HMS Talent (S92): Thirty-Two Years Under the Princess Royal's Sponsorship

Laid Down at Barrow

HMS Talent was built at Barrow-in-Furness and launched by the Princess Royal in April 1988, commissioning in May 1990 as the sixth of the seven Trafalgar-class nuclear fleet submarines, with the Princess Royal remaining her sponsor throughout her entire service life.

A Costly Modernisation

Talent underwent a substantial modernisation at HMNB Devonport, rejoining the active fleet in March 2007 following a £386 million upgrade that included a new reactor core and the updated Sonar 2076 suite, an investment that kept her at the front rank of the Royal Navy's submarine capability well into the twenty-first century.

A Worrying Reactor Incident

In 2009, Talent suffered a properly concerning incident when she lost both her primary and alternative power supplies to her nuclear reactor while in dock, an episode that underlined just how seriously safety systems needed to be treated even alongside the quay rather than at sea.

Striking Arctic Ice

Talent returned from a three-month deployment in August 2013 and took part in anti-submarine exercises with allied vessels that October, before reportedly striking ice in 2014 while tracking Russian naval activity, an incident that came to public attention in 2015 and served as a reminder of the hazards still lurking in the environments Cold War-style submarine operations continued to demand.

A Delayed Retirement

Talent relocated from Devonport to HMNB Clyde in July 2019, and although her decommissioning had originally been scheduled for 2021, delays in the delivery of replacement Astute-class boats extended her service.

She was finally decommissioned in a joint ceremony with her sister HMS Trenchant on 20 May 2022, once again in the presence of the Princess Royal, a fitting close to a service life bookended by the same royal sponsor.