MICROSOFT co-founder Paul Allen has today offered the use of his yacht to recover the bell of a sunken Portsmouth ship.
Battle cruiser HMS Hood was sunk in 1941 in the North Atlantic, where her wreckage lies.
Mr Allen’s yacht Octopus will be used to recover the bell.
If successful, then the bell will be displayed as part of a new exhibition in the Royal Navy Museum, in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, in 2014.
Professor Dominic Tweddle, director general of the National Museums of the Royal Navy, said: ‘It will be an honour and privilege to display the bell from HMS Hood.
‘Our new galleries, opening in April 2014, will recall and commemorate the heroism, duty and sacrifice of the people of the Royal Navy in the 20th and 21st centuries.
‘Hood’s bell encapsulates the whole of that story as no other single object could.’
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