HMS Ashanti (F117): The Frigate That Pioneered Steam-and-Gas Power

A New Kind of Engine Room

HMS Ashanti was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders at Scotstoun on the Clyde at a cost of just over £5.3 million, launched on 9 March 1959 and commissioned on 23 November 1961. She holds a genuinely notable engineering distinction: she was the first Royal Navy warship commissioned with combined steam and gas turbine propulsion, known as COSAG, pairing a conventional steam turbine with a Metrovick gas turbine on a single shaft, a technology that would go on to influence Royal Navy propulsion design for years afterward. She carried twin 4.5-inch guns, Bofors and Oerlikon cannon, two Sea Cat missile systems and a Limbo anti-submarine mortar, a solidly equipped frigate for her era.

Being first with new technology came with the usual growing pains: Caribbean trials in 1962 uncovered a fault in her gas turbine blades, an early lesson in the practical challenges of combining two very different propulsion systems in a single working warship.

A Genuinely Global Workload

Between 1963 and 1967, Ashanti served across the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Beira Patrol enforcing the Rhodesian oil embargo, and Aden, a demanding and varied schedule typical of frigates maintaining Britain's remaining global commitments during the 1960s. She returned to Beira Patrol duty in 1970, and was present in 1971 for the Royal Navy's withdrawal from Malta, a symbolically significant moment marking the end of over a century and a half of British naval presence on the island.

Her service was not without tragedy: in 1974 a large wave struck the ship, resulting in two fatalities, a stark reminder that even routine peacetime deployments carried genuine danger for the sailors involved.

A Target for the Submarine Fleet

Ashanti's career ended, as it did for a number of retired frigates, as a live target rather than a quiet scrapping. In 1988 she was sunk in a torpedo and missile exercise by the submarines HMS Sceptre and HMS Spartan, which used both conventional torpedoes and Sub Harpoon missiles against her, a final, practical contribution from a ship whose very first claim to fame had been an engineering innovation that helped shape the frigates that came after her.