Fake News? The Daily Mail and the Prince of Wales

According to the Daily Mail, there are crew onboard the PRINCE OF WALES who are upset over their ‘bomb site’ living quarters. A photo has appeared which seems to show a sharp contrast between a plush wardroom and a mess deck still under construction, which in turn implies that the junior sailors are putting up with appalling accommodation while officers are living in luxury. This is backed up by quotes from a naval ‘source’ to support the story.

Is this real, or is it perhaps hyperbole or even ‘fake news’?

PRINCE OF WALES goes to sea - Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The story appears to have originated on the website ‘Fill Your Boots’, a Facebook page followed by about 84000 people, and on which anyone can view posts. Its aimed at providing squaddy humour and campaigns for the rights of junior service personnel – often with great success.

Original story

The original post is pictured below. It was dated 16 September (Monday), and simply shows the two images without any context as to when they were taken or where they are. The post was hosted by the page, and no information provided as to the source of the photo.

On Fri 20 Sep the Daily Mail ran a story suggesting that Royal Navy sailors have ‘slammed their accommodation’. It went on to quote from an alleged naval source about strong feelings, using quotes like ‘the strong feeling is, if you spend £3.2bn on a boat, finish it before putting it in the water’.

What seems to have happened is that someone has taken two pictures onboard the vessel and used them to make a very specific point. But, what has not perhaps been made clear, and is a point completely missed by the Daily Mail is that the compartment under construction is almost certainly not intended for use by the regular ships company.

The crew of PRINCE OF WALES were accommodated ashore in Rosyth until late August, with the ship tweeting that they had moved onboard on Aug 29^th. After this point all new joiners would have been accommodated onboard in appropriate accommodation.

One of the great strengths of the Royal Navy is its meticulous approach to health and safety and ensuring that its sailors are looked after properly. The idea that this mess deck would have been signed off for use by anyone in that state is utterly ridiculous to put it mildly.

Accommodation Tweet

The ship has sailed with about 600 people onboard, a mixture of civilians and service personnel. But, at full capacity she can accommodate nearly 1500 people in a variety of mess decks and cabins.

Given not all this space would be needed to be completed prior to sailing, the RN appears to have taken the decision to commence sea trials noting that not all parts of the ship were materially complete. It has been noted on social media that HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH did exactly the same thing when she began sea trials.

The point is that if you don’t need the accommodation, and there is no need for it to be ready to ensure the ship can go to sea, then it doesn’t matter whether it is finished or not providing that the safety of the vessel is not affected.  No sailors will have been put out by this situation nor put onto mess decks like this during the trials. The idea that this is in service accommodation for the ships company is utterly ridiculous.

In fact one of the hugely positive things about the QE class is the quality of their onboard accommodation – featuring smaller messes and cabins, plenty of storage space and other good ‘quality of life’ improvements over earlier ships. Pictures, such as the one below, have featured on twitter showing how good the accommodation is.

Actual JR accommodation onboard

Lets consider this for a moment. A story has been published based on nothing more than two undated pictures put online on a Facebook page without context or information. A variety of people, most, if not all, of whom appear to be either non serving, long retired or never having had any experience of serving in the Royal Navy have then passed a variety of pithy ill-informed comments on the FB page.

There is no evidence to support the assertion that the picture came from sailors onboard the ship, despite the article headlining with the phrase ‘sailors onboard slam plush officers accommodation’ and suggestions that it was a ‘bomb site’.

Then a ‘naval source’ who doesn’t appear to actually have served in the Royal Navy judging by their use of the phrase ‘boat’ not ‘ship’ has been incredibly conveniently identified, seemingly out of nowhere, to offer sage advice that is factually incorrect about the idea of finishing vessels before they launch (something that every warship in history seems to have not done), and this has been turned into a story about how the Royal Navy personnel are complaining about their accommodation. Suddenly its all a disaster for the Royal Navy.

This isn’t a story in any meaningful sense beyond ‘ship goes to sea on initial sea trials still needing some work to be done to areas that don’t need to be used yet’. The Royal Navy has done this to its warships for decades, and often put warships to sea with trials crew still embarked during very arduous circumstances – for example the previous PRINCE OF WALES went into action against the Bismarck with civilian contractors on board trying to iron out problems with the ships main armament.

How it was reported in the Mail

The challenge here is that the article makes out that sailors are being put up in this inappropriate accommodation and are complaining, when in fact it is hard to find any evidence of this being the case at all. The ship has sailed with some parts still needing to be finished, but those are different to where the actual accommodation in use for the crew currently is.

The phrase ‘fake news’ is often used, and perhaps over exposed. But sometimes it feels like it’s the right phrase to use. Articles like this are palpably misleading, and serve to give the public a completely false impression of what is actually going on. A story based on a single undated photo of a mess deck under construction and a remarkably conveniently found non naval speaking naval ‘source’ is absolutely at the threshold of what could be considered ‘the truth’ when it comes to the news.

The real story here is the fact that on the day when the Royal Navy became only the second navy in global history to put two home designed and built super carriers to sea, a tabloid newspaper struggled to find anything to complain about beyond a single unattributed Facebook post from several days previously.