HMS Hecate (A137): The Survey Ship That Survived a Bombing and Patrolled the Falklands

Built on the Clyde

HMS Hecate was ordered in February 1964 and built by Yarrow Shipbuilders at Scotstoun, Glasgow, laid down on 26 October 1964, launched on 31 March 1965 and commissioned on 20 December that year, a Hecla-class ocean survey vessel measuring 260 feet 2 inches in length and displacing 2,733 long tons at full load.

She was powered by three Paxman Ventura diesel engines driving electric motors for a top speed of 14 knots, with a complement of 127, and was based at Plymouth for the bulk of her career, tasked with the patient, unglamorous but essential work of hydrographic survey, carrying her own embarked Wasp helicopter from 829 Naval Air Squadron's Hecate Flight to help with offshore survey work.

Charting the Gulf, and Surviving a Bomb

HMS Hecate opened her decks to the public at Plymouth Navy Days in both 1966 and 1970, attended the Fleet Review of colours at Torbay on 29 July 1969, and spent much of the mid-1970s conducting hydrographic surveys in the Persian Gulf, operating out of Bandar Abbas in Iran, work that helped keep charts of one of the world's most strategically vital waterways accurate and up to date.

In April 1977 she sailed rather further afield than most survey commitments required, serving as flagship of the Hydrographer of the Navy for the 11th International Hydrographic Conference at Monaco, and that June took her place among the assembled fleet for the Silver Jubilee Review off Spithead, a rare pair of ceremonial outings for a ship usually more concerned with the seabed than the guest list.

In a truly alarming episode on 2 November 1981, HMS Hecate survived a bombing attempt while visiting Nantes in France. After three days alongside, a small explosion on the dockside sent most of her 120-strong crew ashore before dawn, and French navy divers subsequently found and removed a device containing 2.2 pounds, roughly a kilogram, of plastic explosive fixed to her hull just below the waterline. An anonymous caller to the local newspaper, Presse Ocean, later claimed the attack on behalf of a "Bobby Sands group," named for the IRA hunger striker who had died in the Maze Prison that May, saying the bombing was meant to support "the political and military combat of Irish republicans for freedom and national independence," a startling reminder that even a dedicated survey ship on a peaceful mission could find itself caught up in the political violence of the era.

Ice Patrol Ship in the South Atlantic

HMS Hecate's most dramatic chapter came in the aftermath of the 1982 Falklands War.

Painted grey and hastily fitted with two 20mm guns and Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles, a considerably more martial fit than her survey work usually called for, she left Britain on 23 July 1982 with her own Wasp helicopter embarked to relieve HMS Endurance as Ice Patrol Ship, taking on the vital task of maintaining a British naval presence in the South Atlantic during the tense period immediately following the conflict.

She carried out surveys at Mare Harbour and Bay of Isles, visited British Antarctic Survey bases, and her crew spent Christmas 1982 at Grytviken on South Georgia, attending a candlelit Christmas service in the settlement's old whaling church, a suitably remote and hard-won posting for a ship that had, only months earlier, been carrying out routine survey work thousands of miles away.

After seeing in the New Year at the Falklands, she became the first Royal Navy ship to visit South America since the conflict, embarking a Chilean pilot at Punta Arenas for the passage through the Patagonian Channels to Talcahuano before heading home the long way round, through the Panama Canal and by way of a four-day call at Antigua, finally reaching Britain on 18 February 1983, having played a remarkably important, if quiet, role in the immediate post-war period.

The End

HMS Hecate continued in survey service for a further seven years after her South Atlantic deployment, including a further refit at Devonport between October 1985 and March 1986, before being decommissioned in 1990. She was finally towed to Pipavav in India for scrapping, arriving there on 29 January 1994, closing out the career of a ship whose working life had ranged from the Persian Gulf to the South Atlantic, and had included both a brush with a terrorist bomb and an unexpected turn as an armed guardship in one of the most remote corners of the world.