Ark Royal Drops Her Anchor For The Last Time, After Being Sold For Scrap

[Omnion 59]

 

HMS Ark Royal, which was built at the Swann Hunter ship yard in Wallsend, was decommissioned in 2010 as part of Government cuts to the budget for the Ministry of Defence.

HMS Ark Royal will be broken up over eight months by 80 workers at the Leylal company, near Izmir on the west coast of Turkey.

The decision to scrap the  22,000-ton ship came following a bidding process which included proposals to turn Ark Royal into a helipad in the Thames, a museum, a hotel, a casino or a diving wreck off the South coast.

HMS Ark Royal saw three decades of service and was seen as a symbol of the former might of the Royal Navy.

She was the fifth vessel to carry the name of the flagship which saw off the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Known as the Mighty Ark, the light aircraft carrier saw action in the Adriatic during the Bosnian War in 1993 before being sent to lead the British fleet during the invasion of Iraq a decade later.

Ark Royal dropped anchor in Turkey after travelling from Portsmouth harbour.