HMS Caprice: The Last Wartime Destroyer Still on Active Duty

Launched as Swallow, Renamed Caprice

HMS Caprice was built by Yarrow and Company at Scotstoun, her keel laid on 28 September 1942, launched on 16 September 1943 initially under the name HMS Swallow before being renamed, and commissioned on 5 April 1944. A C-class destroyer driven by Parsons geared steam turbines producing 40,000 shaft horsepower, she was armed as built with three QF 4.5-inch guns, two 40mm Bofors guns and four 2-pounder guns alongside torpedo tubes and depth charges, an armament substantially updated from 1966 with Squid anti-submarine launchers and a Sea Cat missile system that kept her genuinely relevant into the jet and missile age.

Escort Duty and the Japanese Surrender

HMS Caprice served with the 6th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet, escorting the liners Queen Elizabeth and Île de France, before seeing action in the Far East in 1945, where she was present to accept the surrender of Japanese prisoners as the war in the Pacific drew to its close, a genuinely significant historical moment for a destroyer only recently arrived in the theatre.

A Dramatic Rescue at Pearson Reef

On 1 January 1961, while transiting between Hong Kong and Singapore, HMS Caprice responded to a distress call from the Panamanian freighter Galatea, which had run aground on Pearson Reef in the Spratly Islands. Her crew succeeded in rescuing twenty of Galatea's twenty-one crew members, though Galatea's own captain fell into the sea during the rescue attempts and died, a tragic note on an otherwise successful and genuinely dangerous operation. Two of HMS Caprice's crew were awarded the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct for their part in the rescue.

An Exploding Weapon at Aden

HMS Caprice served with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla at Singapore between 1960 and 1964, followed by service in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, before joining the Beira Patrol in the Mozambique Channel enforcing oil sanctions against Rhodesia between 1966 and 1967, and supporting Army operations during the Aden Emergency in the same period. During three weeks spent at Aden, three of HMS Caprice's crew were wounded when a WOMBAT recoilless anti-tank rifle being demonstrated by the Army exploded, a startling and dangerous accident given that HMS Caprice's own crew were mere bystanders to what should have been a routine weapons demonstration. She returned to Portsmouth on 22 February 1967, and went on to complete a round-the-world deployment between 1968 and 1969.

The Last of the Wartime Destroyers

HMS Caprice was finally paid off in 1973, by which point she held the distinction of being the last wartime-built destroyer still in active Royal Navy service, a genuinely remarkable span given that her keel had been laid down over three decades earlier, during the depths of the Second World War. She was scrapped at Queenborough, arriving there in November 1979, bringing to a close the career of a ship that had begun life under a different name, accepted a Japanese surrender, rescued sailors from a Pacific reef, and survived an exploding Army weapon, before finally outlasting every other destroyer of her generation.