Keren

   HMS Keren (MV Keren)  

   Former Sealink ferry "St Edmunds"  

HMS Keren was the ex-Sealink Ferry "St Edmunds", which was purchased by the MoD shortly after the Falklands War ended. There was a dispute between the National Union of Seamen and the MoD regarding whether they would be paid 'ferry' or 'deep sea' rates of pay with the result that they went on strike. There was an urgency to get the ship to the south Atlantic, so the MoD hatched a plot to take the ship over with an RN crew and sail it there without the NUS seamen.

Thirty Five of us congregated at HMS Calliope (Newcastle Division RNR) on Good Friday 1983 and boarded the ship late that evening. I was the MEO (Tony Dyer). Within an hour of taking over the ship a Commissioning Warrant was read and the ship became 'HMS' Keren, thereby making it an offence for any member of the public including NUS to step on board. We posted sentries at the gangways to ensure they didn't! We then set about learning how the ship worked and prepared ourselves for the 8,000 mile trip to Port Stanley. After three days we took the ship down the Tyne and anchored off South Shields for a further period of familiarisation before declaring to CinC Fleet five days later that we were ready to go.

On hearing that we had succeeded in getting the ship functional (which the NUS believed we could not do), they gave up their fight and asked for their ship and jobs back. We brought HMS Keren back up the Tyne, berthed alongside in one of the shipyards (cannot remember which one), decommissioned (it became MV Keren) and marched off triumphantly to much abuse from local trade unionists, shipyard workers and the leader of the NUS, Jim Slater.

Inevitably there was a great deal of national and local press coverage at the time, and the tabloids accused us of acting in a piratical way and hijacking the ship. We were a tourist attraction over the Easter weekend 1983 and particularly whilst at anchor we were surrounded each day by lots of grockle boats. That made us feel even more happy about the situation and what we had achieved, which in anyone's book was quite extraordinary.

MV Keren was withdrawn from the Ascension Island / Falklands troop ferrying service in July 1985 and offered for sale. She spent a couple of years moored with other vessels for sale in Fareham Creek (Opposite Priddy's Hard) until she was eventually disposed of by the MoD in 1986 / 1987 to the Cenargo Group. It is understood that she is now operating as the car / passenger ferry 'MV Scirocco' on the Almeria (Spain) / Nador (Morocco) service.