Navy pays 2x purchase price to keep warship docked for 5 years

Cheap at twice the price

If new first-rates could really be arranged at 8 million a pop we could almost afford enough to keep our surfeit of admirals distracted (with one each!) and stop them wasting much larger sums. It's a better plan for defence value-for-money than any of Lewis' and they might even turn out to have practical uses once the price of oil really starts to hit the ceiling.

Preserving a 200 year old ship is much harder, to the point where this price seems fairly reasonable... and where exactly are you going to get another one of so much historical importance? Didn't know BAE were in the preservation business though. I suppose the MOD are incapable of purchasing from anyone else... bit like my company and a certain low quality IT outsourcer... see, there's an IT angle in everything if you try hard enough.

why is Military spending running amok?

Why, in a world where everyone is having to tighten their belts are military suppliers able to charge an endlessly increasing premium for what often turn out to be failed or faulty services and supplies?

They seem to be the only ones who benefit from the atmosphere of fear that justifies the inception of many of these projects or initiatives... yet by the time they are delivered the solution is outdated and inappropriate so the cycle begins again

It appears that there are too many big consolidated suppliers and with no patriots (no matter what flag) looking beyond the next bonus cycle holding the military (and us) hostage with the threat of a bogeyman (who they also supply)

Between the guided missile destroyers and frigates with no missiles, and aircraft carriers with no aircraft, it's probably our main front line defences at this stage.

Probably quite useful against Somali pirates, too.

BAe Working on RN Stealth Warship

Given the construction of Victory, any bets on her Radar profile being better than the new stealthy warships?

Lewis!

You missed the chance to repeat the old defense complaint that Victories original great repair was completed late and over budget. When she was only 32 she was old and about to be disposed of, when another First rate was wrecked and a survey revealed she could be repaired and put back into service for £23,500 (a third of the cost of a new ship) in a few months.

three and a half years and £70,933 later (more than a brand new first rate to a better design would have cost) her refit was completed and she sedately set out to harass the kings enemies. She has frankly been something of a pain in the ass to keep in reasonable condition for at least the past 220 years. . .

Did the Victory ...

... have a steam-catapult?

That's not cordage, no sir, those are arresting-wires.

Joining the bandwagon

I normally agree with you Lewis, about the massive waste of cash that is defence procurements. Though, as your quote from Pepys attests, 'twas ever thus...

I think your inflation and fleet size calculation was utterly ridiculous though. When Victory was built, Britain had an empire, in which slavery was still legal (and rather profitable too). These kind of warships also tended to last a bloody long time, it was quite possible for a ship to be in active service for a century (with the odd refit and period of being laid up). Crewing them wasn't all that expensive either, especially when you could dock their (terrible) pay to cover food, uniforms and the like.

Back then, if you earned £1,000 a year, you were able to employ large numbers of servants and live the life of the idle rich. Obviously one didn't earn ones money, that was far too common. One had land, or maybe investments...

Comparisons are tricky things, it was a different world. For example, the going rate for 100,000 troops to fight Napoleon was only £1m per year. That was the British subsidy to anyone who'd fight the French. We even (sort of) borrowed Portugal for £7m a year. The Royal Family buggered off to Brasil, we put a British officer in charge of the army, and sort of used it as a giant depot.

If you call it £1,000 = £1m in today's money, then you're probably not too far from the mark. In which case I reckon we could build HMS Victory now for well under £50 million. Even at BAe prices... If you were trolling, then I think you failed, due to re-use of your favourite hobby-horse.

Didn't someone find a flat-pack first-rater at Chatham a few years ago? All the pieces are numbered, so we could always put that one back together. Should be more useful than one of the Type 45 Destroyers at the moment. As someone above has said, it would also be very funny to surprise the Somali pirates.

Gypsies?

Why not get some friendly travellers to do it for considerably less?

I had one knock on my door once who luckily noticed my chimney stack was about to collapse, causing my entire house to fall down. Thankfully, he noticed this by chance as he just happened to be passing with his team, a van and all the materials they needed to fix the structural damage immediately, saving my house in the process!

Initially, he wanted £5000 for the work, but when I said I really couldn't afford it, he managed to bring down the cost to £150 within 4 steps.

So, what I was thinking was, why not get the same craftsmen to restore the Victory? I'm sure they'll do it for at least under a grand.

If they Launch it now...

it might be operationally ready to see off the Argies when they invade the falklands... Again!

next year.

with any luck they can man it with the ConDemned

who should go down with it when its Torpedoed and sent to the bottom with all hands....

trumped up costs

At B&Q a good quality wood preserver can be had for £9.99 . Obviously you would need a few more cans but you should have change of £5000 easy. Team of 5 painters at £80 a day on top of that .

Manpower requirements?

The other thing which might be worth mentioning are the manpower requirements to operate one of these things. A figure of 8-900 crew members is not untypical.

If we're to successfully recreate the Nelsonian Royal Navy in its full glory, including all the frigates, sloops and other smaller ships supporting the battle line, we're going to need some blummin' amazing incentives based around rum, sodomy and the lash for recruitment purposes, as the current RN personnel numbers won't nearly cover it.

Alternatively, press gangs lurking around the nation's job centres might be an interesting thought?

Comeback

With the ConDem salami slicing it won't be long before the venerable old lady is called back into service to combat piracy off the Horn of Africa.

BAE = Billions Above Estimate

This gentle mockery is intended to help, not hurt.

You'll never guess the name of the contractor

Having immediately interpreted "Navy pays..." from my other side of the Atlantic perspective, I had a post planned that would have gone...

You'll never guess the name of the contractor

Richard Burton?

Tim Burton?

Burton Cummings?

I'm sure there must be a burton in there somewhere.

Only eight million?

Sounds like a bargain deal. Now you know why the navy're no longer sailing wood. Too cheap.

BAE Systems

If BAE Systems are handling this work, it presumably means they have extensive expertise working with oak, canvas, hemp, Stockholm tar etc. This is mildly surprising.

Relative cost...

I'm dubious over the validity of using measurements of the value of currency over time in calculating relative costs. Given that the vast majority of our current GDP comprises products, technologies and services that either did not exist in 1765, or would be so altered as to be completely unrecognisable, it's not a great measure of the real cost of something like HMS Victory to either the exchequer, or the country as a whole. Also, the country has a vastly higher (inflation corrected) GDP these days.

A much better way of looking at HMS Victory's cost is to take it as a proportion of the country's GDP, total State Expenditure and defence budget. According to the estimates at http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/index.php?year=1765, UK GDP was £89.4m in 1765 with £12m state expenditure of which defence was £6.1m. For those that care for such things, the national debt, at £133m, was considerably higher as a proportion of GDP than it is today.

The £63,176 capital cost was equivalent to a little over 1% of one year's defence budget, just over 0.5% of one year's state expenditure and approximately 0.07% of a year's GDP.

Current estimates are that a single one of the new carriers will cost approximately £6.2bn (although nobody really believes that will be the final figure). Taking this as a proportion of 2010's GDP, public expenditure and defence budget (£1,453bn, £660,6bn and £43.2bn respectively) this places one carrier at approximately 14.3% of the defence budget, 0.9% of state expenditure and 4.3% of GDP.

Whatever way you look at it (inflation adjusted, %GDP, %State spending or %defence budget), these new carriers look like expensive naval toys. Even in terms of the country's total output, they are something like 60x more expensive than HMS Victory. I suspect that Victory's 0.07% of GDP might get you a submarine or three frigates.

Of course the headline is nonsense - £16m is just 0.001% of the GDP, so in terms of national affordability, that 5 year maintenance figure is about 1/70th of the initial capital cost.

Napoleonic quote ...

On competence in the armed forces ...

When Wellington saw a list of generals available to fight at Waterloo, he said ..

"I can only hope the enemy trembles as much as I when they see this list ...."