HMS Arethusa (F38): From Escorting the Queen to Ramming an Icelandic Gunboat

A Solid Start on the Isle of Wight

HMS Arethusa was built by J.S. White and Company at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, launched on 5 November 1963 and commissioned on 24 November 1965. A Leander-class frigate of some 2,450 tons standard displacement, she carried the class's familiar twin 4.5-inch guns, Sea Cat missiles and Bofors guns, along with the anti-submarine sonar and torpedo fit typical of the type, a well-rounded general-purpose frigate for the Cold War fleet.

A Genuinely Global Beat

Arethusa's career took her to a remarkable spread of the world. She deployed to the Mediterranean in 1967, and in 1969 sailed with a multi-ship group to the Caribbean via the Panama Canal, later serving as West Indies guard ship with a busy schedule of port visits. In 1970 she deployed to the Far East, where she had the honour of escorting Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip during a royal tour of Southeast Asia, a rather more ceremonial assignment than most of what filled a frigate's working year.

In 1972 she took up the considerably less glamorous but genuinely important work of the Beira Patrol, helping enforce the oil embargo intended to pressure the white minority government of Rhodesia, before her career took a sharply more confrontational turn the following year.

A Collision in the Cod Wars

In 1973, while on fishery protection duty during the Second Cod War, Arethusa was rammed by the Icelandic gunboat Óðinn, part of the ongoing, deliberately physical dispute between Britain and Iceland over fishing rights that saw Royal Navy frigates repeatedly used as escorts and, just as often, as targets. She came through it intact and went on, between 1973 and 1977, to undergo a substantial modernisation that saw her original gun armament partially replaced by the Ikara anti-submarine missile system, transforming her capability considerably for the later Cold War years.

NATO Service and a Late Refit

Arethusa took part in the 1977 Silver Jubilee Fleet Review and deployed again to the Far East and Pacific in 1979, before completing a refit in 1980 and 1981 and going on to serve with NATO's Standing Naval Force Atlantic, the alliance's permanent multinational naval group, from 1981 onward. She received a towed array sonar in 1985, keeping her relevant into the final years of the Cold War, and was finally decommissioned at Portsmouth on 4 April 1989 after a 24-year career that had taken her from royal escort duty to a collision with an Icelandic gunboat and everywhere in between. She was sunk as a target ship in 1991, her useful life continuing, in a fashion, right to the very end.