Falkland sailor’s £15m mission to save f lagship he went to war on
SHE was the flagship of the task force that wrested the Falklands back from Argentina – but 35 years on, HMS Hermes could be headed for the scrapheap.
Now a businessman who served on the aircraft carrier as a teenager in the 1982 war has launched a £15 million bid to save her.
Andy Trish served in the Falklands aged 18, and after leaving the Navy he became an entrepreneur.
He wants to save the warship, which was sold to the Indian Navy in 1987 and faces an uncertain future after she was retired from service last month.
Mr Trish plans to turn the ship into a tourist attraction, concert venue and offices in Portsmouth.
Carrying Sea Harrier jets and Sea King helicopters, HMS Hermes was the carrier from which the BBC’s Brian Hanrahan famously reported ‘I counted them all out and I counted them all back’ about jets on Falklands combat missions.
Tens of t housands of people turned out to cheer her victorious return to Britain. Indian Navy commanders have said the 23,000-ton warship, which spent 58 years at sea, could be scrapped or even sunk as a wreck for divers after plans to turn her into a luxury floating hotel in the Bay of Bengal fell through.
Mr Trish, 53, who launched a global IT firm after he left the Navy, said: ‘I cannot stand by and watch this great ship suffer a sad death. She needs to be saved. I have been told I’ve got four months to get as much money together as I can.’
He vowed to put in £500,000 of his own money and plans to target ‘the likes of Richard Branson and Rod Stewart’ to help him.
Mr Trish believes it will cost £5 million to buy the ship, a further £5 million to tow her back to Britain and another £ 5 million to transform the carrier into offices and a museum at Portsmouth dockyard.
He served as a naval airman on Hermes before leaving the Navy in 1996 and launching a successful IT business the following year.
He said: ‘HMS Hermes is the iconic flagship of the Falklands War, and she was home to many thousands of sailors who lived aboard her and loved her as the Happy Hermes. She was central to those images of the victorious ships returning home from war in 1982. To bring her back to Portsmouth after all these years would be a historic moment.’ HMS Hermes, named after the Greek messenger god, was launched in 1959. Prince Charles joined 845 Naval Air Squadron on flying duties from the ship in Caribbean and eastern Canadian waters in 1975, shortly after qualifying as a helicopter pilot. Three days after Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands, Hermes headed to the South Atlantic. Hanrahan reported from the carrier’s deck when t he Harriers were di s - patched for their first attack on Port Stanley airfield.
The Indian Navy renamed the ship INS Viraat, which means ‘giant’ in Sanskrit. She was retired from service at a decommissioni ng ceremony i n Mumbai l ast month, which Mr Trish attended as a representative of the HMS Hermes Association.
He said: ‘I want to own the ship as a private concern and I will buy her directly from the Indian government. I am not looking for any money from the UK Government at all. I believe I could make it work as a business.’