Unlike our American cousins we as an erstwhile maritime power have responded lamentably over the years to preserving aspects of our maritime past. Having said all that acquiring a warship is not so much, the hard part. Raising money for on going care and maintenances certainly is. In the cold light of day only organizations like the Imperial War Museum have the infrastructure and funding train in place to ensure preservation projects like warships don't end up on the buffers. Even these organizations have acquisition policies and budget limitations but preserving a warship even small ones presents huge problems. Docking, and painting are just two, which eat into any budget. I often hear cries of why oh why didn't we preserve this battleship or that carrier but as we have seen recently even the old Plymouth and Broninngton are languishing, not so much for the lack of on going maintenance which was always a problem but there was no tenure of berthing so when the chips were down the ships had to go. Since then no other interested party has come forward to show any firm interest. To place things in perspective it’s not so much the lack of preservation , as sad as it is but the demise of our ship building skills and capacity now that is were the real concerns should be.
Bowwave