The first of the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates to be disposed of, the former HMS Monmouth, was towed out of Portsmouth this morning to be scrapped in Turkey.
Conceived as a Cold War submarine hunter, HMS Monmouth was the sixth ship of the class and was built by Yarrow shipbuilders on the Clyde, commissioning in 1993. The ‘Black Duke’ served all over the world, from the North Atlantic to the Gulf and circumnavigated the globe in 2007.
Monmouth’s last major deployment was in 2018 when she accompanied HMS Queen Elizabeth on the Westlant deployment to the US. She sailed for the final time in April 2019 and was laid up, ahead of her planned LIFEX refit. This was eventually abandoned as a cost-saving measure and she is the only ship of her class never to have had a mid-life upgrade.
She languished in Devonport, briefly serving as a harbour training ship. She was used by the replacement crews preparing to take over the Type 23 frigate forward-deployed in the Gulf. There we briefly rumours she might be sold to Greece as part of a deal to sell the Hellenic Navy Type 31 frigates but this was always extremely unlikely, given her poor material state. She was subsequently towed to Portsmouth in 2021 and handed over to DSRO for the final stripping of equipment.
She never received a proper decommissioning ceremony and was officially withdrawn from RN service on 30 June 2021. The ship’s bell was handed over to the mayor of Monmouth in Wales for safekeeping, having been on board for the 28 years the ship was in commission, during which time she sailed more than half a million miles and visited over 200 ports. At least 2,000 sailors served on board this ship during its lifetime.
The long list of Royal Navy warships and RFAs that have been disposed of in the last two decades have mostly ended up at the Leyal scrapyard at Aliaga on Turkey’s Aegean coast, and Monmouth is no exception. The UK does not have a facility where ships can be dismantled, mainly due to health, safety and environmental regulations making it financially unviable, despite the rise in the price of scrap steel in the last decade.
Monmouth is the first of all the Type 23s to be scrapped (The 3 older Type 23s sold to Chile are still going strong). Disposing of a warship that is over 30 years old would not be at all remarkable if there was a replacement ready to take her place in the fleet. Ex-HMS Montrose, currently on the trots in Portsmouth harbour, will likely be next to the scrapyard, followed eventually by HMS Westminster, Argyll and Northumberland.
Main image: Portsmouth Proud
Argyll to the scrapyard! What in heaven’s name is going on?
She never got a refit
We also don’t have enough crew
I recall she was supposed to have got 80% through the refit and was scheduled to go to BAES as a training ship.
That is what going to happen to her going to BAES as a training ship
We don’t have enough crew because we keep scrapping vessels! It’s a downward spiral
I’d argue that is only a small part of the issue, even just last year we only had 7 frigates crews (barely) for around 9 frigates
Read somewhere that 23 of that ships will be going to brasil.
Anyone wondering what happens in Aliaga might find this website of interest.
DESA ship recycling reports – GOV.UK
Thanks @NAB – Interesting read on the recycling of decommissioned warships. Very informative on the process and the regulations under which job is done. Wonder why such a similar installation is not setup in the UK since regulation under which the breaking up of ships is done in Turkey is essentially EU regulations. Only real issue I see for UK is labor costs but I am sure the UK operator of such a facility would be more automated than in Turkey, same way shipbuilding in UK is less labor intensive than in Turkish shipyards.
Branaboy
Please see my comments, below, about Teesside (posted yesterday)
It exists = it is just that the RN has not found it yet……
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
You can’t really automate shipbreaking in any meaningful way, particularly if you’re separating the different materials etc. Someone still has to go in and dismantle the outfit components and separate the sheet metal (furniture and HVAC ducting) from the ferrous and non-ferrous pipework, the ME equipment (pumps, starter motors and drivers), electrical items (fuse panels, transformers, cabling) and timber.
I wouldn’t say UK build yards are any more automated than Turkish to be honest – main automation in both is steel prep, fabrication and unit/block erection. Once you’re into outfit it’s still very manpower intensive – the degree depends on when in the build stage you install things.
What are the crew numbers on a T23?
Have they gone up over the years?
UK / scrapping ships vs UK / scrapping cars — the cant be ersed vibe is strong in that one.
I wonder how many gold plated regulations are included in the ship process that have been worked away / around in the car process.
Surprised that no-one wanted to take over the carcass and do some real world prototyping?
New bow in the modern PSV mould would have been a good start.
Props / shafts / engines — all gone.
I wonder what value was put on those parts.
Or is it cannibalizing in true Vietnam mode to keep the rest moving.
We must be living hand to mouth now.
“The UK does not have a facility where ships can be dismantled, mainly due to health, safety and environmental regulations making it financially unviable, despite the rise in the price of scrap steel in the last decade”
Dear Mr Editor
A very significant cock-up in this story
= it should either have been published two days ago, on the 1st April 2025 OR be corrected.
I am afraid to have to be the one to tell you that the UK does have such a facility. It is so well hidden up in Hartlepool that only the US intelligence has ever found it!
And the US has certified it as being environmentally friendly: to the onerous US standards
Able Marine Decommissioning — Able UK
(see more details under “marine decommissioning” tab)
A tough no-nonsense North Eastern company = and thus very good at what they do
Some of you old gits may well remember the huge enviromental protest which hit this yard when the USN tried to scap its old supply ships (many years back)
The legacy of Hartlepool’s US Navy ‘ghost ships’ – BBC News
The RN and DES really needs to look them up in the yellow pages!Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS Having just said that: getting into Hartlepool by road or rail is right pain in the backside. It is is a very long way north of the Watford Gap. A very deprived town, however one gets a very warm welcome when one is bringing much needed jobs into the region…..
thought able had gone bust?
Jason
Not that I know of …….and that is despite the fact that the RN and NL have never even having heard of them!
As of yesterday afternooon, they were still recruiting for “a few good men” (note1)
Careers — Able UK
So why don’t you apply for one of their vacancies.
You might find that intelligent life exists outside of Pompey
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Note1 .
Some will say that not too much intelligent life lives in Pompey either (if the crowds at Fratton Park are anything to base a judgement on!)
Not according to the Companies House site, still a going concern, will be publishing it`s accounts on 22nd of May for 2024.
Ghost ship stushie — remember it well.
Are they still doing ship breaking?
Website points to property development / land banking and offshore wind.
They seem to be a very active company so they must have found a niche.
The big dock could do with some investment — 3 sperate units?
But not Monkeys, obvs.
HMG have run scared from the wimmin of the local FoE branch ever since the “Ghost ships”, which is why the only two RN ships recycled in the UK since were ex-Intrepid (in Liverpool) and ex-Cornwall in Swansea. Don’t think either made a profit, hence much easier to ask those nice folk from Leyal.
Able also did ex-Clemenceau as well (after another environmental odyssey precluded her going to Alang).
N-a-B
Good to see you back on NL
Is there anything that HMG , and indeed MOD have not run scared of in recent decades?…..they currently seem to be scared of their own shadows!
It is bit of a shame that all of these old ships were exported
Had these RN ships been cut up and recycled here in the UK: then the MOD payment would have been recycled back into the UK economy via wages and taxes spent locally etc
(instead of the taxpayers money being exported out to Turkey)
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
I think the issue is more the terms of sale. Nominally the scrapper pays MoD to remove the vessel and makes their profit on the difference between the cost of recycling and the amount they recover in scrap value.
I suspect Able would struggle to keep the cost of recycling sufficiently low to make a profit from the scrap value of materials recovered. They might be better off now with the freeport scheme, but I’m not sure. They’re certainly dealing with more competent and coherent customers in the O&G market, not sure they’d want to engage with chimp-central again.
The whole Ghost ship fiasco was a great shame – had they been able to do them quickly and without fuss they could have stolen a march on the competition and become the default established solution. Back then they were absolutely set up to do it and in a really good position.
Amazing the damage a bunch of hippies with GWB derangement syndrome can do.
N-a-B
Agreed: on all points
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Able (scrap) went bust years ago. Your information is years out of date! Do your research before making false statements
Richard The Researcher
This one from July 2024 (last year)
Shell Brent Charlie Rig Arrives at Able Seaton Port — Able UK
ABLE Seaton Port – Teesside Freeport
I would be the first to admit that Able seem to have mostly been concentrating on cutting up old oil and gas rigs over recent years
However absolutely no reason whatsover why they could not cut up an old RN warship (hey are much smaller and simplier)
This one (Brent Charlie) was reportedly 97% converted into razor blades.
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS Please try refreshing your browser
Able have several companies – their one for disposing of warships went bust years ago. They do not currently have a license to cut up warships, they have permission/license what ever you wish to call it to deal with rigs but they do not have a company that allows them to cut up warships they never had one from The UK, they were using one from America so they could dispose of some of the ghost fleet (even then they used quite a few loopholes) – Your information is nearly a year old. To cut up a British warship in The UK requires lots and lots (and lots more) licenses and specific requirements – due to H&S .
However it is cheaper and there are less stringent laws in Turkey which makes it easier, cheaper and safer to cut up overseas.
Go look up what happened when HMS Cornwall was scrapped in The UK – such a monumental screw up!
I am no longer going to waste my time replying to you if you cannot look up simple things.
Richard the Researcher
Thus there is now very little difference in the safety and environmental standards between what MOD has recently required the Turks to do with HMS Diligence over in Turkey – and the usual long-standing safety and environmental applied here in the UK.
Note that MOD went out to Turkey to photograph things “being done proper like”
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS However please can you also note that the MOD always goes for lowest price (that is also in that link about Diligence). Thus I strongly suspect that Turkey was cheapest on price!
has a very good maritime museum in the old dock yard. Including the sailing frigate Trincomalee.
Martin
Agreed – a surprisingly worthwhile visit (if well off the normal tourist trail…)
National Museum of the Royal Navy Hartlepool | National Museum of the Royal Navy
Last time I was up there in town was when Durham University were thinking of moving their marine research department to the seaside ((It is currently well inland)
That was all go go go for a while……. then it died a death…. I never really understood why they pulled the plug That one investment really could have really transformed Hartlepool
PS Don’t tell them the RN is now exporting scrap steel to Turkey!
Durham to lead new £21.3m research hub to decarbonise UK maritime sector – Durham University
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
For a ship to serve as Monmouth has, the decent thing to do, would be to take her to sea, and open the seacocks, and let Davy Jones have her, she deserves a better farewell, than to end up, being sliced up
The crew numbers on a T23 are 174 , the T45 is 20 more . Was an answer to a written question in House of Commons. click image to see it magnified
That’s a fair bit higher than public numbers. And I inagine the same will go for the new frigates
The crewing numbers above are scary.
We should be working towards 50 plus mission support.
Better comms should mean more can be done on dry land.
80 approx in the engineering department.
That is bonkers mental — they have to crew it not build it.
Oh I see the potential issues now …
Where does the helicopter crew / aviation department sit?
Engineering includes weapons and electronic engineering.
For every specialist system you need specialist maintainers…..
T45 and T26 have a lot of systems on them.
T45:-
SAMPSON
1850
ASTER
4.5”
30mm
Phalanx
NSM – soon
Sea Ceptor – soon
GTs
DGUs
ELINT/EW
Decoy system
EO system
General electrical and plumbing trades to keep things working at sea.
If you want a full fat warship expect a full fat crew.
One of the main reasons for T31 smaller crew was…..simpler…..
Still seems high — we are using it / servicing it not rebuilding it / upgrading it. No support effort available in the user base?
Plus there must be some sort of multi tasking capability.
Radar knowledge on the water / specific system knowledge on land.
Outsider so please help — what kind of on the water support are we able to do on the Aster missiles?
Service servos / rocket motors / upload software patches?
No matter — the crew numbers need to halve.
There is all this breathless chat about autonomous systems.
And then we have the current high human local effort reality.
To me it is an impossible jump.
Thrift the existing units for manpower.
Bare bones crew for the new “autonomous” units.
Shame she cannot be cleaned up and sunk as part of a SINKEX to make an artificial reef off the UK coast.
Would be great for marine life and make a nice attraction for scuba divers, helping the leisure and tourism industry.
The clean up part is the problem. The process is very expensive and no one wants to pay.
With a Lifex she could have given many more years service, specially if she had received the engine upgrade. But no, let’s just scrap it instead despite the fact we di not have a replacement for her, typical short sighted UK stupidity.
Are you sure about that? Even with Lifexs many of our T23 are unreliable and prone to issues. There’s no guarantee an expensive refit would’ve done Monmouth any good
Paul42
It might well have had something to do with the one key fact that the structures and especially the hull plating of the T23 was only ever designed for 18 years use out in the cold North Atlantic.
Thus the T23 are now suffering from what your NHS doctor would call “old age”
Which I am sure N-a-B can soon verify
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Is their anything in the RN that is reliable?
Regarding this unit — she should have trialled a fully diesel powertrain plus some batteries.
Rough as a badgers erse conversion as a proof of concept.
Two 40′ containers worth of batteries.
And 20MW’s worth of medium speed diesels.
Reclaimed units from a fast ferry to keep the cost down.
We desperately need to get into mild steel prototypes.
Use them as training vessels once they have served their testing purpose.
Uckers about the only thing the RN is good at……if you are of a certain age possibly 🤔
Explain, Westminster, Argyll and Northumberland then? They have all had a Lifex and are laid up
The grown ups are in charge and wasting money is not top of their list.
Joined Argyll brand new in 91
Seems like only yesterday
Watching this makes me feel old, I was at her launch, farewell Black Duke!!
Argyll ??? Thought she had been sold to either The Clyde for marine work or for foreign navy? no update on either of the previous stories for her
Iv been lucky enough to have been invited on both HMS Somerset and HMS Monmouth as part of the PACAS ( parents and Children at sea ) scheme, my son was a serving member of the Fleet Air Arm company, I can only speak for myself , but I’m sure it was an honour for all of us to see our family members at work
I loved every minute of it , including watching them at play in Lisbon and Gibraltar, I’m sure I have board lots of friends and family reliving my time in the Navy 😎😎😎
He is about to retire and I know he would serve his time all over again with the people he calls life long friends
We need ships, we don’t have enough, an old hull is better than swimming g to war with a cutlass between your teeth. As for can’t find somewhere to cut her up in the UK ai have never read such errant and stupid nonsense
No point in a rust bucket that won’t be able to get to sea.
Cheaper to do it in Turkey
A very sad day. I served on Monmouth from 2002-2010. Had the best time of my life on that ship. 6 months in the Carribbean in 2004, global in 2007 and few med and gulf trips. Looking at the dead and decrepit hull on the photo I can see it comes to life with all of the memories from every inch of the upper deck. Unless you’ve served on a Warship, you’ll never understand.
25 years of active service for a ship designed and built for a 18 year service life isn’t bad. The T23’s were never intended get a middle life refit, let alone a LIFEX. After the horrendously expensive Leander conversions, an assumption was made in the early 1980’s that it would be cheaper to just replace the T23’s than a try to modernise them. This of course allowed some “economies” to made in the design (e.g. inaccessible compartments), which proved to be a financial disaster when it was decided in the early 2000’s to keep them in service for 30 years rather than start to order their replacements.
Richard
I would add that the T23’s have never really been used as first intended, as a hunting pack, for tracknig and destroying soviet submarines up in the cold regions….
It was always a great shame that the RN did not order the extended version of the T23!
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
Footnote
Note 1
House of Commons hearing doesnt say this at all
‘service life of that particular huge substation had been extended…..and extended…. and extended – and thus that it was already long overdue for replacement“
Nothing at all about North Hyde – which was 3 high voltage ‘supergrid transformers’ and a separate low voltage compound run by the major grid and local grid operators- was beyond its service life.
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/15701/html/
Duker
NESO review into the North Hyde Substation outage: terms of reference – GOV.UK
The North Hyde subvsbtaion has been a known “weak link” in West London for many decades.
This is because of the growth in population and, in particular the huge number of new data centres built along the M4 corridor
The lack of an electricity supply was why the previous government banned the building of thousands of new homes in this area only a few years back
Furthermore that substation was suffering from old age: about 60!
This is the latest report from national grid: dated December 2024
north-hyde-grid-supply-point—strategic-development-plan—for-consultation.pdf
Therefore I stand by my orginal comment:
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS
SSEN didnt own the transformers at North Hyde that caught fire they have the adjacent substation which was fine !
So your source from SSEN local network owner is barking up the wrong tree.
The Map is an obvious clue as the supply area for SSEN and its report excludes Heathrow
National Grid Electricity Transmission. owned and operated the separate 3 super transformers at North Hyde . One caught fire. Heathrow currently runs fine of the remaining two. But the fire tripped the nearest transformer as well as the burning one.
More power demand needs a new supply line from NGEN first which is planned for 2030s, That extra 275kV circuit from Iver comes first.
But what WASNT said at Commons hearing
“service life of that particular huge substation had been extended…..and extended…. and extended ”
You got that from the Daily Mail and a ‘retired ‘ electrical engineers musings, why not say so ?
Do your own research on South China Sea. Dont care either. Irish Sea was area of interest to Britain and RN
Map of SSEN report supply area which excludes Heathrow
I read your sources so you dont have to !
No longer titled HMS.
The thing puzzling me is after relative stability post 2010 we’ve withdrawn Ocean, 5 frigates, something like 8 mine-hunters, the 2 Echo’s and now Albion/Bulwark from RN service in the last few years.
That’s despite manpower numbers only shrinking slightly.
Is it all down to having both carriers in active service? If so that’s a steep price to pay.
Standfast Ocean, which was always due to leave service when they entered service, its nothing to do with the carriers.
It’s everything to do with not having a “new” surface combatant enter service since HMS Duncan and the T23s ageing badly. Plus having five RCB2 operational as well as three of the RCB1 (which wasn’t planned).
There’s also an element where the box-ticking qualifications process is leading to particular manpower shortages in engineering, which dates back to the mid-teens.
Good point about the re-growth of the OPV fleet.
The T23 saga is clearly more about the condition of the vessels rather than manpower. It was a further risk not trying to LIFEX Monmouth and choosing to burn through Montrose/Lancaster’s remaining life on station assuming that all 8 ASW frigates would be around for a lot longer.
The frantic rundown of the Sandown fleet, sudden removal of the Echo’s and now deciding to sell a fresh from refit Bulwark all seems to be manpower driven.
As you say overall headcount isn’t the same as numbers in specialist areas that are fundamental to getting ships to sea.
The Sandown run-down is largely due to the fact the RN went through a phase round about the S2C2 stuff in 2006/7 where in a wizard wheeze to get some more funds into (at the time) the FSC programme, the RN adopted the idea that “the answer is autonomy, now what’s the question?”. Combined with the idea that the C3/MHC “platform” could cover off all the roles.
Trouble was, that essentially identified the Sandowns in particular as easy to delete, partly as single role, but also because there’s absolutely no chance of an upgrade to work with autonomy. The Hunts being a bit bigger had more potential (but of course thats been OBE by the whole LSV/OSV concept).
Echo/Enterprise were similarly knee-capped by the autonomy bug, not least as that was the easiest of the capabilities to automate. They were also reaching the end of their lives from a design PoV.
Bulwark is more manpwoer-driven, but also fatally wounded by FCF. You don’t need a 20000te command platform with multiple landing craft and room for hundreds of Booties if your operating concept is light raiding from distance.
The FSC ( later known as T26) got its extra money was because the last 2 options on top of the then 6 hulls T45 construction contract (last builds cost £650mill each in 2005 pounds) was diverted to the FSC program to ‘speed it up’
Nope. While that was certainly part of the funding line, the machinations of the S2C2 exercise is what led to the cessation of what had been a Long-Term Costing line for FMCMV and it’s inclusion in the overarching FSC programme.
Which reminds me, did you figure out which bit of your BAES promo video gave the game away as to whether FSC/GCS/T26 was ready to build in 2010 – or not?
“You don’t need a 20000te command platform with multiple landing craft and room for hundreds of Booties if your operating concept is light raiding from distance.”
Wasnt the RM and amphib force mission still to land major forces in Northern Norway
The Norwegians are certainly sending one of their frigates for the full CSG25 deployment to the pacific !
The recent political mumbo jumbo certainly seems to say so
‘With Russia continuing to militarise the High North and Arctic, this new agreement will boost security for the UK, Norway and our NATO allies, bolstering defences on NATO’s northern flank. [ie Norway]
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-norway-kickstart-new-defence-agreement-in-boost-for-european-security
“Wasn’t the RM and amphib force mission still…”
Clue is the past tense. There isn’t a formed 3Cdp Bde anymore, it’s now just an administrative organisation.
65 million people in the UK and 30,000 of them in the RN, but “you don’t have crews”. Got it.
Meanwhile the doom loop continues.
The answer is very simple. Just build more T31s until you get your surface fleet numbers up to something approaching a minimal floor. I would suggest 28 or even 26 total vessels, though you would be lucky to get to 24—which is what was supposedly going to happen with the T32. This ship has never made any sense to me whatsoever. Why spend any money at all on a cleansheet design that will only be built in small numbers (5)? Just order more 31’s and take advantage of economies of scale, and once the death spiral is eliminated and the fleet is stabilized, THEN you look at a 32 or some other future design(s).
Why is this so difficult for your political class?