HMS Southampton (D90): A Ten-Metre Hole in the Persian Gulf, and 3.5 Tonnes of Cocaine

The Sixth Ship to Carry the Name

HMS Southampton was a Batch Two Type 42 destroyer built by Vosper Thornycroft in Southampton, the sixth Royal Navy vessel to carry the name, and destined for a career that would prove considerably more eventful than most of her Type 42 sisters.

A Rough Start Before the Falklands

While preparing for deployment as a Falkland Islands guard ship in 1984, Southampton ran over one of the Shambles buoys off Portland during exercises, an embarrassing mishap that required dry dock repairs before she could finally head south to take up her guard ship duties in the South Atlantic.

Collision in the Gulf

The most serious incident of Southampton's career came on 3 September 1988, while she was carrying out escort duties in the Persian Gulf. A collision with the container ship MV Tor Bay tore a ten-metre hole in Southampton's hull and injured three of her crew, damage severe enough that she had to be carried home to Britain aboard a heavy lift vessel rather than sailing back under her own power, a serious accident that this article treats with due seriousness given the injuries involved.

A Major Caribbean Drug Bust

Southampton's later career brought a happier kind of drama: on 3 February 2006 she took part in the seizure of 3.5 tonnes of cocaine in the Caribbean, a substantial contribution to the Royal Navy's long-running counter-narcotics work in the region and a fitting late highlight for a ship whose career had already seen more than its share of incident.

Decommissioned After Twenty-Eight Years

HMS Southampton entered extended readiness on 31 July 2008 and was formally decommissioned on 12 February 2009, having served for twenty-eight years. She was sold at auction in March 2011 and towed to the scrapyard at Aliaga in Turkey that October, closing out a career defined as much by hard knocks as by hard-won successes.