HMS Berkeley (M40): She Cleared Gulf War Mines, Then Was Cut in Two by a Container Ship

A Modern Minehunter for a Modern Threat

HMS Berkeley was built by Vosper Thornycroft at Woolston, Southampton, ordered in June 1985, her keel laid that September, launched on 3 December 1986 by Lady Gerken, wife of Vice Admiral Sir Robert Gerken, and commissioned on 14 January 1988. A Hunt-class mine countermeasures vessel displacing up to 725 tons, she was powered by twin Ruston-Paxman Deltic diesels for a top speed of 17 knots and carried a crew of 45. She was fitted with Type 193M minehunting sonar, two PAP-104 remotely controlled submersibles for actually dealing with mines once found, and the full range of magnetic, acoustic and mechanical sweeping equipment, armed with a deck gun that was upgraded from a 40mm to a 30mm mount by 1990.

Clearing the Gulf After the War

Assigned to the 1st Mine Countermeasures Squadron at Rosyth, Berkeley took part in mine clearance operations in the Persian Gulf following the 1991 Gulf War, part of the substantial international effort to make the region's waters safe again after Iraqi forces had sown extensive minefields during the conflict, genuinely dangerous and painstaking work essential to restoring normal shipping traffic. She also carried out routine UK fishery protection duties during her Royal Navy career.

Two Decades as HS Kallisto

Berkeley was sold to the Hellenic Navy and commissioned as HS Kallisto on 28 February 2001, going on to serve Greece for nearly two decades. Her career came to a genuinely dramatic and violent end on 27 October 2020, when she was struck by the container ship Maersk Launceston in the Saronic Gulf, a collision severe enough to cut her clean in two. Her stern section sank, and two of her crew were injured in the incident, a startling and sobering conclusion for a ship that had spent much of her working life safely clearing other vessels' paths of exactly the kind of danger that, in the end, never touched her, only for an ordinary collision in busy Greek waters to finish what mines in the Gulf never managed.