IT is a point to ponder that the first of the new Type 26 frigates being built for the Royal Navy on the Clyde is to be called HMS Glasgow, while this new class of frigates is to be called the City Class.
Normally whenever a new type of ship joins the Navy, tradition generally has it that the Class of ship takes its name from the first of the type to be launched, so that Type 22 frigates were named the Broadsword Class and Type 42 destroyers were called Sheffield Class after the first ships of those types. The tradition isn’t regimented – the County Class missile guided destroyers, for example, did not take the name of HMS Devonshire – but there were still a few raised eyebrows when the Ministry of Defence said yesterday that the Type 26 frigates will be called the City Class.
The reason for denying the tradition is obvious. When Scotland becomes independent it might be hugely embarrassing for the MoD to have a whole class of frigates that will last into the 2060s named after Scotland’s largest city.
The first HMS Glasgow was originally called the Royal Mary, one of only three warships in the Royal Scots Navy that was founded in the late 17th century.
At the 1707 Act of Union, the three vessels – the Royal Mary, Royal William and Dumbarton Castle – joined the English Royal Navy to become the British Royal Navy.
As there already was a ship of that name, the Royal Mary was re-named HMS Glasgow, the first of eight ships to bear that name and she served until 1719 when she was sold off.
The second HMS Glasgow was launched in 1745, and her main action at sea was helping to prevent the French fleet from supporting Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobite uprising. She was sold off in 1756. The third HMS Glasgow won battle honours at Lagos and Havana and famously took on seven ships of the US Continental Navy on its maiden voyage in 1776 – Glasgow took them all on, badly damaged two and outran the rest. She sank in Montego Bay in Jamaica in 1779 after a drunken steward accidentally set her on fire.
The fourth ship of the name won battle honours at Algiers in 1816 and Navarino in 1827, while the fifth HMS Glasgow was the first to have a steam engine though she was also fully-sailed.
The sixth HMS Glasgow, a light cruiser, was the first to be built on the Clyde by Fairfields of Govan. She was very active in the First World War, sinking German ships in the South Atlantic where she famously picked up an unusual mascot – Tirpitz the pig who was rescued after the German light cruiser Dresden was scuttled.
HMS Glasgow number seven was a Greenock-built cruiser that saw extensive action in the Second World War, and the eighth HMS Glasgow was a Type 42 destroyer launched on the Tyne in 1976. She saw service in the Falklands War when an Argentine bomb damaged her engine room but failed to explode.
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