Wednesday 19 June 2013

Clyde Goes Hollywood in the Falklands – The Patrol Ship, and Falkland Guardship CLYDE has marked in spot in some style by making a permanent mark on the Falklands.    The ship’s name is now writ large in the Falklands using giant boulders overlooking the capital Stanley.     The Patrol Ship becomes the sixth Royal Navy vessel to be honoured with the gigantic ‘inscription’ on the Camber, directly opposite the heart of Stanley – names which celebrate vessels with long or important associations with the remote British territory.     Each letter is ten metres high (32ft) by five metres (16ft) wide, made from roughly four tonnes of rock and laid on top of the scrub and bog that make up the Camber.    The six ships so commemorated are :-
·         HMS BARRACOUTA – a 19th Century cruiser which patrolled the islands, mainly to keep fishermen in check.
·         HMS BEAGLE - Charles Darwin’s survey ship Beagle stopped here during the ship’s round the world voyage in the 1830s
·         HMS PROTECTOR – the honours the previous Antarctic Survey Ship, not the current vessel, which carried out research in the ’50s and ’60s;
·         HMS ENDURANCE honours both vessels which called in on the islands for nearly 40 years
·         HMS DUMBARTON CASTLE, whose boulders were put in place in 2007 after 25 years of taking it in turns to patrol the region with her sister HMS LEEDS CASTLE.
The names are so large that they are visible on Google Earth (51˚40’57”S, 57˚51’39”W – although the satellite imagery’s not been updated yet to include the CLYDE moniker).

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