MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
HMS Dragon calls at Cape Town's naval base for mid-deployment break
There is a permanent reminder of the Royal Navy's HMS Dragon’s first visit to South Africa as the destroyer upheld a 90-year-old tradition. A large painting of the ship’s badge, featuring her namesake mythical beast, adorns the wall of the cavernous dry dock where the Portsmouth-based warship spent her mid-deployment break, receiving some TLC after a four-month battering from the Pacific and Atlantic. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesRoyal Navy's HMS Dragon’s first visit to South Africa
Mar 12th, 2015 - 12:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I thought she had been there , seen it and departed,
oh well I must of miss read it somewhere.
HMS Dragon was at Cape Town after February 27th. A week maybe?
Mar 12th, 2015 - 03:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Thanks for that.
Mar 12th, 2015 - 07:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“after a four-month battering from the Pacific and Atlantic”
Mar 13th, 2015 - 07:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I wonder if TDC 'Navy' could manage four MINUTES outside their docks, never mind a tour!
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
@4 ChrisR,
Mar 13th, 2015 - 09:42 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Their Navy must be embarrassed by their stupid Government.
l almost feel sorry for them……l did say “almost!”
'the Norwegian granite walls of the dock '
Mar 14th, 2015 - 02:32 am - Link - Report abuse 0Norwegian granite eh?
Interesting, I wonder how that came about? Obviously built to last, with the idea of centuries of useful life in mind.
Is anything built that way anymore?
5 - if there's embarrassment to be had when docking in the old land of the boer war it sure ain't Argentine.
Mar 14th, 2015 - 01:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0De la rey de la rey.
@4 & @5
Mar 14th, 2015 - 01:19 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I doubt that the Argentine Navy could withstand a four minute battering in a Whitby Fish and Chip Shop. ...
“Dragons” are also urgently needed for 'mid-deployment break' in the Falklands/South Georgia British Seas!
Mar 14th, 2015 - 01:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Philippe
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKKJSfYraU
Mar 14th, 2015 - 02:23 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@10
Mar 14th, 2015 - 03:44 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Amazing how things move on. Here we are today, the UK and South Africa, both members of the 53 nation Commonwealth, good friends, trading partners and military allies.
And to think that one hundred years ago, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world, not so much now. ...
@ 10 Only a titchy, tiny, Vestige of a brain!
Mar 14th, 2015 - 05:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Did you read any of the comments on that clip? No, I didn't think so.
The Blacks in SA are trying to 'white wash' their heritage you numbskull.
FFS try harder, you are boring.
ChrisRimjob.
Mar 14th, 2015 - 07:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Tell me of these highly reliable and pertinent YouTube comments.
All
Mar 14th, 2015 - 07:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Malvinas vs Falklands: Negotiations with the U.N.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-vys78sGB7Y
@14 Have seen it before - very funny!
Mar 15th, 2015 - 12:23 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@ 13 Only a titchy, tiny, Vestige of a brain!
Mar 15th, 2015 - 07:23 pm - Link - Report abuse 0”Well, it very well might, but then take into consideration what the British created. In the Union of South Africa, as made in 1909, there were no colour or race barriers to vote. The Afrikaner republics - Suid-Afrikaanse Republiek (Transvaal) and the Orange Vrystaat - restricted the franchise not only to men (as was the general practice of the day) but to Afrikaner men (i.e. no Blacks, no British or other non-Afrikaans-speaking Whites). This, roughly, was the practice later expanded to all South Africa post-1948. The British imposed, through force, the abolition of slavery among the Boers, and the Boer Wards, despite their brutality and the interests behind, generally worked along the same lines.”
Stop linking YouTube without understanding what is MEANT by the topic and you will stop making yourself look a complete cupid stunt.
Dear, dear, with cupid stunts like you the Brits have gotten nothing to worry about.
@13 Vestige
Mar 15th, 2015 - 08:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I'm sure you'll also enjoy this account of dastardly Brit meddling in South African affairs, notably as regards the hand of Margaret Thatcher
”Indeed, Lord Renwick’s crisp and candid record shows beyond dispute that Thatcher was the most effective of leaders outside South Africa in nudging the parties and their main leaders—Mandela and Frederik de Klerk (always known by his initials, F.W.)—towards the negotiations that led to South Africa’s freedom under a universal franchise in 1994. ”
And so on.
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21646186-british-diplomat-puts-old-canard-rest-much-be-thankful
couldn't fight the men, even with 4 - 1 advantage ... so fought the women and children instead.
Mar 15th, 2015 - 08:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@18 Vestige,
Mar 15th, 2015 - 09:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Took away their source of food & horses.
By 1900 the main Boer forces were defeated, but then it was guerrilla warfare.
l know that it was their land(well they stole it from the Africans, much like you Argentines did in Patagonia)
At least they didn't kill ALL the Africans, which is different to to what you Argentines did in Patagonia. You killed nearly ALL the Amerindians there.
Then stole their land.
But to continue……because it was a guerrilla war, at which the Boers were extremely good at, they wore no uniform.
The Empire troops could not distinguish between fighters & non-fighters.
Also to the Boer it was total war.
So you shoot a couple of soldiers then melt into the crowd…who me? l'm just a simple farmer etc etc.
Because of lack of clothing some Boers wore captured British uniforms.
Uniformed soldiers had an uphill battle.
So we did what the Spanish did in Cuba, we removed the Guerrilla's source of supply.
Destroyed their farms, killed their livestock & put their families into camps.
Their families died because of bad administration of the camps, regrettable.
But not deliberate like the German concentration camps of WWII.
What would you have done, Vestige?
Your soldiers are dying, you have the means to stop it, would you just let it continue?
Anyway, what did you Argentines have planned for the Falklanders, afterwards?
Especially if guerrilla war had broken out to resist your invasion……as it would have done eventually.
Well? Answers, please
righto.
Mar 16th, 2015 - 03:28 am - Link - Report abuse 0the motive was gold.
the means was 30,000 women and children dead in concentration camps.
when an rg vessel arrives any embarrassment about an underfunded navy kinda pales in comparison.
The motive was not just gold, thats got a lot to do with it of course.
Mar 16th, 2015 - 09:07 am - Link - Report abuse 0Diamonds, farmland, iron & coal.
Didn't want the Cape to fall into other European hands.
A hostile naval power could control shipping around the Cape.
The Germans were eying off South Africa as well & shed crocodile tears for the Boers.
l already explained to you that it was very regrettable that those Boer women & children died. l, personally do not feel good about it.
Although it happened long before l was born.
With a bit more foresight it need never have happened.
You have no answers, you are just trying to score points.
Also l am at a loss to understand what your last sentance means?
Please explain.
@21
Mar 16th, 2015 - 09:40 am - Link - Report abuse 0It looks like another peculiar part of the Malvinista belief system, the one that Falkland Islanders are somehow required to make amends to Argentina for crimes committed by others to others elsewhere on the planet in another time.
There was no chance or fear of s.a falling into another European nations hands.
Mar 16th, 2015 - 12:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Terms were agreed with GB after the first war. Then a sht load of natural resources discovered. Then guess who's back.
Anyhoo its all predicated on your comment about embarrassment. I propose that there's less embarrassment in being told your navy's shoddy than being told 'and over here is where 28000 women and children perished in British concentration camps'.
But hey at least they got the goods .... Even if they did have to sail 10,000 km south to steal them.
Yes its so much easier to engage in historical debate rather than discuss current circumstances.
Mar 16th, 2015 - 02:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Which I mentioned previously. The UK and the RSA are friends and allies. The fact that some Argentines do not like is utterly irrelevant.
#23
Mar 16th, 2015 - 02:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You did know that S.A. is a majority BLACK country...not a white BOERS country any longer..
Its all in this Psycho “Hang Up” that so many argentines have with the ancient past . They are all stuck in it in a multicentury timewarp - it even explains the brain of the likes of Paulcedron at times and Marcos every time.
Mar 16th, 2015 - 05:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They can just never get it- that the world had different rules and methods those days- pretty terrible some of them I agree - but that was the way it was.
Sensible countries like UK- India-South Africa -Germany-Holland- France have all long since moved on and got over it and live now in the 21st Century.
Poor old Argentine Trolls - still stuck in their timewarp of centuries ago- Papal Bulls and Edicts - and land-land-land - never a damn about-PEOPLE!
They live in the past,
Mar 16th, 2015 - 07:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0their policies are made from the past,
they no nothing but the past,
that's why Argentina is in the states that it is,.
@26
Mar 17th, 2015 - 01:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I couldn't agree more. You really summed it very well.
lots of defensiveness.
Mar 17th, 2015 - 04:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I think some egos got hurt.
I think Isolde won't be so quick to run his/her mouth in future.
Not without checking for embarrassing facts like historic British concentration camps first.
embarrassing or not,
Mar 17th, 2015 - 07:30 pm - Link - Report abuse 0you cant keep living in the past, bring up the past , one will achieve nothing,
the future is what should be of concern.
and that future should include the right to live in peace without threats or hindrance.
@29 Vestige,
Mar 17th, 2015 - 11:14 pm - Link - Report abuse 0This is a public forum & l will say what l like to who l like & when l like & its got nothing at all to do with a complete prick like yourself, nabo.
l am not embarrassed but you should be, you pathetic little man/woman/thing.
l am not going to debate with you anymore, troll.
ldiota
@29
Mar 18th, 2015 - 12:39 am - Link - Report abuse 0Personally, I'd be much more embarrassed if I had to resort to events of 100 years ago to score a couple of points. Where have you guys been for most of the last century?
Mostly with their heads in the sand, trying to ignore reality, one might presume.
Mar 18th, 2015 - 10:38 am - Link - Report abuse 0Scum like vestige only try to attack other posters because the scum are weak, insecure and more than a little frightened of the modern world.
Bruised egos calling names, freaking out and running off. Lessons learned.
Mar 18th, 2015 - 12:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0My work here is done.
@34 Vestige,
Mar 18th, 2015 - 08:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0l admit l made a mistake, trying to rationally explain something to a malvinista.
l should have realised that they have a different thought process(thats if they actually think at all!)to normal people.
Well, l won't make that mistake again as it seems that you no longer wish to play, Vestige.
So it is a victory for logic at least.
Have fun.
LOL.
Mar 18th, 2015 - 08:51 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes there were concentration camps in South Africa much to our shame.
Mar 18th, 2015 - 11:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0However, they were not extermination camps as in Nazi Germany whose sole being was the calculated mass murder of “unter menschen”
What logic is that Isolde ? that an Argie feels more embarrassment when arriving in S.Africa than a Brit, when only one of these individuals is represented by the same flag that locally killed tens of thousands of women and children in concentration camps.
Mar 18th, 2015 - 11:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0who's first to hop on the tour bus, who's checking the itinerary just in case.
@38 Vestige,
Mar 19th, 2015 - 08:36 am - Link - Report abuse 0Ah, where to start?
How do you explain logic to a malvinista? A most illogical set of people.
The same difficulty as describing colour to a blind person or the movements of a Symphony Orchestra to someone who is deaf.
l confess, l do not know how to explain logic to someone such as good yourself.
You would have to hope, Vestige, that your world tour did not take in Patagonia.
People under your flag committed mass genocide. Do you feel embarrassed about that? Oh l guess not, because you are Argentine.
But you know, you would probably get away with it because its unlikely that you'd meet too many Amerindians because you RGs killed most of them.
l suggest you check your itinerary just in case you run into a few native people.
Gosh, what an excellent opportunity for an Argie to feel superior. That's unusual. Perhaps you should try selling tickets?
Mar 19th, 2015 - 08:45 am - Link - Report abuse 0Personally, I would certainly feel embarrassment, and worse, if it were going on now, but I don't quite see why I should feel embarrassment for something that happened long before I was born.
You're right Isolde, an Argie would have more reason to feel more embarrassed in Patagonia than a Brit.
Mar 19th, 2015 - 02:19 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I see you do in fact understand, and I see you have moved the context from S.A to Patagonia. Why might that be ?
Perhaps its because you know that on a page originally dedicated to a story of Brits in S.A you just can't win when it comes to a question of who has the greater embarrassment.
Because in embarrassment terms tens of thousands of dead women and kids in a British concentration camp as a means to fight ... nae terrorize... the menfolk for the prize of distant foreign natural resources and yummy yummy gold trumps a shoddy navy every time.
But keep squirming and evading, lets try to make it to 100 comments, it wont change the irony in your original comment. Keep digging.
Well to be fair, at least we never threw nuns out of helicopters.
Mar 19th, 2015 - 07:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0two wrongs don't make a right.
@42
Mar 19th, 2015 - 09:01 pm - Link - Report abuse 0That wasn't them, Briton. It was another country called “The Junta” that mysteriously occupied the same space as Argentina at one time, but otherwise had nothing to do with it.
@41 Vestige,
Mar 19th, 2015 - 09:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0So what have you proved?
That all countries have dark periods in their past?
l've never denied it & l'm certainly not embarrassed by what my country has done.
l'm also quite sure that you are certainly not embarrassed by what your country has done(& would like to do again!).
lf you believe that l'm squirming & evading then thats your problem.
At the beginning, l tried to explain to you how these deaths came about.
Silly me.
l should have realised that l was dealing with a malvinista who will use anything to discredit us & further their own ridiculous “claims”.
So really there is nothing more to say, Vestige, old chap.
l will not respond to any more of your provocation & you can read into that what you like.
lf you think its a victory then l encourage you to think that as it might keep your infantile brain occupied for a little while.
Once again, have fun.
You're not embarrassed by a history of tens of thousands of civilian women and children dying imprisoned in British concentration camps, but you feel others should be embarrassed by an underfunded navy ??
Mar 19th, 2015 - 10:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0How very strange.
Thanks, I did.
Well it's all been a lovely distraction of course, but the article deals with current affairs.
Mar 20th, 2015 - 01:26 am - Link - Report abuse 0Which the RSA and the UK are now good friends and allies. HMS Dragon and her crew have been made most welcome by another Commonwealth family member.
This is now. The past is a different country.
The jealous trolls should be ignored. They have little left but their spite, which is why they are always looking backwards, not forward, like the UK.
#45
Mar 20th, 2015 - 09:28 am - Link - Report abuse 0No I am not embarrassed by events that happened some 110 years ago.any more than the Italians are embarrassed by what the Romans did OR the Spanish did in their murderous conquest of S. America and so on.
If you look at a calendar you will see that it is 2015...start looking forward instead of over your shoulder. All you will get is a crick in the neck.
43 HansNiesund thanks,
Mar 20th, 2015 - 12:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0these argies are quick to slag our past of,
but refuse to accept their own actions barely 35 years ago.
Glad to see all these up to date and forward looking attitudes, I'm sure they're perfectly consistent when Germany comes up in conversation.
Mar 20th, 2015 - 01:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 049 Vestige (#)
Mar 20th, 2015 - 01:38 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Mar 20th, 2015 - 01:02 pm
Excuse me, Vestige, I must have missed something in the article, but I don't recall reading anything about Germany, it seemed to be about HMS Dragon having a mid-deployment break in Cape Town.
Please enlighten me where Germany comes into the story!
Germany and the UK are close Allies within NATO.
Mar 20th, 2015 - 03:58 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Vestige does not have any point to make, just his jealousy and spite to spill.
How terribly sad for him.
@51
Mar 20th, 2015 - 04:27 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Vestige apparently believes that guilt is passed down from generation to generation, yea even unto the umpteenth offspring of the umpteenth ancestor, or whatever.
I conclude from this that he must have the same purity of origin as Tobi claims for himself, and so is set apart from the rest of us chimpanzees with the sinful ancestors and predecessors that didn't know any better. We should be honoured he's here.
Its more embarrassing to visit a country knowing your country's flag flew over a concentration camp where 10's of thousands of women and children died, than to visit that same country knowing you have an underfunded navy.
Mar 20th, 2015 - 05:35 pm - Link - Report abuse 0#53
Mar 20th, 2015 - 06:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Been in S.Africa and did not feel embarrassed. Probably those of Boer descent have a lingering dislike of the British but the black Africans prefer us to their enslavers.
I spent some time in Kwazulu Natal and met lots of Zulus out in the sticks.
They all seemed to be pro-British and we even amicably discussed the Zulu wars. One bloke I met at Blood River was dressed in full gear with an assegai and oxhide shield. He jokingly asked if I wanted to have a sparring match with him. I said only if I have a Maxim gun. This brought roars of laughter from him and relief for me.. He was a BIG lad.
As to our underfunded navy, we managed to get a ship there and it left under it's own steam. Remind me of how potent the Argentine navy is and what happened the last time one of it's vessels went to Africa.
Sorry, but your spoilers don't work. You will have to come up with something better than this puerile attempt at your usual tactic of diversion from the subject.
You haven't been keeping track Clyde.
Mar 20th, 2015 - 08:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Plenty of people in S.A of white/boer ancestry.
There were concentration camps for the black population too.
Fascinating story btw - what happened next between you and your big friendly tribal African.
Well,
Mar 20th, 2015 - 08:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0if you are going to blame the decedents of empire,
then its only fair that you lot [decedents of Spain]
should take responsibility and blame for the millions of south American people that the Spanish wiped out in the 16/17 centuries.
still not getting it.
Mar 21st, 2015 - 12:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0its more embarrassing to have a good navy and the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children in your country's concentration camps, when you arrive in the country where those concentration camps were.
Than.
To have a shoddy navy and arrive in that same country (S.Africa).
still not getting it.
Mar 21st, 2015 - 12:14 am - Link - Report abuse 0you are just as guilty and talk rubbish.
who said I'm Spanish or Spanish descent.
Mar 21st, 2015 - 02:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0HMS Lancaster is 1st ship sail with new Lynx Wildcat embarked for an operational deployment
Mar 21st, 2015 - 07:47 pm - Link - Report abuse 0https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/579278594788167682/photo/1
Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster sailed from her home in Portsmouth today for a routine nine-month Atlantic patrol tasking
https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/579278594788167682/photo/1
,,,,,,,,
Huge US aircraft carrier, 'too big' for Portsmouth harbor, to arrive in Hampshire
The 100,000-tonne ship USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is too big to enter Portsmouth Harbour, will anchor off Stokes Bay, Gosport
RE-NAMED HMS Thatcher for deployment in the Falkland’s to piss off CFKs little rowing boats..lol
https://twitter.com/NavyLookout/status/579278594788167682/photo/1
Spanish , argie makes no difference, stealing is stealing, and its British territory,
cuppa time.
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