HMS Torquay (F43): Twenty-Nine Years From Suez to the Silver Jubilee

The First of Her Class

HMS Torquay was laid down at Harland and Wolff's Belfast shipyard on 11 March 1953, launched the following July and completed on 10 May 1956, becoming the first Whitby-class, or Type 12, frigate to be finished.

Her innovative V-form hull allowed her to operate in heavy seas without the slamming problems that plagued more conventional destroyer designs, making her a properly capable anti-submarine warship for her era.

Straight Into the Suez Crisis

Torquay joined the 5th Frigate Squadron at Portsmouth on commissioning, becoming squadron leader that August, and within months found herself heading for the Mediterranean, taking part in the Suez operation in November 1956 and conducting Cyprus patrols that December, a remarkably eventful introduction to active service for a brand new frigate.

Supporting the Airlift to Jordan

In July 1958, Torquay took part in Operation Fortitude, supporting the British troop airlift to Jordan during a period of regional instability, before settling into a long and varied career that included seven years with the Dartmouth Training Squadron from 1963 and over a decade as a navigation training ship from 1972.

The Royal Navy's Oldest Frigate

Torquay took her place at the 1977 Silver Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead, and continued serving right through to 23 March 1985, by which point she had become the longest-serving and oldest frigate in the entire fleet, a truly remarkable span of service for a ship originally built in the mid-1950s.

Scrapped in Barcelona

HMS Torquay was sold for scrap in 1987 and left Portsmouth on 1 July that year bound for Barcelona, where she was broken up, closing out an exceptional twenty-nine-year career that had begun with the Suez Crisis and ended nearly three decades later as one of the last survivors of her generation still in front-line service.