HMS Sirius (F40): A Wilkinson Sword of Peace for Recovering the Dead

Built at Portsmouth

HMS Sirius was built at HM Dockyard Portsmouth, laid down on 9 August 1963, launched on 22 September 1964 and commissioned on 15 June 1966, a Leander-class frigate that would go on to combine long stretches of routine flag-showing duty with one genuinely significant humanitarian moment.

East to Singapore, and a Royal Coronation

After joining the 24th Escort Squadron and appearing at Portsmouth Navy Day in 1966, Sirius deployed to the Far East that November to join the Singapore-based 2nd Destroyer Squadron, taking in a spell on the Beira Patrol enforcing sanctions against Rhodesia in early 1967, before making a round of flag-showing visits across Asia that included attending the coronation of the King of Tonga.

Recovering the Dead off St Kitts

Serving as West Indies guard ship in 1970, Sirius responded to one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in the region's history when the ferry Christena sank near St Kitts on 1 August that year, killing 233 people. Her crew spent difficult hours recovering bodies from the sea, humanitarian work of the most sombre kind, for which they were later awarded the Wilkinson Sword of Peace, Britain's highest military honour for a humanitarian act, a recognition genuinely well earned.

Missiles, NATO, and the Falklands

A modernisation refit between 1975 and 1977 saw Sirius's forward 4.5-inch guns replaced with Exocet anti-ship missiles, and she went on to serve with NATO's Standing Naval Force Atlantic in 1974 and lead the 6th Frigate Squadron from 1978. Following the Falklands War, she deployed to the islands in 1982, and in 1988 took part in Exercise Outback, visiting Australia for its bicentennial celebrations, a far cry from the grim work off St Kitts nearly two decades earlier.

Sunk as a Target

Sirius was paid off on 17 February 1992 and formally stricken the following year. After environmental delays over her disposal, she was finally sunk as a target in the Atlantic in 1998 by the submarine HMS Spartan and the frigate HMS Monmouth, an unceremonious end for a ship whose crew had once been decorated for one of the more genuinely moving humanitarian actions in the Royal Navy's postwar history.