HMS Lancaster Sails Into The Sunset After Nearly 35 Years of Service
The UK Ministry of Defence has broken its silence and confirmed that the Type 23 frigate HMS Lancaster (F229) is within days of retirement, having been forward-deployed in Bahrain since 2022.
After a period when it was unclear where HMS Lancaster was or what it was doing, Vice Admiral Steve Moorhouse, the Royal Navy's Fleet Commander and a former commanding officer of HMS Lancaster, broke the news that the ship is to be retired shortly, and is to be disposed of from Bahrain without returning to the UK.
The period of silence may be accounted for by a last-minute review of whether the frigate could be further extended in service, given that the operational need for a ship of HMS Lancaster's capabilities in the Gulf region is still acute, and contingencies are arising that warrant having a Royal Navy warship close at hand. For example, there is currently considerable unrest in Tanzania after the recent disputed results of the presidential election. The situation in Iran is also particularly unstable, with it highly likely that the internal security situation there will deteriorate even further over the next 12 months.
Lancaster, however, is already the oldest Type 23 frigate in the Royal Navy, and has served for nearly 35 years against a designed operational life of 18 years. She has had an extraordinary record of service, particularly in the Gulf region, and has had particularly effective crews, enhanced because of the full-spectrum operational experience they have been exposed to, ranging from drug-interception operations to countering Houthi threats in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Rather than being hidden away for the last months of her service by dint of Ministry embarrassment, she deserves a splendid send-off, and it seems she is now getting one.
Welcome home for HMS Lancaster in Bahrain for the last time on December 5 (UK MoD)
On her return to HMS Juffair on December 5, she was greeted by a fire-boat salute and a full Royal Marines band on the dockside. A 35-gun salute marked the end of a career that the Royal Navy said encompassed completing 4,097 days at sea and travelling 816,000 nautical miles. The Royal Navy confirmed the 4,500-tonne warship powered down her engines,
No announcement has been made as to how the gap left by Lancaster's retirement is to be filled, but the first replacement Type 31 frigate, HMS Venturer, is not due into service until 2027. One of the few possibilities the Royal Navy has is to redeploy to Bahrain one of the two offshore patrol boats, HMS Tamar (P233) or HMS Spey (P234), which are currently forward-based in the Indo-Pacific region. Until a replacement is assigned, the Royal Navy will be represented in Bahrain and the region by the Hunt-class minesweeper HMS Middleton (M34).