HMS Exeter: last Falklands ship retires from service

HMS Exeter, the last surviving operational Royal Navy warship which took part in the Falklands War, will retire from service on Wednesday.

A decommissioning ceremony to mark the end of HMS Exeter's 29-year career, is to be held at Portsmouth Naval Base.

Amongst the 325 guests attending the event will be many of its Falklands veterans as well as 10 of its 21 former commanding officers.

The ceremony will be conducted by naval chaplain the Rev James Tabor. The ship's affiliate organisations, including Exeter City Council, will also be represented.

Exeter's white ensign will be lowered for the last time during the ceremony and it will be rounded off in naval ceremonial fashion with the cutting of a decommissioning cake.

Portsmouth-based HMS Exeter destroyed four Argentine aircraft - two Skyhawks and two reconnaissance planes - during the Falklands campaign.

The Type 42 destroyer was sent to the region from the Caribbean to replace its sister ship HMS Sheffield, the first major British casualty of the conflict.

Built by Swan Hunter Shipbuilders on the Tyne, HMS Exeter was launched in 1978 and entered service in September 1980.

It was also involved in the Gulf War of 1991, employed as an escort for a US battleship and mine countermeasures vessels off the Kuwaiti coast.

In 2005 it took part in the International Fleet Review to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

During its lengthy service around the globe Exeter clocked up 892,811 nautical miles.

The Navy is replacing its ageing Type 42s with the far more capable Type 45 Daring class of destroyers.

The first of the class, HMS Daring, made its first entry to its home base at Portsmouth in January and the second, HMS Dauntless, is due to arrive next year.

Most of Exeter's ship's company have already been transferred to other posts across the naval fleet, including Daring and Dauntless.

Indian navy shows the Nelson touch

Taken from an Indian Navy Website. Why don't we tell the rest of the World that our Governments given up on us. I think we need to put some adverts in the Times looking for Admirals, Captains and Government Officials. The key requirement will be back bone. Whatever happened to ships of wood and men of steel. Do NOT let our Government get away with letting the Royal Navy shrink in size to around 17 ships over the next ten years. It makes me sad that someone in the Indian Navy can make comments like this and we cannot even argue our case. Come on Lads..... Lets get stuck in an tackle the Pirate issue...

The Gulf of Aden is awash with Somalian pirates who have been cheerfully capturing merchant vessels and holding them and their crews to ransom, all this despite the presence of American and European warships supposedly there to prevent these nefarious activities.

All the commanders (or their on-board PR men) say, when invited to explain why they can’t prevent the piracy or do anything about the pirates’ lairs, well known to all of them, is to say that they can’t do anything because it might put the captured crews at hazard.

Well the Indian navy is taking a more robust attitude, sinking a pirate boat a month or so ago and now capturing 23 of them as they tried to pinch merchant vessel the MV Gibe.

A couple of hundred years ago the Royal Navy cemented its reputation as the master of the seas through the audacious exploits of the captains of its fast, heavily-armed frigates against piratical riff-raff like these Somalis.

Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick Brien’s collection of novels is how we envisage them.

Now the British are agonising about building two huge (and probably useless and vulnerable) aircraft carriers at a time when they have neither the frigates, or apparently the will, to carry on in the glorious traditions of the Royal Navy and police the seas.

They should take a leaf out of the Indian navy’s book.