Hello,

I know or at least know of the ship Weather Surveyor. She was built as HMS Rushden Castle early in WW2, one of many Corvettes used for convoy escort and anti submarine action. The ships were given duties beyond their abilities but carried them out all the same. Churchill pitied the crews of the Flower and Castle class ships as they rolled and pitched such the the crews were at times incapacitated by sea sickness while also being soaked and frozen. I think that one of these vessels featured in The Cruel Sea.
After the war some were repurposed as weather ships at a time when the way of reporting was to go to where the weather was and call it in. So Rushden Castle became the Weather Surveyor. I heard nothing about her while Mi Amigo was still afloat but the name came up some time after the sinking. I think she was by then owned by Harry Pound, the ship breakers, and Chris England and I went to try to view her in Portsmouth. A navy sentry headed us off but said that she was in awful conditon.
Ronan of course, suggested that maybe the Caroline crew could steal the ship. James Kay and I think Peter Chicago did go and take a look but the interior was unlit and James hurt himself badly falling down a hatchway. These ships had triple expansion steam engines and it would have been impossible to raise steam and depart without this being noticed even in the event that anyone knew how to fire the boilers and start the engine. Those practicalities were lost on Ronan.
Weather Surveyor was scrapped in 1982 and while she would have been better than Mi Amigo as she was in 1979, she was not a patch on Ross Revenge.