Goodbye to HMS Daring

HMS Daring, the first of the new Type 45 Destroyers – the Daring class, taking its name from the first of the type – left the Clyde this evening for the last time. As we publish this we can see her, via an online ship tracking service, on a steady 6.5 knot passage south, just off Brodick in Arran with a cargo ship, the Herm, coming past on her starboard side and the Clansman coming out of Brodick headed for Ardrossan.

For Argyll has watched the Daring go through her final sea trials in the Clyde waterway, quite literally putting the ship through her paces for pretty well 24 hours of every day of the week after week. We’ve been to the launch of her third sister, HMS Dragon. (In between the two are HMS Dauntless, currently on her own first sea trials and HMS Diamond.) And we’ve seen, in the BVT yard, parts of the final two destroyers in the class – Defender (to launch in October this year) and Duncan. It’s going to feel odd without the Daring’s familiar shape on our computer screens.

But she’s on her way now to her base at Portsmouth where she will undergo further trials. Having said that she’s not going directly there. She’s doing further trials on passage and may remain in the Clyde waterway for part of that work.

Her Commanding Officer, Captain Paul Bennett OBE RN, calls her ‘the best air defence destroyer in the world’. He says, of Daring’s immediate future: ‘My task now is to make sure the ship’s weapons systems work to the full extent of their capability and that will take about 11 months. It seems a long time, but it indicates just how complex these weapons will be’.

So Bon Voyage, Daring. We’ll be looking out for you.

The photograph above is used under Wikipedia Commons licence and shows HMS Daring embarking on sea trials.