Two Ships
                  And A Story
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SANDEEP UNNITHAN charts the survival bid of HMS Trincomalee
docked in North-eastern England and the decommissioned aircraft carrier Vikrant in Mumbai

Bobbing ina dock in North-eastern England is among the most distinguished Indian artefacts in Britain. The HMS Trincomalee, a 1440-tonne frigate built in Mumbai 183 years ago, has attracted far less attention than the Koh-i-noor or the Amravati marbles though.

At the historic quayside in Hartlepool, however, the ship is the centre of attraction. Its three 165-foot high masts proudly soar skywards and are visible as soon as the train pulls into the seaside town.

On board the ship, guides — most of them hardy ex-Royal Navy sailors — take wide-eyed tourists back into the age of sail. Without neglecting to mention that the ship was built in India. ‘‘We have a hard time convincing them that it wasn’t built in Britain,’’ says Joan Lilley, one of the engineers working on the ship. There are no ‘Made in Mumbai’ plaques onboard the ship.

The only giveaway is the ship’s bowspirit, where the traditional mermaids and other mythical creatures have been replaced by the life-sized wooden figure of a turbaned and mustachioed Indian. This likeness is the lasting tribute to Jamsetji Bomanjee Wadia — the master shipbuilder who directed hundreds of sweaty workmen at his Wadia shipyard (site of the present naval dockyard in Mumbai) where the ship was launched in May 1816.

Nearly two centuries later, work continues on the 38-gunship he built. This 10-year refit, the first in its history, is to ensure that the ship will last out another 200 years in the water. It involves replacing rotting timbers with fresh wood and the restoration of its cabins and crew compartments. All this amidst the steady flow of hard-hatted tourists. ‘‘We think it looks more authentic this way,’’ grins Lilley, leading the way through the slightly cramped confines of the ship. Over 240 officers and men once endured pirates, trans-Atlantic voyages and sheer boredom in two decks of this 180-foot-long ship. During its adventures through Britannia’s troubled seas, the Trincomalee helped quell a revolt in Haiti and quelled an invasion of Cuba.

It’s the original rock-hard teak wood that is mute testimony to the ship’s origins. The Wadias used Malabar teak from the forests of Kerala, when supplies of British oak became scarce. One of the reasons the ship was made in India. And though British sailors expressed their dissatisfaction with teak — its splinters left sores in their skin — the choice has been vindicated over the years. The Trincomalee has lasted out in the water longer than any other wooden ship in the world and today is the single greatest testimonial to the skill of Indian shipbuilders.

Trincomalee Trust President Captain David Smith proudly mentions that the ship has retained over 60 per cent of the teak the Wadias used to build her. In stark contrast, less than four per cent of the world’s oldest floating ship the USS Constitution is original. ‘‘The Constitution is more of a replica ship,’’ he scoffs. Evidently, Britain’s National Historic Ship’s Committee wasn’t impressed. The committee, set up to identify rare ships in Britain which needed to be preserved, omitted the Trincomalee from its list of core historic ships last November. Wasn’t built in the UK, they shook their heads.

For veteran Captain David Smith, who has battled for over two decades to preserve this ship, the move is nothing short of treason. Under the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Trincomalee Trust has so far raised a staggering £ 9.5 million for the refit, but is still a million pounds short. Dropping the ship from the heritage list could spell an end to the chances of raising additional funding for the refit which is due to be completed by the year-end.

If the origins of the Trincomalee have clouded its future, then it’s not alone. Anchored in the very shipyard where she was buit is another historic ship — the retired aircraft carrier Vikrant. This ship was laid down as the HMS Hercules for the Royal Navy during the Second World War, left incomplete when the war finished and then sold to the Indian Navy.

Vikrant-sceptics have ranged against the ship as she was built in Britain — a colonial relic which isn’t worth preserving and hence must be sent to the scrapyard. Never mind the fact that the Vikrant was the bulwark of the navy for over three decades. The Vikrant’s single greatest achievement was to corral over 1 lakh Pakistani troops and pummel them with her aircraft in erstwhile East Pakistan, while enforcing a naval blockade during the 1971 war.

Retired from the navy in 1997, the ship has seen a series of flip-flops. Three successive Chief Ministers have promised to convert it into a museum in the last three years — first Manohar Joshi, then Narayan Rane (both Sena). Last month, it was the turn of the new Congress Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy CM Chhagan Bhujbal to promise funds to rescue the ship. But the ship’s tragedy seems to have been this excessive delay. And even a section of the Indian Navy, its protectors, now seem to have turned against the ship. The argument is that this decommissioned ship occupies the berthing space meant for newer warships.

While the Indian Navy can always take heart from the fact that the Royal Navy, the force it has modelled itself on, has been equally short-sighted in the preservation of warships. But the British nation hasn’t been as myopic. Evidently fired by the spirit of ‘Remember Nelson’ inscribed in the holds of the Trincomalee, several trusts like The Imperial War Museum have not let the old ships die. Over two decades ago, they saved the historic World War II cruiser HMS Belfast and preserved her on the Thames. But haven’t saved a single aircraft carrier, of which they built nearly a hundred, lament the guides on the Trincomalee.

Jon Wenzel, director of the HMS Belfast, calls the Vikrant among the last surviving examples of Royal Navy WWII carrier designs. It could be the only aircraft carrier museum outside the United States, he says. ‘‘But ultimately, its importance has to be judged by the people of India.’’ This importance is yet to be felt in India.

Former chief of naval staff Admiral Jayant Nadkarni feels the issue is larger than just an ignorance of maritime matters. ‘‘It’s simply the lack of our sense of history,’’ he reasons. ‘‘The reason why so many of our forts and historic monuments are in a dilapidated condition.’’

In 1987, India did request the British government to gift the Trincomalee so that she could be preserved in Mumbai, where she was built. This was politely turned down by Captain Smith.

Strangely this gesture came at a time when India was slowly sending most of its historic ships to the scrapyard, a fate that periodically threatens the Vikrant. It began with the TS Dufferin, a First World War troop ship that later served as a training ship for most of India’s early naval recruits. The ship was scrapped in the 1970s after a few half-hearted attempts to save her. The HMS Achilles which engaged in the furious Battle of the River Plate with the Nazi battleship the Graf Spee, was transferred to the Indian Navy as its first flagship the INS Delhi. Plans to convert her into a museum were scuttled over two decades ago and the ship was towed away to the scrapyard. A similar fate befell a series of other ships like the cruiser INS Mysore. Even the gallant missile boats that staged naval history’s first-ever massed missile attack, in the 1971 war, didn’t survive the scrappers.

Also lost over the years was the skill of building hardy wooden ships like the Trincomalee. Some say this skill has been lost forever, a fact which was reinforced by the navy’s acquisition of a sailing ship three years ago. The ‘INS Tarangini’ was built in an Indian shipyard alright, but, horror of horrors, used aluminum instead of teak. An embarrassment for a nation whose sail ships roamed he oceans several centuries before the Europeans ventured out to sea.

The country today suffers from, in the words of naval historians, an acute case of sea-blindness. The Mughals — a land power — derisively called sailors ‘worms clinging to logs of wood’. The British who sailed in and gradually took over the country in the sunset of Mughal rule, had the last laugh, of course.

The Trincomalee, a relic of that empire, at least seems to have a brighter future than the Vikrant does. The trust may eventually raise the one million pounds it needs to complete the refit. The decaying Vikrant meanwhile, awaits her Rs 5 crore hull refurbishment at the naval dockyard this month. It’s the infusion of a subsequent Rs 70 crore, required to convert her into a maritime museum for posterity, that is in doubt.

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