In the league of extraordinary navies

India had not been independent for even a decade when its last Viceroy and then First Sea Lord (Chief of the British Navy), Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, in one of his many exchanges with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, mentioned that his Navy was decommissioning, read putting out of service, its aircraft carrier HMS Hercules and that it was available to us. He had always seen India taking on responsibilities in the Indian Ocean that the Royal Navy had been discharging for two centuries, recognising that those years could be drawing to a close.

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