Royal Navy selling HMS Victory?
CPO SCC Dean Marshall| | September 13, 2008
HMS Victory
It has been reported today that HMS Victory, the ship famous for the most historic battle of the Royal Navy, could be sold by the Royal Navy in an effort to save money. The ship, which became the flag ship of Lord Horatio Nelson is reportedly costs 1.5 Million Pounds every year to maintain and the Royal Navy fear that its just too costly. Having successfully defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805, the ship returned to Britain where it was decommissioned in 1809 and put into dry dock in Portsmouth in 1922. Since then it has become a popular tourist attraction boasting 400,000 visitors each year. High ranking officers of the Royal Navy, including Sir Julian Oswald, Former First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, have shown their dismay at the decision to sell the ship, by saying “The Victory is a national treasure. Talk of selling her or anything of that sort, is absolutely daft. ”
Rugby Sea Cadets have visited HMS Victory in dry dock on a number of occasions.
Source: Daily Mail Website
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This would be a terrible idea. The Victory should be a nationally protected heritage site—who would they sell it to? A private enterprise? Would the Americans sell the Abraham Memorial because it costs too much to maintain? This is one of the things tax dollars are for—to assist in the preservation of national history.
And if the HMS Victory doesn’t represent the glorious heroics of Imperial Great Britain, I’m not sure what *does*.