HMS Montrose (F236): The Frigate That Warned Off Iran's Revolutionary Guard in the Strait of Hormuz

Built on the Clyde

HMS Montrose was laid down by Yarrow Shipbuilders on the River Clyde in November 1989, launched on 31 July 1992 by Edith Rifkind, wife of the then Secretary of State for Defence Malcolm Rifkind, and commissioned in June 1994, the eighth of sixteen Type 23 Duke-class frigates, carrying the motto Mare ditat rosa decorat, meaning the sea enriches and the rose adorns, and maintaining a strong affiliation with her namesake town of Dundee.

Falklands Guardship and a Fallen Sister's Flag

HMS Montrose served as Falkland Islands guardship in the South Atlantic between 1994 and 1996, and later, during a further Atlantic Patrol Task in 2002, took part in a quietly moving ceremony, replacing the White Ensign flying on the wreck of HMS Antelope, a ship lost during the Falklands War two decades earlier, a genuinely fitting piece of remembrance carried out by one warship on behalf of another.

Assisting a Stricken Submarine

HMS Montrose assisted the Canadian submarine HMCS Chicoutimi after a serious fire aboard in 2004, before deploying to the Persian Gulf in 2006 as part of Operation Telic, and to the Mediterranean in 2007 with Standing NATO Maritime Group Two, taking part in Operation Active Endeavour, NATO's counter-terrorism maritime patrol operation launched in the wake of the September 2001 attacks.

Twenty-Three Tonnes of Drugs and a Pirate Vessel Destroyed

HMS Montrose deployed to the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea in 2008, seizing more than 23 tonnes of illegal drugs during that tour, and returned to anti-piracy operations in 2010, during which she destroyed a Somali pirate vessel, a genuinely tangible contribution to the multinational effort curbing piracy off the Horn of Africa at the height of that crisis.

Escorting the Queen

HMS Montrose deployed to the South Atlantic between 2011 and 2012, and in 2012 had the honour of escorting Queen Elizabeth II during her Diamond Jubilee visit, before returning to Middle East operations in 2013 and 2014, where she assisted with the removal of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, a genuinely significant contribution to one of the more delicate international security operations of the decade. She also took part in the BALTOPS 14 exercise in the Baltic Sea in 2014.

The Royal Navy's First Permanent Gulf Frigate

HMS Montrose was forward-deployed to Bahrain from 2019 to 2022, becoming the first Royal Navy frigate ever permanently stationed overseas, conducting sustained counter-piracy and counter-narcotics operations from that base. In July 2019 she found herself at the centre of a genuinely tense international incident, issuing radio warnings to Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats that were attempting to impede the British-flagged tanker British Heritage as it transited the Strait of Hormuz, a confrontation that captured global headlines amid a period of sharply rising tension between Britain and Iran. In January 2022 she capped her Gulf deployment with one of the largest single drug seizures of her career, intercepting 663 kilograms of heroin, 87 kilograms of methamphetamine and 291 kilograms of hashish, together valued at some £15 million.

Decommissioned, With an Uncertain Future

HMS Montrose was decommissioned on 17 April 2023, and as of 2024 had, somewhat unusually, failed to attract any bids when auctioned off for scrapping, remaining at Portsmouth Naval Base with her ultimate fate still undecided, a strangely uncertain final chapter for a frigate that had spent her active career standing directly in the way of Iranian gunboats and hauling in tonnes of narcotics on behalf of the Royal Navy.