This is a question that has always bugged me, why did the MoD buy the Dilligence, a big state of the art DSV from Stena, purpose built for supporting saturation diving and sub sea engineering, and just use her as a floating workshop, then spend ££££££’s building Challenger, to do the very job the Dilligence could already have done (probably to a far better standard) at a fraction of the price? That has never made sense to me, does anybody know?
By: Fedaykin - 3rd February 2008 at 17:14
She was a bit of a dog, when I was still working for the offshore oil industry a few of my friends discussed her when the MoD were trying to sell the ship and said they’d recommended not going near it with a barge pole. Even if the RN wanted another DSV, why not just buy a commercial off the shelf design? One thing the offshore oil industry knows about is dive support and sub sea engineering ops, probably an awful lot more expertise than the RN in the field, and the commercial designs are excellent. And the fact that the RN have just used commercially chartered and leased offshore support vessels for the role since retiring Challenger illustrates that there is no technical reason why they needed to design their own ship. Cynical it may be, but I see just a mix of pride (we know better…) and political pork barrel largesse with tax payers money on this one.
Interesting to hear she was a bit of a dog.
Personally I agree that it was silly building her in the first place when there were commercial ones available for sale or lease.
By: Turbinia - 3rd February 2008 at 16:54
She was a bit of a dog, when I was still working for the offshore oil industry a few of my friends discussed her when the MoD were trying to sell the ship and said they’d recommended not going near it with a barge pole. Even if the RN wanted another DSV, why not just buy a commercial off the shelf design? One thing the offshore oil industry knows about is dive support and sub sea engineering ops, probably an awful lot more expertise than the RN in the field, and the commercial designs are excellent. And the fact that the RN have just used commercially chartered and leased offshore support vessels for the role since retiring Challenger illustrates that there is no technical reason why they needed to design their own ship. Cynical it may be, but I see just a mix of pride (we know better…) and political pork barrel largesse with tax payers money on this one.
By: Fedaykin - 3rd February 2008 at 16:27
HMS Challenger is a bit of a farce anyway considering its was sold after only 10 years of use.
I do remember seeing her on a navy day at Portsmouth whilst I was still in shorts:D
By: Phil Foster - 3rd February 2008 at 08:23
At a guess I’d say it was because some MPs dad or brother didn’t get a proper back hander over the Dilligence so its services were no longer required and in comes Challenger with a proper back hander for some high ranking MPs mate.
Or am I being a bit cynical?
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February 2, 2008 at 8:20 pm