British Royal navy Decline?

Unseen Navy?

Living by the sea, one has the advantage of seeing many kinds of ships and vessels of various types passing by, apart from the wildlife and the carry on of people? Over the years one has noticed a dramatic decline in British Royal naval ships in our waters?

(Thank You for sending HMS SMITER from Padstow in Cornwall).

There are various news items that report that our navy is shrinking, because of costs? Perhaps because Britain still has many rocks and islands around the world to protect so much of the navy is now spread apart to thinly to be of any real effect?

NATO Perhaps has seen its day in relation to the current U.S. administrations unpredictability or our ships have become more powerful, so we need less of them to be physically seen?

Boaty McBoatface.

'I just could not resisit it.'

What a name for a southern oceans research ship?

Humour or not, they had to go with number two Sir David Attenborough?

Many nations employ these types of vessels, mostly to protect their isolated assests? The British case being the disputed Falkland Islands, South-Geogia and the Sandwich group.

 These vessels measure sea tempratures and study aspects of underwater volcanism and many other supposed secret of the deep on of them being the level of radioactivity from the dumping of deep water waste.

Russia and China have huge fleets of such vessels mostly used for spying in the name of science? They too have their intrest now with the illegal occupation of the spratley Islands between Vieatnam and the Philippines.

Cable laying, monitoring of submarines, oil slicks and plankton activity are a few of the other areas.

These vessels are of a new design to cope more with their longer periods at sea. The helicopter deck is now at the front, while the rear has winches and cranes. Mini manned and robotic subs are carried along with internal scientific facilities.

Blue Sky M.

Abandoned Ships.

This has now been under way for some time with various boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy or to the Island of Lampadusa. These migrants were generally from Libya, Somalia, Eritrea and various other north-African countries, were life is not really worth living.

Now it seems that the phenomena has moved to the Adriatic Sea and these are mostly Iraqis and Syrians. This form of purchasing cheap vessels is nothing new, enough money can be made from the extortion of desperate people to buy more and more ships, fishing boats and other rickety vessels for the one way trips.

The sad fact about the whole world of the shipping industry as we are starting to see, is that it can sometimes be very hard to find who actually owns a vessel. The flags of registration do not really tell us much about the origin of the vessel and who makes up the syndicates that share the profits. Meanwhile many of the crews of these ships are paid pittance or never paid at that.