AFTER printing a verse about the warship called the "Heather", for which the people of Horwich had raised money during the Second World War, Mr B.W. Tyas Cooper, of Breckland Drive, Heaton, wrote to tell me that Turton also held a "Warship Week" with the object of buying a corvette, the estimated cost being £55,000.

"In May, 1942, the National Savings Committee of Turton were officially informed that a corvette, HMS Nith, would carry the name Turton. As Turton actually raised £101,432, the committee did ask why not two ships as almost double the estimated coast had been raised!

"After a story about the Turton ship appeared in the Evening News in 1986, I wrote a letter to the editor explaining that at the time considerably larger and better armed corvettes were being built to assist the small Flower Class corvettes which, together with escort destroyers, had uptill then, borne the brunt of the Battle of the Atlantic. It was decided, on the suggestion of Winston Churchill, that these large vessels should be called frigates, thus reviving in the Royal Navy a famous name which had fallen out of use. These vessels were of the River Class, and HMS Nith was one of these.

"If a Flower Class corvette had an estimated cost of £55,000, a River Class firgate would have certainly cost twice that amount. I had the honour to serve in two Flower Class corvettes and three River Class frigates."