Regards

Clive

Andrew C. Toppan <actop...@gwi.net> wrote in message
news:G9cc3.204$MC6.381@newsfeed.slurp.net...

If the money had been available, Warspite should have been saved
and kept in Portsmouth :) But she was a _lot_ of steel,  available for
scrapping, in terrible condition, and it was use her or lose her.
Preservation wasn't an option at that point.

Tragic, but true. I wish we had a dreadnought battleship in Pompey
to finish the evolution from Mary Rose to Victory to Warrior to...
whatever we could get. Warspite and Vanguard would be good
choices, but we're missing that last step in the evolution of the line-
of-battleship.

Perhaps we could acquire an Iowa-class BB? ;)

--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...            

;-)

JM

 I realize that times were difficult after the war, but Britain did
manage to support an ill-advised foray into socialism, an expensive
monarchy, the vestiges of an empire, and the development three V-bombers
during this era. After the war generation bore burdens and made
sacrifices as great as any in British history, the ideal that a ship as
important as HMS Warspite could be reduced to scrap for a few cents on
the pound is almost repugnant. How will Britons of the twenty-first
century come to view this decision? Did the faceless bureaucrats who
made the decision ask the men who rode with Warspite into the teeth of
death before the German fleet at Jutland if they were willing to make
economic sacrifices to preserve her? Did they ask the soldiers who
stormed Normandy’s beaches and found solace under her guns if she was
worth saving?

Please pardon this little tirade; I realize that few, if any, of the
readers on this newsgroup were in any position to affect the
preservation decision one way or another. And of course, the United
States has been almost as short-sighted with its naval heritage, as the
scrapping of USS Enterprise in 1959 showed.

I certainly hope you're volunteering all your free time and money to help
in warship preservation efforts.  

G. Smith <g_smith...@hotmail.com> wrote

The average Brit is very proud of the nations naval heritage, but they
do not see this in terms of wood or steel. For most people the men who
fought and won those battles are more important than the vessels ever
will be. For example, everyone who visits Victory gets to see the plaque
that marks where Nelson allegedly was shot, and visits the point in the
ship where he died.

The country is full of pubs named after naval heroes, for example the
Admiral Duncan pub in Soho is in the news today. I live in Merton where
everything from the pubs, the roads and even the local hospital are
named after Nelson. I can think of one pub locally that is names
Victory.

A few places are named after ships, but it is extremely rare. Even very
famous ships like Revenge and Iron Duke have almost nothing named after
them.

The British people do not need ships, they know that a navy is not any
good without men of calibre to command and man them.

--
                             Julian Barker

By the way, I meant absolutely no disrespect to the British people, and hope
none of our friends, cousins and allies on the other side of the pond
construed my comments as such.