OT The driver of that sub wasn't very astute was he.

[brass monkey]

What a pillock.

[js.b1]

Usual SatNav problem... "Turn Left"... :-)

[ARWadsworth]

Not a "let her drive" then?

[Adrian Simpson]

In article , brass monkey writes

I won't have been the "driver", he will have taken it exactly where he was told to. The navigating officer may have some interesting questions to answer.

Adrian

[Peter Scott]

I wish I could be in the officers mess when he gets back. The Skye boat song, offers of a satnav, 'watch out for that table'. Any other offers?

Peter Scott

[Huge]

He'll be court martialled.

[Peter Parry]

Court martial for running your ship aground (automatic in the Navy) used to be a cunning way of getting promoted until the system caught on.

The Navy had seniority brackets for promotion, so to attain the next rank you had to be in the lower one for (say) 3 to 7 years. Less than

3 or more than 7 and you were not eligible for promotion. The rank for which this was really critical was Lt Cdr as one wrong posting at the critical time could lose you all chance of promotion with no opportunity of ever recovering.

If you were a Lt Cdr and just outside the top of the promotion bracket you would never be promoted. The writers of the annual reviews of officers just out of the band generally wrote very favourable reports (assuming the Lt Cdr was basically competent) and highly recommended them for promotion knowing it could never happen but it made the passed-over feel better.

One cunning aged Lt Cdr of my acquaintance and just out of bracket did a bit of research and discovered that the penalty for running aground without doing too much damage was usually about 2-5 years loss of seniority. Now most running aground incidents tended to happen to more inexperienced officers and losing seniority was quite a blow.

However, for the aged Lt Cdr outside the top limit of the time in rank promotion bracket loosing seniority was a godsend. It meant the punishment put the man back into the promotion bracket (as he had just had 5 years of "time in rank" removed) but he was now accompanied by a few years glowing reports and strong promotion recommendations.

Borrowing a minesweeper (not difficult - he offered to command it for a week when it was tasked with the thankless job of making cadets sick (sea experience)) said Lt Cdr found a prominent sand bar near Portsmouth and duly wedged his craft gently upon it in full view of assorted Admirals. To make sure it was noticed he launched bright orange life rafts and summoned help from everything afloat and within range.

At his court martial, as an experienced seaman branch officer he was given the higher punishment of 5 years loss of seniority - and promoted to Cdr 12 months later and Captain shortly afterwards.

It took the Navy several years, and several happy Lt Cdrs, before they realised what was going on.

[Richard Head]

The sub is steered by a computer, not manually.

[PeterC]

Ah, a submarine with windows.

[Donwill]

I'm afraid that the "Diana" effect has permeated all parts of our society even the Navy. That debacle in the gulf when a naval boat strayed into Iranian waters and British Sailors were captured by the so called Revolutionary Guards was embarrassing enough. What happened to the sub is yet another indication of the depths to which we have sunk ( no pun intended). Don

[Huge]

Fascinating, thank you. My father was in the RN for 25 years, but never mentioned this.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , PeterC writes

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[geoff]

You mean Porthole XP

[geoff]

In message , Mike Tomlinson writes

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Peter Parry saying something like:

Glorious. :)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "brass monkey" saying something like:

It's all relative, innit? Back when we had a Navy worth speaking of, with many handfuls of boats, the odd one running aground was hardly worth mentioning really, and escaped notice by the Yellow Press. Now the Navy consists of three paper boats and a rubber duck, it's much more something to write about when the inevitable happens.

"Left hand down a bit."

[Windmill]

Maybe it was being steered via remote control by a Field Marshal in MOO headquarters!

[John Weston]

Or someone running a simulation that was "accidentally" still connected to feeds to the live boat, previously used to program the simulator. Fire one... :-) This happened to a Power Station that had faulty firewalls, not all that far from here. Fortunately someone noticed and hit the big button before -it- ran aground. It never was made public and I know nothing about it...

[Chris Hogg]

I see the tug used to pull it off was one of the UK coastguard tugs (we have one of its three sisters stationed down here in Mounts Bay in west Cornwall to cover the Western Approaches). Apparently all four are due to be scrapped in the next 12 months as part of the cost cutting exercise. What's the betting there'll be a major tanker disaster in UK waters the following winter?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Chris Hogg saying something like:

It's absurd that a maritime nation, having learned from bitter experience where to put these tugs, is getting rid. TF the RNLI (for example) is independent, for sure as shit they'd be cut to the bone if it was up to the Gov't.