Action Stations Call Over HMS Caroline

An historic naval vessel that got a second life after combat duties as a base to train hundreds of part-time sailors is under threat.

Alliance Councillor Seán Neeson has called for action to be taken ensure that HMS Caroline remains in Belfast.

The ship has been lying idle since 2009, when the Royal Navy decided it would decommission it.

Mr Neeson has represented Northern Ireland on the UK National Historic Ships Committee as well as being a member of the Nomadic Charitable Trust and commented today: "HMS Caroline was decommissioned at the end of March and there is a great deal of uncertainty about her future.

"She is a major historic ship and is the last remaining survivor from the battle of Jutland. She has played a major role in the maritime heritage not only of Belfast but the whole of Northern Ireland," he said.

"HMS Caroline is a member of the core collection of national historic ships along with the Nomadic and the Result.

"Unless people in Northern Ireland make a major effort to keep Caroline in Belfast I believe that she could be moved somewhere else in the UK, and that would be a tragic loss as regards our maritime heritage and tourism industry," he said.

Earlier this year, Ulster Unionist Mark Finlay, also expressed his hopes that HMS Caroline, the naval ship and later Royal Naval Reserve training vessel over nearly a century of service, can be kept in Belfast.

"Caroline has had 96 years of faithful service and, since 1924, served as the headquarters of the Ulster Division of the Royal Naval Reserve and its training facility. It is the last surviving ship from the 1916 Battle of Jutland and the last physical embodiment of the bravery of the sailors who participated and I note with sadness that it is decommissioned now.

"I hope that a mechanism can be found to keep Caroline in Belfast," he concluded, in April.

In 1972 HMS Caroline's reservists received the Freedom of the City of Belfast and, with their RN compatriots, they also received the freedom of the Borough of Newtownabbey.

The connection to Northern Ireland is long and distinguished, dating back to the formation of the Ulster Division of the RNR in 1924.

For 85 years the training unit was based on HMS Caroline, a light cruiser built in 1914, a vessel that saw action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and served in the Far East before coming to Northern Ireland where she is still docked in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast.

The Royal Naval Reserve unit that operated from the permanently docked vessel at The Titanic Quarter has since moved to the Lisburn Army Barracks where it was reincarnated as the shore base, HMS Hibernia.

Located within Thiepval Barracks, HMS Hibernia is home to around 100 reservists.

It is the Royal Naval Reserve's newest unit, following the decommissioning of HMS Caroline in Belfast in December 2009.

See: HMS Caroline 'Appeal'

See: Naval Reserve Leaves HMS Caroline

(BMcC/GK)