Note 16.

Doubts about the longer term future of a ship which in 1949 was already 120 years old, and the inevitability of an eventual move ashore; the exciting opportunities which the eminently suitable Plas Newydd represented in the awareness they would never be likely to find its equal again; once established ashore there, the inevitable decline in cadet numbers once the post-war shipbuilding/sea-staff recruitment boom had ended would be bound to leave the ship surplus to requirements were all factors far more relevant to what eventually happened to the ship than anything which happened on the fateful day itself.