The navy's newest ship

[John Arton]

Under conversion in Birkenhead, the newest addition has been named HMS Proteus.
Rgds
J.A
https://www.navylookout.com/first-im...d-rfa-proteus/

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John.
I was puzzled for a moment as to which way was for' d and which was aft.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

What is it, might look good when finished.

[J Gowers]

Looks like an Ex North Sea oil rig/diving support ship

[Ivan Cloherty]

Looks like an Ex North Sea oil rig/diving support ship

That's exactly what it was

[James Curry]

Good job they got the intended name right and put in the "R" Could have upset the White house.

[Keith Tindell]

Certainly not a thing of beauty, but then what ship is now.

[j.sabourn]

During the Falklands war the Navy was in the process of building a vessel to replace HMS Reclaim. Beleive she was called HMS Challenger if not someone else might know her name. She was going to be a multi purpose vessel not confined to Diving Support. After I left that particular way of earning a living and shall we say HMS Challenger was commissioned it was brought to the notice of whoever responsible that large amounts of aluminium had gone into her construction , and it had been noted during the Falklands war that HM or any ship hit that had aluminium in her makeup burned very profusely .So it was decided to sell her off after a very short life. Don’t know who bought her or anymore of her history . Maybe they are still chasing a suitable vessel ? JS

[Jim R Christie]

During the Falklands war the Navy was in the process of building a vessel to replace HMS Reclaim. Beleive she was called HMS Challenger if not someone else might know her name. She was going to be a multi purpose vessel not confined to Diving Support. After I left that particular way of earning a living and shall we say HMS Challenger was commissioned it was brought to the notice of whoever responsible that large amounts of aluminium had gone into her construction , and it had been noted during the Falklands war that HM or any ship hit that had aluminium in her makeup burned very profusely .So it was decided to sell her off after a very short life. Don’t know who bought her or anymore of her history . Maybe they are still chasing a suitable vessel ? JS

It was Challenger.
Unfortunately with that ship the MOD (as is usual) decided to reinvent the wheel in design terms instead of following what the offshore industry was doing at the time and either copying it or buying an "off the shelf" design and modifying accordingly. She was basically intended to be a dive support vessel.
What they ended up with was a very expensive ship for the time which was nowhere near as capable as it should have been with a design at odds to what the commercial world was doing. In effect she was a white elephant, hence her short service life of only 7 years.
She cost £80 million to build in the early 80s, which was the same price as a Type 42 destroyer.
Ironically the longest lived part of her in RN service was one of her deck cranes. It was removed on her decommissioning in the early 90s and was fitted to HMS Ocean which was then in build; that ship is still in service with the Brazilian Navy.

[j.sabourn]

Most of the naval crew off the Seaforth Clansman were told they would be seconded to her when she came into commission. And it was from them I gathered they weren’t too keen and one of their comments was that the ship was going to have too many different workloads . The fire hazard off aluminium was often discussed among the NCOs . I was in attendance at at least 2 downed aircraft during my time there ,a Tornado in the Irish Sea , and a couple of Wessexs in the English Channel both with fatalties . JS