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Looking for the name of a ship
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Message 1.Â
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 16th January 2011
In the late 70s I was the mate on a small coaster and frequently came into Southampton water loaded with either soya meal or maize for Eling mill? Depending on the state of the tide we would berth alongside a decommissioned warship just off Marchwood Military Port… sometimes for the weekend.
I never found out the name of the ship, but it was British, old and completely deserted… also unlocked. Now tell me anyone that’s stuck out in the middle of Southampton water alongside a ship like that, can’t get ashore, and doesn’t want to have a look around.
It was either a corvette or a destroyer, I don’t know, but it was a lot bigger than us, and we spent some very interesting times wandering around, but always fearful our torches would fail, for it was very dark inside, very quiet, and rather eerie, a ghost ship.
On the bridge, it very much put me in mind of ‘Compass Rose’ from the film ‘The Cruel Sea’, it was easy to imagine Jack Hawkins on the bridge shouting orders down to the engine room, and listening to the cries of help coming up from the engine room.
A lot of the electrical stuff had been removed, but most of the machinery was still there…
Can anyone help put a name on it… with a bit of its history, and is it now a long gone pile of razor blades.
Kind regards bandick. -
Message 2
Posted by Stepney Boy (U1760040) on Monday, 17th January 2011
Hi,
Did you notice if she had a number painted on her hull such F71 or D32?
Regards
Spike -
Message 3
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 17th January 2011
Hi stepney boy… I don’t recall if there was a number… although I suppose there must have been. I certainly didn’t see anything to give its identity away; I think I recall seeing where a name plate would have been. Perhaps all that kind of stuff was removed lest it fall into the hands of souvenir hunters.
I remember when we got up onto it to get our ropes out etc, the decks were covered in sea shells. I wondered why, and then saw the seabird population dropping the shell to crack them open… I’d never seen that done before. I’ve seen other birds doing in Poole since.
We berthed alongside it several times, so I think she must have been there some time, but I have no idea when she went as we were a trampship and had no permanent contracts.
She was completely empty… and I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t locked up. Very fascinating to wander around in the dark thou I can tell you.
Kind regards bandick. -
Message 4
Posted by Stepney Boy (U1760040) on Monday, 17th January 2011
Hi again,
Can you recall how many gun turrets she had and were they single or twin gunned?
Also how many funnels and are you able to discribe her stern?
For example a rounded stern with a single funnel and a single barrelled turret
in front of the open bridge would indicate a corvette.
Regards
Spike -
Message 5
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 17th January 2011
Oh ek!... I think she had one funnel… the foredeck was enormous, and I think she had one gun turret there, but maybe another gun mounted on the deck housing behind that. The turrets to me looked out of proportion to the size of the barrels, as if they were just old drain pipes. She had another turret to the rear of the deck housing, and the stern… was not rounded… so it must have been a transom. I’m being very vague here I know, but it was 30-35yrs ago.
I found the engine room once… I think she had two turbines… I’d never seen anything like them before so I’m assuming that’s what they were. I really don’t know what she was doing there… maybe she was waiting to be scraped. What struck me most of all was that she looked like she’d just steamed out of an old war film. And trying to remember how to get out again.
µþ²¹²Ô»å¾±³¦°ì…
Ps I seem to recall mention of a race… and she won. But now I’m wondering if it was about that ship? -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 17th January 2011
bandick
Just another Cass longshot..
But there was that whole scandal about the breaking up of old naval vessels.. that no-one knew what to do with, and which hung around for years.
In the end some desperate NE politician and local council decided that, as the region used to be a great shipbuilding centre, perhaps it could now become a great shipbreakers. For these military ships were beyond the capabilities of the Third World breakers of the Indian sub-continent.
Green peace caught wind of a lucrative contract to also bring over redundant vessels from the USA. But, as with nuclear waste, they created an outcry about the dangerous products and the pollutants that would have contaminated the locality- including asbestos.. [It sounds from some of your posts that you probably worked through the period of having to deal with asbestos as an old construction material..We suspect it was that more than the roll-your-own cigarrettes that killed our father.. For a few years he worked nights in a place that stored sacks of asbestos powder]
As I say just another longshot.
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 17th January 2011
You’re quite right Cass… when I was a kid you could buy asbestos mats from the hard ware counter in your local Woollies, to put your old flat iron on. I had one of those ‘Mamod’ model steam engines for Christmas, remember them, I still got it and, the box, it has 19/-6p pencilled in the corner… that has a meth’s burner and the wick is… asbestos. Father had an old motor cruiser with twin gardener diesels… guess what lagged the exhausts… asbestos rope. On board ship all the lagging was asbestos.
In the construction game, I’ve disk cut hundreds of asbestos roofing sheets creating vast clouds of dust… and am I worried about it… you bet your bottom dollar I am. Just before I became ill, I wanted to remove an old Marley garage with a corrugated asbestos roof from my garden… the council came around and told me I would have to get specialist in to remove it. I left the garage standing.
I’ve had my lungs checked out recently… they’re perfect, which I’m pleased about as I used to smoke a lot.
Bandick. -
Message 8
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 17th January 2011
bandick
Good news about your lungs... I am afraid that my father's smoking made me a bit of an obsessive non-smoker..
I too have a boxed up brass model steam engine somewhere. I do not know the make. My father gave it to me as a present in about 1957, when I was building model catamarans and the like.
I have a vague memory of seeing my paternal granfather once when I was a toddler. He was bed-ridden downstairs with a plastic mask over his nose and mouth, attached to an oxgen bottle. -- I now realise.. He was dying of emphesema having spent his working life as stoker in a Welsh steel mill- I believe. Possibly Anthracite.. Hard stuff. Probably nasty dust.
But I suppose this goes along with that post-war "Festival of Britain" "look at the Brave New World of Science and Technology culture that I have just been writing about on another thread . Humankind was now able to tame Nature, rape the Earth with impunity and subject everything to the will of "those who know best".
Look where it has got us!
Cass -
Message 9
Posted by MB (U177470) on Monday, 17th January 2011
Try asking on Ship Nostalgia.
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Message 10
Posted by Pete- Weatherman (U14670985) on Monday, 17th January 2011
There were a few Ships moored around Marchwood in the 70s. Most were supply ships like the Galahad and a few of the others that whent to the Falklands. Others were just mothballed craft. most have gone to other ports or even been scraped. To be honest I have not notest any there resently but I have not been looking.
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Message 11
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011
Hi MB… I have tried to register several times now, but I’m doing something wrong as it won’t accept any of my passwords, so I’ll keep trying as it looks interesting.
Pete… hi, if you know that area, perhaps you would know if those ships moored on buoys, or alongside… I can’t ever remember getting ashore, which makes me think we were tied up alongside that warship out on the buoys… I remember seeing Sir Galahad there, and a few others. Did they scrap them there as well…? It’s a hell of a big place once inside those gates.
Years later I used to have to go there to do welding repairs to loads of artic trailers. It was a devil of a place to get into due to all the security etc… and I recall many times having trouble getting a crane authorised to lift gun barrels off the trailers before I could get to the cracks, and make the repairs. Everything was always ‘don’t worry… come back tomorrow’… -
Message 12
Posted by Piltdown (U6504098) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011
"I seem to recall mention of a race… and she won."
I wonder if she may have been HMS Cavalier. She won a race against HMS Rapid in 1970 for the title Fastest Ship in the Navy. She did languish at Portsmouth for some years until being preserved at Chatham dockyards. She would appear to match your description.
Some pictures here:-
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Message 13
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011
Piltdown hi… amazing… after spending all morning checking out all the bigger ports, I’ve just found HMS Cavalier on goggle earth in Chatham… I don’t know if that’s the ship I’m looking for, it looks promising from the street views… but I’ve literary just clicked off earth and back onto the thread to ask anyone if they knew if Cavalier spent time in Southampton… and you’ve come up with the same ship. Well done that man. Need now to read about her…
¸é±ð²µ²¹°ù»å²õ… -
Message 14
Posted by Piltdown (U6504098) on Tuesday, 18th January 2011
No probs,
The main clue was the mention of the race which I'm old enough to remember.
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