HMS St Brides Bay (F600): The Frigate That Faced Down a Gunboat in the Taiwan Strait
Ordered as a Loch, Launched as a Bay
HMS St Brides Bay was ordered from Harland and Wolff in Belfast on 2 May 1943 as the Loch-class frigate Loch Achilty, with her keel laid down the following year before the design changed. She was launched under her eventual name on 16 January 1945 and completed that June, commissioning for the British Pacific Fleet just as the war she was built for drew to a close, her planned Pacific deployment cancelled that August when Japan surrendered.
The Haifa Patrol
Instead, St Brides Bay joined the 5th Escort Flotilla in the Mediterranean, flying weather ship and air-sea rescue cover during American troop repatriation flights, patrolling the Aegean, Adriatic and Red Seas, and taking on guardship duties at Alexandria, Trieste and Aqaba. She also served on the Haifa Patrol, attempting to intercept ships carrying Jewish refugees to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions, one of the most politically fraught duties of the immediate postwar years.
The Yangtze and Malaya
Sailing for the Eastern Fleet in July 1949 and arriving at Hong Kong that August, St Brides Bay took on guardship duty on the Yangtze, kept watch on Chinese Nationalist warship movements during the closing stages of the Chinese Civil War, and patrolled in support of operations against insurgent forces during the Malayan Emergency.
Four Tours of the Korean War
From December 1950, St Brides Bay joined the United Nations naval task force supporting the evacuation of Incheon, going on to complete four separate Korean tours through 1953, including bombardment operations on the Han River in December 1951, and providing medical assistance to the American destroyer USS John R. Pierce after she was damaged by shore batteries. In June 1953 she carried out further bombardments in the Ch'o-do area in support of South Korean army operations.
Facing Down a Gunboat in the Taiwan Strait
On 16 August 1953, a Republic of China Navy gunboat seized the British freighter Nigelock in the Taiwan Strait. St Brides Bay's arrival on the scene was enough to persuade the gunboat to withdraw, allowing the freighter to continue on her way, a striking example of how the simple appearance of a Royal Navy warship could defuse a genuinely tense international incident.
A Near-Fatal Collision
St Brides Bay went on to serve off Aden during the 1956 Suez Crisis and made extensive visits to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands, but her later career included a genuinely alarming moment: on 2 July 1960, at Hong Kong, she collided with the minesweeper HMS Damerham, almost cutting the smaller ship in half, a serious accident that this account notes plainly given how close it came to tragedy.
Sixteen Years of Continuous Service
St Brides Bay finally sailed for home in November 1961, arriving at Portsmouth that December and decommissioning after an extraordinary sixteen years of continuous overseas service, a genuinely remarkable stretch for any Royal Navy ship. She was sold to BISCO for scrapping and towed to Faslane, arriving there on 3 September 1962 to be broken up by Metal Industries.