Historic Warships Commentary

By the Editors of WARSHIPS IFR

Pictured: The battleship Missouri enters Pearl Harbor to become a memorial vessel. Photo: Petty Officer 1st Class David Weideman/US Navy.

The missing forecastle of the Tudor capital ship Mary Rose, Henry VIII's ill-fated fleet flagship, has been found during dredging of a channel into Portsmouth for the next generation of British capital ships, the 60,000 tons super-carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. The majority of the rest of the Mary Rose lies preserved at the new carriers' designated homeport, Portsmouth Naval Base. As the Queen Elizabeth begins her maiden voyage from the historic Hampshire naval bastion sometime in the second decade of the 21st Century, she can expect to salute the preserved wooden wall battleship HMS Victory, the very active flagship of the Royal Navy's Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command, and the oldest RN warship still in commission. Meanwhile, as the towering grey sides of the super-carrier slide out of harbour, a wedding may well be in swing aboard the Victorian-era HMS Warrior, a splendid steam warship saved from a state of decay. Such will be the sense of continuity at Portsmouth, reinforcing the message that Britain has been, and always will be, defined by its relation to the sea and the strength, or otherwise, of the British navy. Other nations similarly value historic warships as symbols of statehood. One of the earliest turreted ships, designed by the UK's Captain Coles survives, in the form of the legendary Huascar, built for the Peruvian Navy. She is still afloat in South America, a living testament to the struggle for nationhood and stability. All across the world, from the mighty Iowa Class battleship Wisconsin, which saw action between WW2 and the 1991 Gulf War, to the lowly steam torpedo boat Druzki in Bulgaria, historic warships act as reminders of how hard previous generations have fought to preserve liberty. Sometimes, however, those past sailors fought for wrong causes and the remnants of historic ships, such as the various items dredged up from the Graf Spee on the bottom of the River Plate, remind us that impressive ships of war can be created by evil men too.

In our May 2006 Historic Warships special edition we provide a global tour of selected naval heritage vessels, looking at their stories and locations, as well as the effort expended in preserving them. Our objective is to show the variety of living, breathing historic warships on display worldwide. We believe they are important and should continue to be preserved, despite the expense and effort. Some countries, often those with a modest naval history, are well blessed with historic warships while others, such as the United Kingdom, with an illustrious naval past and cutting-edge naval present, seem to be slipping into a deliberate state of amnesia. Nothing illustrates this worrying British trend more than comparing the two great naval cities of Portsmouth and Plymouth, one with a flotilla of historic warships and the latter with not a single one. Meanwhile, on the Mersey an important collection of historic warships faces an uncertain future, offering such a poor investment that the Crown has been forced to take responsibility for its assets, one of which is the minesweeper Bronnington, formerly commanded by the current Prince of Wales.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Japan, a magnificent model of the battleship Yamato has been created inside its own museum.

In breath-taking style, it displays the massive waste of human endeavour in creating the real thing - sunk by US Navy strike planes while on her way to carry out a kamikaze attack against the Allied fleet off Okinawa in 1945. It also commemorates the sacrifice of thousands of sailors' lives. They died bravely for the wrong cause. Britain, which gave birth to the dreadnought battleship, has no single example either to compare in model form to the Yamato, or even to the real thing, as Japan also has the pre-dreadnought Mikasa (built at Barrow-in-Furness in the northwest of England).

The USA has many battleships as salutes to its past wars, from the Missouri at Pearl Harbor, to the Texas, in Houston, Texas.

Of course, as the world's hyper-power, the USA can afford to keep such steel memorials, while the task for other, less prosperous, countries is not so easy. However, what matters is not the size of the ship, or the magnificence of its setting, but that nations try to maintain their naval heritage in life-size form that can instruct and educate merely by its presence.

For if we learn from these ships today, perhaps we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past in the future.

• See WARSHIPS IFR June 2006 for more on the Joint Strike Fighter.