My gushingly sentimental - but heartfelt - piece of August last year on the Windsor Castle goes uncommented upon.




In it, I made a fundamental error - two, actually - I said that the asking price of the lovely mouldering hulk was $8,000,000. It has subsequently been reduced to $4,000,000 (what's 4 million between friends when you're talking those numbers?, and it may well have been reduced further since I had that information from Peter Knego towards the close of 2001.




Peter Knego is a contributing editor of 'Maritime Matters' - which is easy to find on the web - I don't have the URL handy now but just search for 'RMS WINSOR CASTLE' and you can't miss it. I am indebted to him for replying in some detail to a bombardment of emails from me asking after the ship, and the fact that the now fast-deteriorating ship has had its price-tag halved would suggest that Mr Latsis, the owner, would rather see something done with her than send her to the breakers, who would offer him somewhat less for the dubious privilege of towing her onto a Taiwanese beach and cutting her up with welding torches.




My second error was to say that Mr Latsis had named the ship 'Margarita L' after his wife - it is in fact named after one of his daughters, who reportedly has a small fleet of her father's maritime acquisitions already named after her.




It is absurd of me to be so sentimental about an obsolete ship, which is, after all, a floating piece of metalwork; an inanimate, functional and characterless object....or is it?





The fabric of the lives of those of us who sailed in her and loved her is inextricably woven into the rusty and peeling plating of the dying Windsor. I, and many others, will be saddened by the surely imminent passing of this great lady. She was killed by the jumbo jet - a piece of equipment about as appealing as a cold bowl of congealed oatmeal.




If someone has up-to-the-minute news of her (14 January 2002), please come back to me with it. I need to know.