Ali Kefford is a naval journalist, who specialises in submarine warfare. She has joined six Royal Navy nuclear submarines at sea, including a Trident deterrent boat.
A Vanguard-class submarine used for Britain’s nuclear deterrent has resurfaced after a record-breaking 204 days at sea. Relatives gathered on the Rhu Narrows point yesterday to welcome back their loved ones as the sailors returned to HM Naval Base Clyde, in Scotland. When the submarine departed last year, it was still summer, President Biden was in
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On this week’s Christmas Out Loud – part two: Andrew Watts goes to santa school (1:11); Marcus Walker reads his priest’s notebook (7:20); Ali Kefford spends Christmas on patrol with submariners (12:34); Roger Lewis says good riddance to 2024, voiced by the actor Robert Bathurst (20:57); Ayaan Hirsh Ali argues that there is a Christian revival
71 min listen
Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a
This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. She will have slipped out of HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland in late August. Her location is a secret, known only to a handful of officers aboard. Even the highest ranks of
It is a little unsettling that the merchant ship MV Ruby is anchored off Margate, carrying 20,000 tonnes of Russian ammonium nitrate. This is seven times the amount of ammonium nitrate that caused the Beirut explosion in 2020, which killed 218 people and injured 6,000. While ammonium nitrate is usually sold as plant fertiliser, it can also
On Monday morning at 5 a.m. the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, leaving one man dead and six people missing. Among the unaccounted for are the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who had been enjoying a celebratory cruise after a US jury acquitted him of fraud charges in June, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
When the news broke that the Titan submersible was missing, naval experts immediately recognised that the chances of saving the lives of those on board were, realistically, tantamount to non-existent. With rare agreement, they swiftly concluded that the kindest outcome for the five passengers would be that the submersible had imploded. Hard-hearted as this may
The thought of laying eyes on the wreck of Titanic has tantalised the world since the ship’s rediscovery in 1985. Now the five people aboard the submersible Titan, currently lost in the Atlantic, will almost undoubtedly end up paying the ultimate price for their desire to see the sunken liner on the ocean floor. Superpowers spend billions, largely
