HMS Manchester, a Type 42 Jamaican Canoe, is making an official visit to Grand Cayman.
Unsure about the terminology? Let me break it down for you.
A Jamaican Canoe is a type of boat used for drug running. They are slim, fast, open boats with two huge outboard motors and often very brightly painted. Can't imagine how they got their name.
HMS Manchester is a venerable, dull grey, British Navy 'Type 42' Destroyer now used for anti drug trafficking patrols in the Caribbean - if they can get the engine started.
Two type 42's were sold to the Argentinian Navy and were used by both sides in the Falklands War.
Twenty Eight years on a Type 42 has ended up on both sides of another conflict - the drug wars.
A navy wren has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years for her part in trying to smuggle £1.9m of cocaine into the UK on board a warship
Teresa Matos, 37, picked up 4.94 kilos of the 100 per cent pure class A drug when HMS Manchester stopped at the port Cartagena in Columbia.
The cocaine was found on the Type 42 destroyer - which had been involved in anti-drug smuggling patrols in South America - when it arrived in Plymouth en route to Portsmouth last August.
Some of the drugs had been hidden in the lining in Matos's clothes, the rest was stashed in her locker.
[Various UK papers June 18th]
Hmmmm.HMS Manchester cost about CI$ 132 million - which figure is close to the CI$ 155 million that the CI Government needed permission from the UK government to borrow to balance the books.
It may be worth sending a sniffer dog aboard HMS Manchester, because if drugs were found on board and the ship is confiscated for drug running in the usual speedy manner, the original owners would have to bid at public auction against (say) Argentinian buyers.
It could fetch a very good price. Well above market price. Maybe as much as CI$ 155 million.
Yah Mon!
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