HMS Boxer (F92): First of a New Breed, Commanded by a Royal Son-in-Law

First of a New Generation

HMS Boxer was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders on the Clyde, her keel laid on 1 November 1979, launched on 17 June 1981, and commissioned on 22 December 1983, the first of the Batch 2 Type 22 frigates, an improved version of the original Type 22 design that added a longer hull, an Exocet anti-ship missile capability and other refinements learned from the first batch's service. Displacing 4,800 tons, HMS Boxer carried two GWS25 Sea Wolf missile launchers for point air defence, four Exocet surface-to-surface missile launchers, twin 30mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns, general-purpose machine guns, and hangar space for two Lynx Mark 8 helicopters, a genuinely formidable and versatile package for a frigate of her era.

A Squadron Leader, and a Royal Connection

HMS Boxer went on to lead the 1st Frigate Squadron during 1996 and 1997, a mark of the confidence placed in the Batch 2 Type 22 design as a capable and reliable frontline frigate. Among her commanding officers across the 1980s and 1990s was Timothy Laurence, who commanded HMS Boxer between 1990 and 1992, some years before he became better known to the wider public as the second husband of Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, a genuinely notable footnote for a frigate whose day-to-day service was otherwise the standard, steady round of Royal Navy deployments and exercises.

The End of Service, and a New Purpose

HMS Boxer was decommissioned on 4 August 1999, her service life complete after some sixteen years in commission, a career that had spanned the final years of the Cold War and the early post-Cold War reshaping of the Royal Navy's frigate fleet. Rather than being sold or broken up in the conventional sense, HMS Boxer was expended as a target: in August 2004 she was sunk by the Royal Navy in the Western Approaches during a live-fire exercise known as a SINKEX, her hull put to one final use testing modern weapons and providing invaluable data on ship survivability, a role that, however unglamorous it sounds, continues to inform the design and protection of the ships that succeeded her.