London - Britain's Queen Elizabeth 2 luxury liner, which is to be turned into a floating hotel in Dubai, set sail for its final voyage as a cruise ship Tuesday.

The famous QE2 left its home port of Southampton, in southern Britain, to a blaze of fireworks and the cheers of thousands Tuesday evening after 40 years of service.

Hours before its departure, the vessel had to be refloated after running into a sandbank off Southampton.

Tugs were employed to refloat the 70,000-ton ship which was believed to have been blown off course by strong winds as it negotiated entry into the port in the early hours of Tuesday.

"She touched a sandbank called Brambles but with the tide rising she was able to get away," said a spokesman for Cunard, the shipping line.

"We are not aware at this stage of any damage to the vessel and everything is proceeding as planned," said the spokesman. "We don't know exactly what happened for the vessel to get stuck."

The 1,700 passengers on board, disembarking at Southampton, said they had hardly noticed the incident.

Its final voyage to Dubai, where the QE2 is due to dock on November 26, was sold out almost instantly, with the most luxurious berths going for more than 28,000 pounds 
(43,000 dollars).

The QE2 will be handed over to the Nakheel company, part of Dubai World, which bought the vessel for 50 million pounds.

It will be refurbished as a luxury hotel before taking up a permanent docking on a berth in Palm Jumeirah, the largest man-made island in the world.

Before the QE2 set sail on its last journey from Britain Tuesday, it was part of nationwide commemorations to remember the end of World War I 90 years ago.

Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was on board the ship to mark the occasion as 1 million paper poppy flowers - Britain's symbol for remembering the war dead - rained down from a Tiger Moth biplane flying overhead.

The liner, launched by Queen Elizabeth II in 1967, has sailed around the world 25 times, crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times and carried more than 2.5 million passengers.

It served as a troop carrier in the 1982 Falklands conflict.

Apart from royalty, the QE2 carried former South African president Nelson Mandela during a trip from Durban to Cape Town in 1998.

The ship also won fame in a special episode of the popular British TV series, Coronation Street, while in 1976, police foiled an attempt by the former Irish Republican Army 
(IRA) terrorist group to blow it up in dry dock in Southampton.

As she disembarked from her last journey with the QE2 in Southampton Tuesday, British pensioner Shirley Newcombe said: "I'm a regular and I'm very sad to see her go. There's just something about her. She's just absolutely wonderful." (dpa)