Warship set to star in hit TV drama series

icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk Mar 7 2003 By Laura Davis Daily Post Staff   THE warship set to star in a naval version of hit television series Soldier Soldier docked in Liverpool yesterday.

HMS Grafton will provide the setting for the new drama Making Waves as the fictional frigate HMS Suffolk.

Officers and other personnel, many of whom are from Merseyside, may become extras in the six-part series which will mostly be filmed at sea.

Ship's captain Commander Richard Thomas, from Crosby, said: "It's absolutely marvellous. The ship's company is keyed up about being involved.

"There will be actors playing the principal roles but hopefully some of the crew will be extras."

Producers Carlton TV are currently casting for the series about the lives of Royal Navy officers and their families, which will start filming at the end of the month.

It is due to be shown on ITV1 later this year.

The visit to Liverpool this week is the first trip home for some of the crew since returning from from a drugsbusting mission in the Caribbean before Christmas.

During the six-month operation, they seized £100m of cocaine in a single bust and confiscated more than £11m of marijuana following high-speed chases.

The cocaine was found hidden in a secret compartment on board a small fishing boat, said Commander Thomas, who attended Merchant Taylors School for Boys, in Crosby.

"We were queued on to a vessel which had left Venezuela and was taking the drugs to the southern states of America.

"We followed it for 48 hours and covered 450 miles before we found the cocaine hidden in a compartment between the engine room and the crew's quarters," he said.

Realising the drugs had been discovered, the fishermen tried to sink their boat to destroy the evidence.

However, the HMS Grafton's crew managed to arrest them and hand the fishermen and the cocaine over to the Venezuelan authorities.

While on board, the ship's company sleeps in cramped cabins usually shared between two or three. There are only three officers permitted to navigate the ship, including Sub Lieutenant Simon Dixon, from Bootle, who studied at Hugh Baird College before joining the Royal Navy at 18.

Whilst in the Caribbean he worked an eight hour shift each day navigating from the ship's bridge.

He said: "It's quite an experience to come in to your own port on your own ship. I was bouncing off the walls with excitement when we sailed in.

"It's really a great life on board. I've already been to two continents and seen an awful lot of different places."

As well as filming, the following year will be spent on training the crew and carrying out maintenance work on the ship.

She and her crew are not lined up to take part in military action in the Gulf.

Sub Lieutenant Dixon, 22, said the company has mixed thoughts on the prospect of going to war.

He said: "It's never something you would hope for. We tend to think of ourselves as a peace keeping force.

"But it is something we've been trained to do and is just one of those things we have to accept."