Union Jack.

[John Arton]

KT
Hamburg b.s. That place was still going in 08 though unless you had an old fart (me) master, then dipping the ensign was hardly ever done on any vessel. My Philippine crew were well into the ritual but my Russian lot never could understand it even though many of them had been trained in the old style Russian navy ways. A mate of mine tried to demolish the jetty that was in front of the restaurant when his engines packed up on him coming out from Hamburg fully laden but his navigational skills were that bad he missed that jetty and demolished the next one up river, though to be fair it was dense fog at the time.
As for submarines one of the biggest frights I ever had at sea was in the Gulf of Oman, beautiful calm hot night. I was 3rd mate on a crude oiler inbound for the Gulf when around 2200 there was a huge whoosing noise a bloody great big Russian sub surfaced just metres off our stbd beam and proceeded to tail us into the Straits.
rgds
JA

[Hugh]

Worked with quite a few of the minehunters until the Navy got its all purpose vessel HMS Challenger which believe turned out to be a dud. Cheers John Sabourn

Yes, John, a bit of a white elephant I believe, and probably sold on by the MoD at a loss.
Regards
Hugh

[j.sabourn]

Hugh, heard second hand that the main reason was the amount of aluminium in her construction, which was found in most cases to be rather disasterous to some of the vessels hit with exocets during the Falklands war. Have also met some ex Navy personel. who reckon the multi purpose part didn't go down too well. As apart from diving situations she had other roles. As she was built to replace HMS Reclaim which believe was a dedicated Diving support vessel. Cheers John Sabourn