HMS Russell (F97): The Frigate That Threatened to Sink an Icelandic Gunboat

A Specialist Anti-Submarine Frigate

HMS Russell was a Blackwood-class Type 14 frigate, a class of fast, purpose-built anti-submarine vessels designed to counter the growing Soviet submarine threat of the early Cold War. She commissioned in 1957 and joined the Second Training Squadron at Portland Harbour, work that fitted her original design purpose closely, before her career took a rather more confrontational turn than most of her sister ships would experience.

Into the Fishery Protection Squadron

From 1958 to 1963, Russell served with the Fishery Protection Squadron, a role that placed her directly in the middle of the first Cod War, the escalating dispute between Britain and Iceland over fishing rights in the waters around Iceland that repeatedly brought Royal Navy frigates into direct, tense confrontation with Icelandic coastguard vessels defending an expanded exclusion zone.

A Collision in Defence of a British Trawler

On 4 September 1960, Russell intervened when the Icelandic patrol vessel AEgir attempted to seize a British trawler, an intervention that resulted in a collision between the two ships, one of numerous close and occasionally dangerous encounters that characterised the Cod War's peculiar brand of low-intensity maritime confrontation between two NATO allies.

Standing Between a Trawler and a Gunboat

Russell's most striking moment came on 12 November 1960, when she directly threatened to sink the Icelandic vessel Thor if it opened fire on the British trawler Hackness, a genuinely remarkable escalation for what remained, officially, a fisheries dispute rather than a shooting war. The episode captures just how seriously the Royal Navy took its duty to protect British fishing vessels during the Cod Wars, even at the risk of a direct clash with the coastguard of a fellow NATO member.

A Quieter Later Career

Following a refit at Rosyth, Russell joined the 20th Frigate Squadron at Londonderry Port, returning to more conventional anti-submarine training duties, and she appeared at Portsmouth Navy Days in 1966, a public-facing role rather different from her tense encounters off Iceland just a few years earlier. Detailed records of her eventual decommissioning and disposal have proven difficult to trace with confidence, though her sister ship HMS Blackwood was broken up in 1976, giving some indication of the timeframe in which the class was retired from service.

A Small Frigate in a Very Real Dispute

HMS Russell's career is a useful reminder that the Cold War Royal Navy's confrontations were not confined to distant hunts for Soviet submarines. Her willingness to stand between an Icelandic gunboat and a British trawler, and to say so plainly, gives her a genuinely memorable place in the story of a dispute that, while rarely violent, tested the nerve of the ships and crews caught in the middle of it.