HMS Nubian (F131): Guarding an Air Race, Then Cleaning Up France's Worst Oil Spill

Built at Portsmouth

HMS Nubian was built by Portsmouth Dockyard at a cost of £4,360,000, laid down on 7 September 1959, launched on 6 September 1960 by Lady Holland-Martin and commissioned on 9 October 1962, a Tribal-class frigate displacing 2,300 tons standard and capable of 27 knots on her combined steam and gas propulsion system.

Enforcing the Rhodesian Blockade

HMS Nubian suffered minor collision damage in 1964, before joining the Beira Patrol off Mozambique in 1967 to help enforce the oil blockade against the breakaway Rhodesian regime, the long-running operation that occupied so many Royal Navy frigates through the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Radar Coverage for an Air Race

HMS Nubian took on a genuinely unusual task in 1969, providing the escort and radar coverage for the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race, a widely publicised event that saw competitors race across the Atlantic by any means of transport they chose, a curious but useful piece of maritime safety infrastructure for a purely civilian sporting spectacle.

Reinforcing Belize

HMS Nubian appeared at Portsmouth Navy Days in 1971, and in 1975 was deployed to reinforce the British garrison in Belize amid rising threats from neighbouring Guatemala, which maintained a long-standing territorial claim over the colony, a genuinely tense piece of gunboat diplomacy that helped ensure Belize's security in the years before its eventual independence.

Cleaning Up the Amoco Cadiz

HMS Nubian took part in the Spithead Fleet Review marking Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee in 1977, serving with the 5th Frigate Squadron, and in 1978 assisted with the cleanup following the grounding of the supertanker Amoco Cadiz off Brittany, one of the largest oil spills in history at the time, a genuinely unglamorous but environmentally vital piece of disaster response work for a frigate more accustomed to conventional naval duties.

Cannibalised for Indonesia, Then Sunk as a Target

HMS Nubian entered reserve and the Standby Squadron in 1979, was placed on the disposal list in 1981, and subsequently served as a training ship, with many of her components cannibalised to help support three of her sister Tribal-class frigates that were sold on to Indonesia in 1984. She was finally sunk as a target on 27 May 1987, closing out the career of a frigate whose varied service had taken in oil blockades, air races, colonial defence and environmental disaster response in equal measure.