24 NAVY NEWS, JUNE 2011


A refresher for you on small ships


I MUST say it gets a bit tedious having to correct Navy News every time there is mention of MTB102 as on page 3 of the May edition. The picture you feature of the P2000 Fleet in formation has the


caption Eleven of the Navy’s P2000s joined by MTB102 and two launches. This would be a bit difficult as at the time MTB102 was in her boatyard undergoing her annual slip and maintenance. The


102 in your picture is


HSL102,an RAF launch. It’s a poor show when the Navy cannot tell the difference between one of its own and the opposition. I suggest you check out www.mtb102.com to refresh the Navy’s memory of what her small ships did in days past.


MTB102 was in Holland in early May for the Dutch Liberation Day celebrations and is ready now for a trip from her home at Lowestoft to Ramsgate for the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships Commemorative Cruise over the bank holiday weekend. As we will have a contingent of


ratings from HMS Collingwood with us at Ramsgate we will do our best to make sure they can tell the difference. MTB102 is grey and has two big


Each month Pussers Rum are offering to courier a bottle of their finest tipple to the writer of our top letter – provided he or she is over 18, of course. For youngsters and teetotallers we will provide an alternative prize. This month’s winner is:


torpedo tubes on the deck. What more do you need? – Richard Basey Skipper MTB102, Commodore Association of Dunkirk Little Ships


Richard Basey, in apologies for a recurrent slip...


I WAS surprised to learn from the May edition that there are 14 ships in the University Royal Naval Units with 11 of them pictured together in the Solent.


Contrast this with another article in the same edition detailing the last


voyage of another Type 22 frigate returning home to be decommissioned together with her three sisters and the Ark Royal. It seems we can no longer afford to keep many of our front-line ships,


l The P2000s exercising in the Solent just before Easter Picture: LA(Phot) Arron Hoare, FRPU East


but can afford to ‘give influential youngsters a greater appreciation of what the Navy does.’ I’m sure this will be a great comfort to the many sailors currently facing redundancy.


It’s good to keep company


ONCE out of uniform, one tries not to be too much of a SOF but it’s not always easy. Some standards and rituals are


worth keeping and the proper use of our nautical language is, for me, important. It’s irritating enough hearing civilian friends, and broadcast media, refer to a ship as a boat, even when that boat is HMS Albion or RMS Queen Mary 2. However, I notice an increasing


Navy but the ships are not all boats, and surely we don’t have to have a smaller lexicon of nautical language to match the smaller fleet? I accept that


tendency to call a ship’s company ‘a crew.’ I was taught that boats and aircraft have crews and ships have companies – and ships carry boats and aircraft, of course. But, for every rule there’s an exception too.


In the media and in MOD press releases and elsewhere, captains of HM Ships (and Boats) often seem now to refer to their ‘crew’ and less frequently to their ‘ship’s company.’


LETTERS to the editor should always be accompanied by the correspondent’s name and address, not necessarily for publication. E-mail correspondents are also requested to provide this information. Letters cannot be submitted over the telephone. If you submit a


are sea-blind, but we should take care not to civilianise our nautical language unnecessarily, for language is a living thing and thrives on usage, conversely, words (and language) soon die out if not in common usage. It would be interesting to know


how the Royal Navy dealt with nautical language and naval terms given the huge intake of civilians as RNVR officers and Hostilities Only ratings in World War 2. – Lester May, Camden Town, London


Generally speaking we refer to a ‘ship’s company’ in these pages, but I hope readers will forgive references to ‘crew’ to prevent too much repetition – Ed


photograph which


not take yourself, please make sure that you have the permission for us to publish it. Given the volume of letters, we cannot publish all of your correspondence in Navy News. We do, however, publish many on our website, www. navynews.co.uk, accompanied by images. We look particularly for correspondence which stimulates debate, makes us laugh or raises important issues. The editor reserves right


the – John Lee, Whitburn, Sunderland submissions. to edit your you did most civilians I know we have a smaller Royal


WHEN HMS Liverpool returned fire on a rocket battery in Libya, it was the first time a Royal Navy ship had fired her 4.5 medium range gun in anger since Iraq in 2003. The fact that Liverpool and her ship’s company were


on which we all depend don’t exist because of luck, or because the world is an inherently safe and well-ordered place.


They exist because our Armed Forces stand equipped, trained and ready to step in when they come under threat.


ready and equipped to respond proves the value of continuous training and of the great insurance policy which the Armed Forces represent. The safety, free flow of trade and creation of prosperity


The fact that few shots have been fired in anger for eight years does not indicate that we no longer need our Armed Forces at a high level of readiness and capability – it proves rather that deterrence works. Deterrence is not only vested in the nuclear last resort, important though that is, and welcome the confirmation that the Vanguard replacement class is on its way. It also relies on the presence of Royal Navy ships at sea working hard on the nation’s behalf to deter threats before they reach the 4.5 gun response.


Most of this work is silent and unseen, and it doesn’t come cheap, but its importance in maintaining global stability cannot be overstated.


June 2011 no.683: 57th year Leviathan Block, HMS Nelson, Portsmouth PO1 3HH


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