Canned! MoD sells Ark Royal for £3m scrap that will be melted down to make tins and razor blades. The pride of the British fleet cost £320 million to build. Repairs are said to be impossible because the ship is in such poor condition.
For a quarter of a century Ark Royal sailed the seas as a proud symbol of Britain’s illustrious maritime history.
But the Royal Navy’s former flagship is to meet an undignified end – it has been sold for £3million for scrap metal and faces being turned into tin cans and razor blades.
Defence officials concluded that repairs were impossible because the 22,000-ton Invincible-class aircraft carrier – launched in 1981 at a cost of £320million – was in such poor condition. Best deal: The MoD said the decision to sell the Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal, was ‘difficult but necessary’. Ark Royal had been rusting in Portsmouth Harbour after being controversially axed in the Government’s 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, five years ahead of its expected retirement date.
A raft of other bids had come in for the 600ft vessel after it was put up for sale online, with plans including turning it into a nightclub in Hong Kong, a floating
hospital, a commercial heliport moored on the Thames or sinking it to be used as a diving wreck off the south coast.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is expected to announce details of the deal to Parliament today but Ark Royal is likely to suffer the same indignity as its sister ship, Invincible, which was sold to a Turkish recycling firm.
Only HMS Illustrious, commissioned in 1982, is expected to be preserved by the cash-strapped Ministry of Defence after completing active service in 2014.
An MoD source said: ‘Ministers want to do their best to keep one of these iconic aircraft carriers for the nation. Sadly Ark Royal wasn’t in the condition to be kept.’ Ark Royal, built by Swan Hunter on Tyneside, saw action in the Bosnian War in 1993 and led Britain’s fleet for the invasion of Iraq a decade later.
She is the fifth vessel to carry the name of the flagship which saw off the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Tory MP Patrick Mercer said: ‘This is an immensely sad day for the country and especially the Royal Navy. There has been an Ark Royal in the fleet for centuries and now the name seems to have perished along with all her achievements.’
Lord West, a former First Sea Lord, said: ‘This is a sad day for Ark Royal but we must not get silly and sentimental.
‘It was a bad error getting rid of Ark Royal and I think politicians realise that now. But she’s been paid off and that can’t be changed.’
An MoD spokesman said: ‘Retiring her five years earlier than planned was a difficult but necessary decision to help address the multi-billion-pound defence deficit and deliver a balanced MoD budget.
‘The new, much larger Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers will start to enter service in 2017.’