8 NAVY NEWS, APRIL 2008
● Preen of the seas... A penguin cleans itself while
HMS Nottingham anchors off Grytviken
The age of
I
T’S been a case of ‘out of the freezer
passageways and mess decks.
and into the frying pan’ for HMS
Those warm waters eventually carried the
Nottingham this past month as the
destroyer to Rio de Janeiro, where the ship
celebrated the Royal Navy’s role in the foundation
destroyer experienced opposite of the modern Brazilian nation.
ends of the temperature scale in the
Two hundred years ago the Royal Prince
South Atlantic.
of Portugal and the Portuguese court arrived
We will begin in the freezer – South Georgia,
in Rio. They did so escorted by four of His
to be accurate.
Majesty’s warships: Marlborough, Bedford,
Although it was still high summer in the
London and Monarch.
Southern Hemisphere when the Type 42 warship
The arrival of the Portuguese royal family
arrived in this isolated cluster of islands, there
was a seminal moment in Brazilian history. The
was plenty of ice and snow on display for the
country’s ports were opened to free trade with
ship’s company.
friendly countries and she began to take her place
There were plenty of icebergs too (one almost a mile
with the other nations of this world.
in length) which were deftly avoided by the bridge team.
Two centuries later, the Brazilians marked the occasion
Nottingham lowered her anchor off King Edward Point,
in company with their British allies. Kim Howells, the
close to the South Georgian ‘capital’ Grytviken, permitting
Foreign Office minister for Latin America, flew to Rio to join
most of the ship’s company to get ashore by boat.
the head of the Brazilian Navy for a celebration aboard HMS
Some sailors headed to the island’s museum, others went
Nottingham.
in search of penguins (admittedly, they’re not too hard to
It has, of course, not been all penguins, parties and dips
find as South Georgia is home to several large colonies).
in the ocean for the destroyer.
Suitably chilled, the sailors decided some austral warmth
Nottingham is at the tail end of a six-month deployment
was the order of the day and turned north towards South
to the South Atlantic, with principal responsibility for
America in company with her tanker RFA Gold Rover.
safeguarding the Falklands and environs.
She pumped 500 cubic tons of fuel into Nottingham’s
To keep the team on their toes – and to offer some moral
tanks during two replenishments at sea – enough to keep
support – a string of senior visitors climbed aboard to
the average family car running for seven million miles,
chat with the sailors: Commander-in-Chief Fleet Admiral
apparently.
Sir Mark Stanhope, the UK National Hydrographer Rear
And then it was on to warm climes. As temperatures
Admiral Ian Moncrieff and Commodore Portsmouth Flotilla
topped 30˚C, so Nottingham ground to a halt in the
Cdre Andrew Cameron.
middle of the ocean and the cry ‘Hands to bathe’
Such visits remind the ship’s company that they are not
echoed around the hallowed
forgotten about more than 8,000 miles from the UK, but they
were not the sole reminder of home aboard.
These days, most RN surface ships are blessed with
‘creature comforts’ few, if any, could have dreamed of
barely a decade ago.
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