Prince of Wales Fire

1. Taken by Tony Booker from the roof of one of the Mk III craft, this picture shows The Prince of Wales shortly after the outbreak of fire in her port cabin	2. Smoke builds as the fire takes hold	3. Flames can be seen breaking through the roof	4. The fire develops
5. Thick black smoke is evident as cabin furnishings burn	6. Groundcrew can only watch helpless as the craft burns	7. Flames can now be made out coming through the burned out cabin windows	8. At last one of the ground crew manages to get a hose trained on the fire
9. One hose is hopeless against the now raging fire	10. A Dover Harbour Board tug arrives and begins hosing the fire from the adjacent canal to the inner docks, across the top of the bonded store	11. The first Kent Fire Brigade appliance arrives on the pad	12. The Fire Brigade take up position behind the Mk II craft parked forward of The Prince of Wales
13. The tug's hoses start to quell the flames	14. A second fire appliance arrives as the first starts hosing	15. By now the fire is almost out	16. Smoke still hangs over the craft after the fire is extinguished
17. The fire brigade assess the situation with further appliances now on scene	18. Any remaining smouldering items are damped down by the fire brigade	19. It takes some time to ensure that the fire is completely extinguished	20. A wide angle view of proceedings, still from the roof of a Mk III craft
21. Fire brigade personnel enter the burned out craft...	22. ...to check that all fires are out	23. Now declared safe, the fire brigade pack up their equipment	24. Later that day, the damage is surveyed
25. The complete port cabin is written off...	26. ...as is much of the port side roof...	27. ...and the structural bulkheads flanking the car deck	28. All port side windows are burned out...
29. ...and the passenger door has fallen from it's mountings	30. A view taken through the open bow ramp shows the damage on the car deck	31. The extent of roof and car deck bulkheads burned through	32. The craft is not surprisingly declared a write-off
33. The car deck had been used for storing some items. Prop shafts can be seen stacked on the left of this picture	34. Another view through the burned-through roof	35. Looking through the forward cabin passenger door leading from the car deck	36. An aerial view of the Dover hoverport shows one Mk III craft on the pad together with Swift, Sir Christopher and the burned out Prince of Wales (large file)
37. Taken in early June 1993, operations are underway to salvage anything useable from the burned out craft (John Lloyd)	38. Propeller pylons, rudders and engines have evidently been removed (John Lloyd)	39. The larger control cabin on this craft is evident here (John Lloyd)	40. On 9th June at 10:05am, the first blow was struck by Ling Demolition against the craft using a hydraulic excavator which the Hoverspeed staff nicknamed Jaws
41. By 10:08am, the roof section mounting the control cabin had collapsed on to the car deck	42. 10:09am and Jaws continues to cut it's way through the control cabin	43. The excavators made steady progress cutting though the craft...	44. ...stacking waste material in skips to the side of the craft
45. Progress being made through the car deck	46. Most of the port side gone now	47. The mangled material that was once a proud machine	48. Nothing survived the grip of Jaws
49. The craft look surprisingly fragile when up against these machines	50. Port side now gone, work commences on the starboard superstructure	51. By 3:30pm there was not much left of the craft	52. All that was left of GH-2054 the next morning. R.I.P.