HMS Burnaston (M1116): Caught in the Suez Canal When the 1967 War Closed It

HMS Burnaston (M1116)

Built at Fleetlands, Commissioned at Harwich

HMS Burnaston was built by Fleetlands at Gosport, her keel laid on 3 May 1951 and completed on 3 March 1954 after 34 months of construction, a Ton-class coastal minesweeper that entered service that March with the 104th Minesweeping Squadron based at Harwich. Her early career followed the well-worn pattern typical of the class, moving into reserve at Chatham that November before recommissioning in March 1957 for Portsmouth-based operations, and in September 1958 she underwent Deltic conversion work at Sheerness, fitted with the powerful and distinctive Napier Deltic diesel engines that gave later Ton-class vessels significantly improved performance over their original wartime-derived propulsion.

Mediterranean and Gulf Service

HMS Burnaston deployed to Malta in March 1959 with the 108th Minesweeping Squadron, and that October took part in a search operation off Cyprus connected with the scuttling of the vessel Deniz, a tense episode reflecting the complex security situation on an island then only recently independent and still working through the political and communal tensions that would flare into more serious conflict in subsequent years. In April 1961, HMS Burnaston was involved in a collision with her sister ship HMS Shavington that caused serious damage to the other vessel, an occupational hazard of the close-quarters manoeuvring that Ton-class minesweepers regularly practised together.

Caught by the Six-Day War

HMS Burnaston transferred to Bahrain service with the 9th Mine Countermeasures Squadron in September 1965, but her passage there in June 1967 was disrupted in genuinely dramatic fashion when the outbreak of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours led to the closure of the Suez Canal while she was actually in transit, forcing a change of plans for a ship that had expected a routine passage through one of the world's most important waterways. She went on to conduct Mediterranean patrols from Malta from June 1967, before completing her final passage back to the United Kingdom by June 1969.

The End of the Line

HMS Burnaston was paid off on 9 June 1969 and sold to Metrec of Newhaven for breaking up on 29 March 1971, bringing to a close a career that had taken her from routine Harwich-based minesweeping duties to the middle of one of the defining geopolitical crises of the 1960s, quite literally caught out by a war she had nothing to do with while simply trying to get to her next posting.