Former crewmen distraught as mighty aircraft carrier is torn up for scrap metal on an Indian beach
Her awesome presence dominated Hong Kong when she sailed into Victoria Harbour at the end of the second world war. Now, the mighty aircraft carrier that came to symbolise the city's liberation is being crudely torn apart, rivet by rivet, by gangs of itinerant labourers.
HMS Vengeance is dying a slow and undignified death on a junk-strewn stretch of shoreline in India, to the horror and dismay of elderly servicemen who fought for years to preserve the ship, Britain's last wartime aircraft carrier, as a living museum.
After an auction in Rio de Janeiro in February failed to find a buyer prepared to meet the US$6.5 million price tag, the 16,000-tonne vessel was towed to the Alang shipyard where she is being dismantled for scrap metal.
Hundreds of tonnes of that scrap metal are expected to pass through Hong Kong on the way to buyers in China later this year - an anonymous final journey through the city Vengeance played a key role in freeing from the Japanese in 1945.
Vengeance steamed into Hong Kong with 1,400 troops on board ahead of the Japanese surrender in 1945 and served as a base for the allied troops during the city's post-war rebuilding.