HMS Barrosa (D68): The Destroyer That Fought Actual Pirates

A Long Wait to Complete

HMS Barrosa was built by John Brown and Company at Clydebank, laid down on 28 December 1943 and launched on 17 January 1945, but was not completed until 14 February 1947, well after the war she had been designed for had ended. A Battle-class destroyer displacing up to 3,420 tons and capable of 34 knots, she carried five 4.5-inch guns, Bofors guns, torpedo tubes and a Squid anti-submarine mortar, later supplemented with Sea Cat missiles and updated radar as her career progressed.

Her early service was fairly quiet: commissioned into the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, she was initially laid up owing to postwar manpower shortages before returning to active duty in 1948, collided with the oiler Black Ranger in November 1949, and was placed in reserve in April 1950.

Coronation and Suez

Barrosa was recommissioned on 2 May 1952 into the 4th Destroyer Squadron, and took part in the Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead in June 1953, before settling into Mediterranean duties that included anti-smuggling patrols off Cyprus. She deployed during the Suez Crisis in November 1956, part of the substantial Royal Navy force assembled for the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt.

A Genuine Fight With Pirates

After colliding with HMS Corunna in March 1959 and being modified as a radar picket ship later that year, Barrosa joined the 8th Destroyer Squadron in the Far East in 1963. There she had a genuinely unusual brush with danger on 10 February that year, engaging pirates in an action that cost the life of one of her crew, a rare and sobering reminder that not every threat facing a Cold War-era destroyer came from a conventional enemy navy. She went on to conduct patrols during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, the low-level conflict fought over the formation of Malaysia in the mid-1960s.

Oil Spills and a Final Withdrawal

Barrosa's final commission proved just as varied as her earlier career. In March 1967 she took part in the response to the Torrey Canyon disaster, the supertanker wreck that caused Britain's worst ever oil spill at the time, and that November supported the British withdrawal from Aden, marking the end of over a century of British presence in the territory. In October 1968 she towed the stricken Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Lyness, a fittingly practical final duty before her own service came to an end.

A Long Wait for the Scrapyard

Barrosa was decommissioned in December 1968 and listed for disposal in 1972, though she was not immediately broken up, instead serving as a storage hulk at Portsmouth by 1974. She finally arrived at Blyth for scrapping on 1 December 1978, a full decade after her active service had ended, closing out a career that had taken her from Suez to genuine piracy to one of the twentieth century's most notorious environmental disasters.