HMS Ark Royal arrives in Portsmouth for the very last time.
Fleet flagship HMS Ark Royal returned to her home port of Portsmouth for the final time on 3rd December 2010, ending 25 years of service to the Royal Navy across the globe.
The aircraft carrier is being decommissioned early next year and sailed into Portsmouth Naval Base following a brief farewell tour of the UK and a stopover in Hamburg.
In keeping with tradition she flew a decommissioning pennant.
Her role as the current Royal Navy flagship will initially be taken on by amphibious assault ship HMS Albion.
Bit overdramatic to use all that dry ice, wasn’t it?
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My Canadian work colleagues can’t understand why I am crying…..
Where’s Turner when you need him?
ohhhhh very atmospheric! Nothing more awesome than seeing that with the mist… shame on this occasion it’d be for the last time :/
And Albion? I’d make Ocean the flagship…
Very sad.
{Thanks BBC News for cocking up the times so I missed it. BZ!}
@Mike – don’t forget that Ocean herself could be going under the SDSR, losing two flagships within a few months would be a bit embarassing…
El Sid;
Right and we dont need more of that… XD
Ixion, mate, do we really want to see an orange, blurry Ark Royal?
I find Albion being chosen as the new Flag Ship hilarious.
I saw on newsnight that in arguments with the MoD over the SDSR that the Navy charaterised those ships as ships for the Royal Marines.
why, they come with flag facilities?
Yes Jedi, i know they have good facilities.
What i mean’t was that the Navy did not seem to view them as Fleet ships.
I now think that this could be a subtle dig at the Gov./MoD.
People will scratch their heads that an Assault ship is the Fleet Flagship.
Oh, they won’t – everybody wants one these days. What they will notice is that the pride of the fleet is now on the level of the Netherlands Navy, just it doesn’t have a hangar.