Six British Sailors Arrested in Florida After Maiden Voyage of ‘Big Lizzie’
The new $4 billion aircraft carrier and its hundreds of sailors have reportedly caused chaos for restaurants in Jacksonville Beach.

Richard Pohle/Reuters
Six British sailors were arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, after the first transatlantic voyage of Britain’s new $4 billion aircraft carrier. Sgt. Larry Smith of the Jacksonville Beach Police Department told the Florida-Times Union that three of the sailors were also charged with resisting arrest, and one of them had to be tasered in the incident last Wednesday. The arrests came after local businesses scrambled to accommodate the hundreds of British sailors who swarmed the area after the docking of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, a new British aircraft carrier nicknamed ‘Big Lizzie. “The Royal Navy guys came in like a flood, boom. Like they had suddenly been let out of a cage and now they were free. It was unreal and we just weren’t prepared for it,” a manager at Lynch’s Irish Bar was quoted as saying by The Daily Mail.
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