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.