12 NAVY NEWS, OCTOBER 2008
634
Refl ecting on a fi rst year
T
EMPUS fugit, as the
Romans said.
● The sea is millpond-like for HMS Clyde’s visit to
South Georgia earlier this year
Yes, believe it or not it’s 12
months since HMS Clyde
arrived in the Falklands to take
over guardianship of the islands’
waters.
And it’s amazing just how many
miles you can clock up patrolling
this southerly outpost of empire in
Norway .......................1940
a year – 27,000 nautical miles to
Mediterranean ...........1941
be precise.
Malta Convoys ...........1942
Much of that mileage has been
accrued getting to know the 770-
Battle Honours
plus islands in the Falklands
archipelago.
Class: River-class Offshore
Some of those she’s come to
Patrol Vessel (Helicopter)
know rather better than others;
Pennant number: P257
Mare Harbour is her home port,
Motto: Clwo (strength)
while Clyde has called in on
Builder: VT Shipbuilding,
Stanley, the islands’ capital, on
Portsmouth
seven occasions – eight if you count Launched: June 14, 2006
her visit as Navy News went to press Commissioned: January
to celebrate her first birthday. 30, 2007
But not all Clyde’s time is spent Displacement: 1,962 tons
in the Falklands.
Length: 81.5 metres
She’s paid two visits to South
Beam: 13.6 metres
Georgia (most recently in company
Draught: 3.8 metres
with HMS Liverpool) and has
Speed: 20+ knots
made one foray into the Pacific to
Range: 7,800 nautical
sail to Valparaiso in Chile via the
miles at 12kts
Patagonian Canals.
Complement: 36
That was the highlight of her
first year – but none of the present
Propulsion: 2 x Ruston
ship’s company remembers it as
12RK 270 engines,
they’ve just changed over. Regular
controllable pitch es
rotation of sailors keeps the ship’s
propellers, 280kW bow
company fresh (82 sailors have so
thruster, 3 x 250kW main
far been rotated through the ship
generators, 1 x emergency
since she arrived in the islands).
generator, VTC control and
Day-to-day business revolves
monitoring system,
around defence of the Falklands,
Armament: 1 x 30mm
working hand-in-hand with RAF Shipbuilding’s new yard (the 20mm) and an improved flight duration of her career, carrying From then until the 1930s, BMARC gun, 5 x GPMG,
and Army units in the islands, firm had built sections of Type deck. out maintenance work and refits most Clydes enjoyed solid if 2 x Mk44 Minigun
conducting exercises, and getting 45 destroyers, but not a whole One thing she shares with her in the southern hemisphere rather unspectacular careers. Sea boats: 1 x Pacific 22,
to know the locals in this scattered vessel). siblings is ownership: VT own than bringing Clyde all the way That changed with the seventh 1 x Rigid Raider Mk III
islands community. She’s similar, though not Clyde and lease her to the RN, home. Clyde, a large River-class
Helicopter: Flight deck
Clyde was the first complete identical to her older sisters Tyne, initially for five years. That also means that unlike submarine which crippled the
can accommodate Lynx,
warship built in Portsmouth in Mersey and Severn – notably a The aim is to keep the patrol her predecessors Dumbarton and German battleship Gneisenau,
Sea King or Merlin
more than three decades in VT beefed up main gun (30mm not vessel in the South Atlantic for the Leeds Castles, only one ship is mauled Italian shipping in the
Facts and figur
required to patrol the Falklands. Mediterranean, and finally struck
As befitting the great river – and against Japanese shipping in the within a decade as a Ton-class
centre of shipbuilding – for which latter stages of World War 2. She minesweeper. HMS Crichton,
CUTAWAY BOOK
she is named, Clyde has had many earned all three of the ship’s battle launched in 1953, was quickly
predecessors, eight to be precise. honours. retitled Clyde, a name she bore
The Clyde lineage begins in The boat was scrapped in 1946, until the vessel was broken up
1796 with a 38-gun fifth-rate. but the name was resurrected more than 30 years later.
HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No.54
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© CROWN COPYRIGHT/MOD
Reproduced with the permission of
Lt William Nathan Hewett VC
the Controller HMSO
AS IMPREGNABLE fortresses go, the Crimean and the slopes of Careenage Ravine were a
bastion of Sevastopol has proven to be rather charnel house of slaughtered infantry.
pregnable. Sevastopol would eventually fall to the invader
The Wehrmacht battered its way through the – but not until the following year.
fortifications to raise the swastika in the summer And the cannons which once ringed the
of 1942. Within two years, the Red Army had fortress and were now in British hands would
booted it out again. eventually be carried back to the mother isle
Pregnable it might be, but Sevastopol has where their metal would forge a new award for
always been a tough nut to crack, as the Allied gallantry.
armies learned in the autumn and winter of 1854- ‘Bully’ Hewett was only the fifth man to receive
55 during the first modern siege of the fortress the Victoria Cross from the monarch for which it
city. was named.
The Tsar’s armies were on a high. Just the day Such patronage did his naval career no harm;
before they had beaten off an assault by British in the subsequent three decades he rose to the
cavalry in a valley near Balaclava. rank of vice admiral, eventually commanding the
In due course, the Charge of the Light Brigade Channel Squadron.
would enter military and literary mythology, but With age and higher rank, he became no less
on October 26 1854 British forces were still prickly (he clashed regularly with a young ‘Jackie’
reeling from the loss of two out of three of their Fisher, an equally forthright figure, aboard HMS
finest cavalry. Ocean) but he remained highly-regarded by
In the wake of their victory, the Russian his contemporaries as
armies swept forward, determined to dislodge a first-rate leader.
the invader and throw him into the Black Sea. He died in 1888
Four thousand Russians swarmed forward, at Haslar and was
intent upon smashing the British right flank at buried with full
Sevastopol, including a battery manned by a honours in a
naval brigade. lavish ceremony
£9.99
At the head of the battery stood a prickly at Highland
junior naval officer, 20-year-old Lt William Road
Nathan Wrighte Hewett – known, perhaps Cemetery in
UK
not affectionately, as ‘Bully’ – whose fiery Southsea.
temperament was matched by his doggedness.
In the heat of battle, commands and orders
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became muddled – a recurring theme in the
Crimean War.
With the Russians bearing down on his battery,
Hewett received orders to spike his gun and fall
Eighteen stunning cutaway drawings of Royal Navy ships, submarines and aircraft, back with his men.
past and present, by internationally renowned artist Mike Badrocke.
“Retire?” he snarled. “Retire be damned!
Fire!”
Originally published in Navy News, the newspaper of the Royal Navy.
Under ferocious Russian rifle fire, he and his
men slewed the gun around, blew the parapet
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away and then fired grapeshot into the advancing
Russian ranks at point-blank range.
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The enemy attack faltered. The Russians fell
back, but Hewett showed them no mercy. He
The Business Manager, Navy News, Portsmouth PO1 3HH
replaced grapeshot with solid 68lb rounds and
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continued to pour fire on his foe.
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And so, the Russian steamroller was repulsed
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0012_NN_Oct.indd 112_NN_Oct.indd 1 118/9/08 17:37:028/9/08 17:37:02
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