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 In the early 1970s, boat-builder John Pinder received a rather unusual commission: four miniature warships. The order was placed by the Royal Navy, which hoped to use scaled-down versions of their fighting craft as recruitment tools by touring them on the inland waterways. Based on narrowboat hulls, the boats were fitted with Thornycroft engines and created quite a stir around the system.                            

During the 1970s in an effort to boost recruitment in the Royal Navy, recruiters took to the canals in narrowboat replicas of warships: HMS LONDON,                          HMS SHEFFIELD, HMS CLEOPATRA and submarine HMS RENOWN.