HMS Lincoln (F99): Padded With Railway Track for the Cod Wars

Built at Govan

HMS Lincoln was laid down in 1955 and built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan, launched on 6 April 1959 and completed on 7 July 1960, a Salisbury-class Type 61 aircraft direction frigate named after the city of Lincoln, displacing 2,170 tons standard, and purpose-built to provide radar direction and control for aircraft rather than to fight in a conventional gunnery role.

The Far East and the Indonesian Confrontation

HMS Lincoln recommissioned at Singapore Dockyard on 13 July 1965 under Commander D. C.

Nairne, and went on to conduct operations in the Far East during the Indonesian Confrontation, taking part in exercises with the United States Navy at Subic Bay and serving as guard ship in Hong Kong, before returning home to Plymouth in 1966, a remarkably varied and geographically wide-ranging deployment for a ship whose design had originally been optimised for a very specific radar-control role.

Reinforced With Railway Line

HMS Lincoln found herself drawn into the Second Cod War in October 1973 under Commander D.

Howard, and after suffering stern damage from an earlier ramming incident, was fitted with sections of railway line protruding from her stern as improvised protective reinforcement, a properly resourceful, if slightly agricultural, engineering solution to the very real danger posed by close-quarters confrontations with Icelandic gunboats.

Even with this reinforcement, she still sustained damage to both her port and starboard sides while manoeuvring between a trawler she was protecting and the Icelandic gunboat Aegir, a sharp reminder of just how physically confrontational the Cod Wars could become.

Wooden Padding for a Second Round

HMS Lincoln was decommissioned at Chatham in April 1974 and placed in reserve, but was called back into service for the Third Cod War in 1976, this time fitted with wooden padding on her bow, reportedly chosen for the role specifically because she was the one Type 61 frigate not fitted with hull stabiliser fins that might have interfered with the reinforcement.

Plans to sell her to New Zealand fell through that same year when the missing sonar equipment on offer proved unacceptable, and she went on instead to serve in the Arctic Circle and as Gibraltar's guard ship before returning to the standby squadron at Chatham in December 1977.

A Final Few Years and a Quiet End

HMS Lincoln spent 1979 training submarine engineers and taking part in the earliest sea trials of the Sea Harrier alongside HMS Bulwark, providing radar coverage over Scandinavian waters during those crucial early tests of Britain's new jump-jet fighter.

Proposed sales to Egypt in 1978 and Bangladesh in 1981 both fell through, and HMS Lincoln was ultimately broken up in 1983, closing out the career of a frigate whose most memorable contribution to naval history came not from any grand action but from a particularly inventive piece of wartime improvisation involving old railway track and wooden padding.