A fleet decays, worse than ‘prison’
January 4th, 2010 | Carriers Life at Sea Maritime operations Royal Navy | Posted by Phil Ewing
Hard times: The Royal Navy carrier Ark Royal suffered a fire in one of its gas turbines (its third since September) and British sailors complained their lot was worse than prisoners, in stories that appeared a day apart. // Royal Navy
When the Royal Navy’s carrier Ark Royal put to sea for its most recent set of exercises, the British admiralty probably had no idea how much news the ship would make: First people worried it would put the Royal Fleet Auxiliary out of business, then it became the first British warship on Twitter, and now it suffered an engine room fire at 30 knots in the English Channel.
The Ark Royal was weaving and dancing at high speed as part of an air-attack exercise when one of its gas turbines caught fire, The Times reported. The ship’s engineers and fire-fighting systems put out the flames, but it was Ark Royal’s third main-space fire since getting out of the yard in September. How much longer can the navy keep this up, the newspaper wondered.
The Royal Navy has gotten to such a low point that sailors are reaching for that time-honored complaint that they’re treated worse than convicts. Sailors from the frigate Portland told the UK’s Mirror newspaper they had to spend Christmas and New Year’s aboard a ship with no heat, bad food and no news:
“One said: ‘We would be better off if we committed a crime and got thrown in jail. Morale has hit rock bottom.’”