HMS Decoy (D106): Fifty-Four Years of Service Across Two Navies

Built by Yarrow

HMS Decoy was built by Yarrow Shipbuilders at Scotstoun, her keel laid on 22 September 1946, launched on 29 March 1949, and completed on 28 April 1953, a Daring-class destroyer displacing 2,610 long tons standard, armed with three twin 4.5-inch gun mounts and three twin Bofors 40mm mounts, and capable of a particularly impressive 34 knots on 54,000 shaft horsepower.

Coronation, Suez and a Grounding

Within weeks of commissioning, HMS Decoy took part in the June 1953 Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead, before deploying to the Mediterranean Fleet in September 1954. She served as part of the Royal Navy's force during the 1956 Suez Operation, under the command of Captain Peter Hill-Norton, who led her through this period of genuine international crisis.

Decoy was one of three Daring-class destroyers, alongside HMS Duchess and HMS Diamond, that carried out the main naval bombardment ahead of the landings, their combined eighteen 4.5-inch guns firing for around half an hour to clear dug-in Egyptian T-34 tanks, buried to their turrets on the beaches, out of the way of the advancing troops. Decoy herself carried a Royal Artillery officer whose job was to coordinate the fall of shot from an army spotter plane circling overhead, a genuinely collaborative piece of gunnery between two different services.

Hill-Norton went on to rather bigger things than a single destroyer: he later became First Sea Lord, then Chief of the Defence Staff and an Admiral of the Fleet, and eventually chaired NATO's Military Committee, a fair distance to travel from coordinating 4.5-inch salvoes off Port Said.

On 4 September 1957, HMS Decoy ran aground at Portland Harbour due to a failure of her steering gear, an embarrassing but evidently not disabling incident, since she returned to Mediterranean service with the 5th Destroyer Squadron that same month, remaining until July 1958.

Missile Trials and Far East Service

Between 1960 and 1962, HMS Decoy underwent trials for the Sea Cat missile system, valuable experimental work for the Royal Navy's transition toward guided weapons. She recommissioned on 9 April 1963 and joined the 21st Escort Squadron, alongside HMS Berwick, HMS Dido, HMS Corunna and HMS Cavendish, before a major refit led to a further recommissioning on 15 August 1967 for general service, including deployments to the West Indies and the Far East.

A New Life as BAP Ferré

HMS Decoy was decommissioned and sold to Peru in 1969, alongside her sister ship HMS Diana.

Cammell Laird at Birkenhead carried out an extensive modernisation between 1970 and 1973, fitting eight Exocet MM-38 surface-to-surface missiles and rebuilding her foremast to carry Plessey AWS-1 radar, before she was commissioned into the Peruvian Navy in April 1973 as BAP Ferré, named in honour of Diego Ferré, a hero of the War of the Pacific.

Diego Ferré Sosa had joined the Peruvian Navy as a midshipman in 1866 and was a First Lieutenant aboard the ironclad monitor Huáscar when he was killed at the Battle of Angamos on 8 October 1879, fighting alongside the celebrated Rear Admiral Miguel Grau, a defeat still honoured in Peru as one of the navy's defining moments. It made for a suitably determined namesake for a British-built destroyer about to begin a second career on the other side of the world.

Peru's SIMA dockyards at Callao continued upgrading the former HMS Decoy through the 1970s: removing her original Squid anti-submarine mortar and installing a helicopter landing deck between 1975 and 1976, and fitting two OTO Melara twin 40L70 Dardo compact guns with associated fire-control systems between 1977 and 1978, keeping the ship truly combat-relevant decades after her original British construction.

BAP Ferré later tested her Exocet missile system against the decommissioned Peruvian vessel BAP Villar, herself a former American Fletcher-class destroyer, USS Benham, transferred to Peru back in 1960, putting her upgraded weaponry through realistic live trials against a genuine, if elderly, warship rather than an empty hulk.

A Fifty-Four Year Career

BAP Ferré, the former HMS Decoy, was finally decommissioned on 13 July 2007, bringing to a close an extraordinary fifty-four years of continuous naval service split between two navies on opposite sides of the world, from a Coronation fleet review off Portsmouth to Exocet missile trials in the Pacific, a remarkable working life for a single hull.