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One of the joys of being on the road as a film-maker is the unexpected encounter. And none could have been more unexpected than meeting Master Mariner Jalal Shaheen from Libya (picture) who somehow managed to combine a vigorous seagoing career in the Mediterranean, the North Sea and the Atlantic with championship chess across the Arab world, starting in his home country at the age of 5, and going on to wide success. All this while rising from deck officer to Captain, commanding a crew of 40 longline fishing for tuna in the Gulf of Sirte, at a depth of 4000 metres. Chess awards have kept coming, including the Mary Thomson Cup, and recognition of his chessboard skill from the International Chess Federation. One question though, Jalal: how do you keep your chess pieces on the board in a seaway..?!

10 successful years with The National Museum of the Royal Navy – 17 films on time and budget, 8 on HMS ‘Victory’. Winning the Museum’s acclaim: “You have excelled yourselves”, “a joy to work with”, “indispensable”.

Well… not that indispensable … the museum said procurement rules meant ‘Victory’ filming must go out to tender. We studied them – not so! None of our films, commissioned and invoiced one by one every time, got anywhere near the cost ceiling where those rules apply. The tender also split filming and editing – not us, that – and forbade mentioning previous work for NMRN. Blocking us, main ‘Victory’ film makers for nearly a decade, from citing our USP.

As Dylan said, “You don’t have to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.” So… goodbye, ‘Victory’. Sad. Heart-breaking, in fact. But unavoidable.

This is Rebecca Parrant. She’s ‘Interpretation Manager’ for the Victory project. Through the marketing department of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, she pulls together all the outreach for the ship’s restoration. That’s being called ‘ Victory Live – The Big Repair’ – with visitors able to watch that repair, well, live – key to the Museum’s plan. Clever, because it’s going to take quite a while. The new ‘Interpretation’ structure inevitably begged the question of what Maritime Films UK’s role would be – we had been successfully chronicling the progress of the project over nigh on a decade, to the Museum’s warm approval, and it wasn’t clear where we stood. That question became more noticeable with Rebecca’s first (nice) films delivered in that role were flatteringly similar what we’d already done. I enquired. And then it all became all too clear…

This is the laser camera that tells the story for the shipwrights rescuing ‘Victory’ from rotting away before our very eyes. It scans the ship inside and out, building up a ghostly image of her structure, identifying where work on her is needed – at this point in time, on the ribs of the ship, “futtocks” confusingly being part of a rib. No I don’t understand it either, but no-one working on ‘Victory’ was ever quite able to explain it to me, leaving us with a potential problem for scripting our next film – which now won’t happen, scroll up. It seems a shame, though, that the word never found its way onto the lips of Rambling Sid Rumpo, the bucolic master of double-entendre as played by Kenneth Williams in radio’s ‘Round the Horne’. Or maybe it did and I missed it.

The latest (and as it turns out, the last for us) of HMS ‘Victory’ works we shoot is the removal of the futtocks that have gone rotten and need replacing. Many of them are fine, showing little sign of three centuries of wear and tear – extraordinary to see such a good condition so often, particularly as the Royal Navy’s stewardship of ‘Victory’ over the years was, ahem, “pretty average”. Reportedly it was no unusual experience for a visitor to come aboard, see apparently gleaming solid painted wood, apply fingertip gently, and see said fingertip go right into the planking. Mind you, if the Andrew had had its way, ‘Victory’ would have been scrapped – story goes that when the then First Sea Lord responsible for that decision told his wife, she burst into tears and he hastily rescinded the order. Hmmm.

This was a two-camera shoot, as when things are happening on board ship, you often need to be in two places at once to capture what you need and you don’t get second passes. So Andy and I travelled to Plymouth to be met by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s Paul Sexton (picture), who’s everything you need or desire from a PR liaison guy, plus extra. Endlessly enthusiastic, scouting out interviewees and locations for us, and always having our back, Paul has become a good friend to MFUK. One thing even he couldn’t do, though, was get the layout of the ship through yours truly’s bonce. I’m generally pretty good at getting round ships, but it became a running joke as I found myself heading off down another blind alley while Andy and Paul breezed ahead. You do feel such a fool…

So… what of the ship herself? She may not have been built to impress but she certainly does. Constructed by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in Korea, she took just 3 years from laid down to sea trials – British shipbuilders please note –a good example of the benefits of getting away from obsessively building all RN assets here. Which means endless delay as we don’t have the shipyards any more. Another advantage of getting South Korea to do may have been to head off the endless faffing about by the MoD, changing the design of doorknobs (only half kidding) and insisting on mods like the newest, fanciest kit. That all meant order to in-service was just 5 years. Hmm. There are 4 in the ’Tide’ class – ‘Tiderace’, Tidesurge’ and ‘Tideforce’. Max speed 20 knots. Range 18,200 nautical miles. Very nice.

This would be Andy Jones’ and my home for the best part of a week, in a voyage from Plymouth to Scotland. RFA ‘Tidespring’ is one of the newest fleet support ships the Royal Navy can call on. She’s equipped to deliver whatever’s needed:
above all, fuel. Essential for the new super-carriers, whose designers opted for conventional fuel for her propulsion system – turbines feeding electric motors. Nuclear propulsion was rejected due to its high cost and manpower required, in favour of ‘Integrated Electric Propulsion’ – with two Rolls-Royce Marine Trent gas turbine generator units and four Wärtsilä diesel generator sets (two at 9 megawatts delivering 12,000 horse power, two at 11 megawatts delivering 15,000 horsepower.) All of that needs engineers. So does the RFA – with a catch: though it’s a civilian service, all crew members must be UK citizens.