A Tainted Line

An outbreak of naval Britishness has paralysed NATO's wog-bombing flagship a day out from Portsmouth. Her Majesty's Ship Prince of Wales, the incestuous transsexual sister of HMS Queen Elizabeth, fell prey to its latest difficulty as it was due to deploy across the Atlantic for an arctic rah-rah with the World Cop and some other chums. The current trouble is far from the first to beset the unlucky vessel which, in the glorious British tradition of submarines that are blind underwater and armoured vehicles that can't move and shoot at the same time, tends to succumb to waterproofing issues when placed upon the ocean. As a result, during its first two years in service HMS Prince of Wales spent less than three months at sea, despite being named after an expensive old crock who has been adrift for seventy-three years.