TheEye is unsure what to get St Crispin for his birthday this year, but may have found the answer. It also happens to be free but postage and packing may prove expensive.

How about a top-secret ship? The US Navy wants to give away the USS Sea Shadow to a museum. It’s big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was designed to escape detection on the open sea. It comes with the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. Sea Shadow berths inside the barge, which kept it hidden from spy satellites.

Marvellous…a boxed set.

The barge is the only fully submersible dry dock ever built, making it very handy — as it was 35 years ago — for trying to raise a sunken nuclear-armed Soviet submarine.

But a gift ship from the Navy comes with lots of strings attached to the rigging. A naval museum, the Historic Naval Ships Association warns, is “a bloodthirsty, paperwork ridden, permit-infested, money-sucking hole…” Because the US Navy won’t pay for anything — neither rust scraping nor curating — to keep museums afloat, survival depends on big crowds. That’s why many of the 48 ships it has given away over 60 years were vessels known for performing heroically in famous battles.

A pair of mysterious vessels that performed their heroics out of the public eye can’t have much claim to fame. Glen Clark, the Navy’s civilian ship-disposal chief, has received just one serious call about the two vessels, and it didn’t lead to a written application.

Anyway, they have been birthed in Providence, Rhode Island since 2006 awaiting a good home, but their fate of being turned into razor-blades is looming within the next few months.

St Crispin will probably get handkerchiefs.