A CAMPAIGN to refloat and restore a warship named after a village near Whitchurch is making progress - and has been recognised with a letter from King Charles.
HMS Bronington, named after Bronington, was launched in 1953 and commissioned in 1954 and went on to see active service during the during the Cold War and was briefly commanded by the then-Prince of Wales.
Currently, the former minesweeper remains partially submerged in Birkenhead, but Portsmouth based Royal Navy veteran Mike McBride believes the campaign to restore the vessel is progressing after it received charitable status in December last year.
And Mr McBride said the King has written to the campaign to recognise the work they are doing to restore the vessel.
Mr McBride said: "It is progressing well, we have got charitable status.
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"This means we can start applying for funding from the Heritage Lottery fund and other sources.
"We have got a meeting with a northern ship builder on March 1 with regards to raising, transfering and landing her on the slipway.
"Things are progressing really well."
Mike credited the crowdfunding with helping the campaign.
He added: "It is improving because the crowdfunding has reacher around £16,000.
"Because of that we have been we were able to get charity status and got a dive survey done.
"The dive survey said the hull was in good condition, despite being in a sunken state.
"With some minor work we can get her refloated."
The Royal Navy veteran added: "I got a letter of response from King Charles about how he was humbled about what we were doing to save HMS Bronington and how he maintains a very strong link with crew he served with on the warship.
"We have received support from Penny Mordaunt who is my local MP.
"She is very keen HMS Bronington should be saved as a museum ship.
"I have also had a response from another major shipyard.
"It said to us that it wants to invest by using its community investment spend to help pay for the initial refloat and transfer to a slipway.
"So things are progressing really well and mainly because of the King Charles III link."
To keep up with the latest on HMS Bronington visit https://hmsbronington.org/
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