HMS Cuxton (M1125): Two Decades in Reserve Before Finally Going to Work

Built at Camper and Nicholson

HMS Cuxton was built by Camper and Nicholson at Southampton, yard number 783, her keel laid on 23 July 1952 and completed on 13 October 1954, a Ton-class minesweeper built in the substantial numbers that characterised this class of coastal minesweeper across the 1950s. Rather than entering immediate active service, HMS Cuxton instead spent the years from 1954 to 1961 held in reserve at Hythe, one of a great many Ton-class vessels built in numbers that comfortably outstripped what the peacetime Royal Navy actually needed in commission at any given time.

A Very Long Wait

HMS Cuxton's reserve status continued from May 1962 through to 1975, based at Gibraltar for most of that period, and she holds the distinction of being the final Ton-class vessel to remain in reserve status before eventual recommissioning, more than two decades after her original completion. It was not until October 1975 that HMS Cuxton finally entered active service in earnest, commissioning for duty with the Fishery Protection Squadron based at Rosyth, a role that finally put her considerable capabilities to genuine practical use protecting British fishing waters.

Reserve Squadrons and the Troubles

HMS Cuxton took part in the June 1977 Spithead Review, one of the great ceremonial fleet gatherings of the Royal Navy, before transferring in February 1982 to the 10th Minesweeper Squadron with the Tay Division of the Royal Naval Reserve. She deployed to Gibraltar for training in May 1984, and in 1985 was reassigned to the Faslane-based Northern Ireland Squadron, service that placed her directly in support of the ongoing security operations connected to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a genuinely different kind of duty from her earlier fishery protection work.

In April 1988, HMS Cuxton sustained severe hull damage, requiring five months of repairs at Rosyth before she could return to service, a serious enough incident that it left a real mark on the final years of her operational life.

The End of Service

HMS Cuxton was paid off in 1991, finally bringing to a close a genuinely unusual career defined as much by the two decades she spent waiting in reserve as by the fifteen years of active service that eventually followed. She was sold for breaking up at Bruges on 16 April 1992, a quiet end for a ship whose most remarkable feature was, in many ways, simply how long she had to wait before finally being put to work.