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Dit is een taal, vierhonderd jaar oud, en een mooi vaarwel ...............

Wat hier ontbreekt is het echt vieze woord : the Breaker .

Last voyage for HMS Glasgow

25.10.04 12:27
One of the Navy’s veteran warships made a poignant final entrance to Portsmouth Harbour on Friday as preparations are made to decommission her after a career spanning a quarter of a century.
Type 42 destroyer HMS Glasgow sailed in on Trafalgar Day, exercising the option to salute the Flag of the Second Sea Lord with a 15-gun salute.
She was wearing the traditional long paying-off pennant, and also the flag of St Lucia, an honour granted to her after she steamed to the assistance of the Caribbean island after a hurricane had swept through with winds of 170 mph.
Over the course of five days, (-) Glasgow’s sailors helped more than 300 casualties, using the ship’s Lynx helicopters to evacuate the most severe cases to (-) hospital.
Her Commanding Officer, Cdr Michael Wainhouse, said: “As a fighting ship, HMS Glasgow’s record is unsurpassed in today’s Royal Navy, and the firing of a salute is highly appropriate on the last big day of her life.
“Among her achievements, she is one of the few warships still in service to have fought in the Falklands War, where she won a Battle Honour; she assisted the United Nations to bring peace to the beleaguered islanders of East Timor in 1999; and on her very first deployment in 1980 went to the aid of St Lucia.”
The service she rendered the island prompted the then Prime Minister of St Lucia the unique right on special occasions to wear the St Lucia flag.
(-) Glasgow was built at the Swan Hunter yard at Wallsend-on-Tyne and commissioned into the Royal Navy in May 1979, the fifth of 14 Type 42 air defence destroyers.
Six of these were Batch 1 ships, but with Glasgow’s passing only two survive – HM ships Newcastle and Cardiff. Of the other three, HMS Birmingham has already paid off, and HM ships Sheffield and Coventry were sunk in the Falklands War.
HMS Glasgow was the first Royal Navy ship to enter the Falklands Island exclusion zone on May 1, 1982, and 12 days later she was providing air defence and naval gunfire support when she and Type 22 frigate HMS Brilliant were attacked by Argentine aircraft.
Three planes were shot down, but one dropped a bomb which went into Glasgow’s hull, passing over the machinery in the after engine room and out of the other side of the hull without exploding – leaving a 3ft hole on each side.
Two sailors had a narrow escape, but no one was seriously hurt, and with wood shoring stuffed into the holes, the ship continued her work until she was relieved.
Glasgow had strong links with the Russian Navy. Then years ago, in the Gulf, she conducted the first jackstay transfer between a British and a Russian warship, and the following year she was the guardship for the Royal Yacht on the Queen’s visit to Russia.
In 1996 she helped rescue a submariner taken seriously ill on board a Russian nuclear submarine off the north-west of Scotland, earning a letter of thanks from the Russian government.
She also maintained strong ties with the city of Glasgow, and her final official visit was to the Clyde for a series of farewells.
Cdr Wainhouse said: “How apt it was that our last port visit as a serving warship should have been to Glasgow.
“We are extremely proud of the links we have developed with our affiliated city and which we have underlined this week.
“I am sure that the Royal Navy will continue to maintain strong links with the city and I hope Glasgow will continue to support the Royal Navy.
“The two have very close connections built over many generations.”