HMS Maxton (M1165): The First Ship Through Suez Since the Six-Day War

Built at Harland and Wolff

HMS Maxton was laid down at Harland and Wolff's Belfast yard on 23 May 1955, completed on 19 February 1957 after a construction period of 21 months, and finally commissioned on 4 July 1958 for the 104th Minesweeping Squadron based in Malta, a Ton-class coastal minesweeper of the kind that formed the backbone of the Royal Navy's mine countermeasures fleet for decades after the Second World War.

Patrolling a Troubled Cyprus

HMS Maxton was posted to Cyprus between 1958 and 1961, a period of considerable unrest on the island in the run-up to and immediately following independence, and sustained damage there in a collision with HMS Undaunted near Larnaca, a reminder that even routine patrol duty in busy, crowded waters could carry its own hazards quite separate from the mines she was actually built to hunt.

Rebuilt as a Deltic Minehunter

HMS Maxton went into reserve before undergoing a significant conversion between 1964 and 1966, re-engined with Deltic diesels and adapted for the minehunting role rather than pure minesweeping, a modernisation that extended her useful life considerably and reflected the Royal Navy's growing emphasis on precisely locating and neutralising individual mines rather than simply sweeping channels clear in bulk.

A Decade in the Far East

HMS Maxton recommissioned in 1966 and spent much of the following years in the Far East, joining the 6th Mine Countermeasures Squadron based first in Singapore and later in Hong Kong, serving there through until 1971, a long and demanding overseas posting typical of the Royal Navy's continuing presence east of Suez in that period.

First Through Suez Since the Six-Day War

HMS Maxton earned her most notable historical distinction in 1974, taking part in Operation Rheostat, the international effort to clear the Suez Canal of war debris and unexploded ordnance left behind since the canal's closure during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. HMS Maxton became the first ship to pass through the Suez Canal since 1967, a genuinely striking piece of naval history for what was, in most other respects, a fairly ordinary coastal minesweeper simply doing the job she had always been built for.

A Quiet Contribution to the Falklands

HMS Maxton's own crew were not deployed to the South Atlantic in 1982, but personnel from the ship were detached for service during the Falklands War, a further small thread connecting her long career to one of the defining Royal Navy operations of the late twentieth century.

Twenty-Seven Years of Service

HMS Maxton was finally paid off on 19 August 1988 after twenty-seven years of operational service, a genuinely impressive span for a minesweeper originally built in the 1950s, and was sold for breaking up by Franciscomata SA at El Ferrol on 17 April 1989, closing out the career of a small, unglamorous ship that had nonetheless found her way into a genuine piece of Middle Eastern history.