Originally Posted by
j.sabourn
The only vessel the RN had in 1980 able to do a rescue of survivors from a bottomed submarine was the well out of date HMS Reclaim , second to that was mv.Seaforth Clansman. It was the one and main reason we didn’t accompany the fleet down to the Falklands as the navy wouldn’t commit it too far away from where may be needed as would leave that area exposed . They were busy building their own vessel think it was HMS Challenger. However going by what I heard on the grapevine on completion the Challenger proved to be a white elephant , as due to the information gained from the Falklands war and the intelligence that it provided on how easily aluminium burned and which a lot of that material had been put into her building , her commission was not too long under the White Ensign . The Challenger was not built as a DSV purely for the one job , but a ship for all seasons . Seasons being jobs. What the RN has today I haven’t a clue. The Clansman I tried to follow her career and got as far where she was looking for gold off the seabed somewhere off West Africa. Probably been made into razor blades a long time ago. Cheers JS
PS the gold may of been diamonds JS