NAVY NEWS, JANUARY 1998 Options
No 506
Ships of the Roval Naw
Boxer takes a Wbreather ITH a ship's motto of Praemonitus praemunitus - "Forewarned is Forearmed" - HMS Boxer is perhaps the ideal frigate to have on your side in a crisis.
The Type 22 frigate, based at Devonport, was the first of the "stretched" Batch 2s in a programme originally designed to replace the highly-successful antisubmarine I .candor class. Powered by gas turbines including the maritime version of Concorde's engines - she can be made ready for sea at short notice. And her range of weapons extended by her Lynx helicopter, which can carry Sea Skua missiles, guns or torpedoes - allow the ship to pack a heavy punch. Boxer returned to Devon in the summer after a successful and varied deployment as WIGS, the West Indies Guard Ship - one of the Royal Navy's longest-standing commitments. During her time away, Boxer steamed 28,000 miles and undertook an intensive schedule of antidrugs patrols, working closely with the US Navy, Caribbean islands' Coast Guards and in particular the US Coast Guard, who had a team embarked in the frigate for much of the seven-month deployment. The ship, which has been in service for 14 years, also carried out the more traditional duties of the
Crimea
1855
Sicily.
1943
WIGS, promoting the UK's interests in the area on a political and diplomatic level. Throughout the deployment, Boxer stood by to lend assistance to the population of Montserrat members of the ship's company spent three days with island officials touring emergency facilities. On returning to her home port, the ship - part of the First Frigate Squadron - entered a period of DED (docking and essential defects). She is due to leave dockyard hands early in the spring, after which the "Billy B" will embark on an intensive period of sea trials, which should include a visit to a continental port. While far from a refit - no major additions are being made to armaments or machinery - the work package will cost £10 million. And while the ship is out of circulation, her ship's company have been using their time effectively, attending professional and leadership courses, conducting ship husbandry, studying for further advancement and catching up on sea leave, as well as managing the ship through the upkeep period. After her sea training and shakedown, Boxer will undertake basic operational sea training (BOST) prior to summer leave, and will then be ready for her next operational commitment by late summer.
Salerno Anzio...
1943 ...1944
Facts and figures Class: Type 22 Batch 2 frigate Pennant number: F92 Builder: Yarrows, Glasgow Launched: June 17, 1981 Commissioned: January 14, 1984 Displacement: 4,800 tonnes Length: 143 metres Beam: 14.8 metres Draught: 6.4 metres Ship's company: 270 (30 officers), accommodation for 296 Machinery: COGOG; 2 Rolls-Royce Olympus TM3B gas turbines; 2 Rolls-Royce Tyne RM1C gas turbines; 2 shafts Speed: 30 knots; 18 on Tynes Range: 4,500 miles at 18 knots on Tynes Armaments: 2 twin Exocet surface-to-surface missile systems; 2 Seawolf surfaceto-air missile systems; 2 twin 30mm close-range guns; 2 20mm close-range guns; 2 triple torpedo launcher tubes Sensors: Surveillance and navigational radars; IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) and ECM (Electronic Countermeasures) Combat Data System: Ferranti Computer Assisted Command System (CACS) Affiliations: 1st Battalion Irish Guards; 10 Squadron RAF; Trafford; USS Boxer; Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers; Royal Observer Corps Seaborne Association; Bournemouth School CCF; TS Wrekin; TS Boxer; TS Victorious; Stockdales School for the Handicapped.
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• Squaring up - Type 22 frigate HMS Boxer
Featherweights were ready to scrap • 1 ight Boxers have graced the history of the was launched at Deptford in 1868, this time of 465 tons. She was involved in the punitive expedition up the pH Royal Navy in only 201 years, but the first six J—/were featherweights compared to the pre- Niger in 1877, and carried out patrols off the West African coast in 1879 before she was sold in 1886. sent frigate and her predecessor. The sixth Boxer, a 280-ton destroyer built by The first, a 12-gun 161-ton gunboat, was launched at Rotherhithe in 1797 and assisted in an attack on four French frigates at Dunkirk. She was sold in 1809. In 1812 her successor, another 12-gun vessel, was launched at Redbridge, but that brig sloop had a short life and ignoble end - in September 1813 she was captured by the USS Enterprise off Maine, losing 21 of her ship's company, including her commanding officer. The next two Boxers were paddle ships. The first was a 159-ton steam paddle packet, formerly GPO vessel Ivanhoe, which transferred to the Admiralty in 1837 and spent three years surveying before being sold in 1841. A 301-ton Boxer laid down in Chatham in 1846 as a paddle gunboat was cancelled in build in 1847. Boxer number four was a Dapper-class steam gunboat from Northfleet. She saw action in the Crimea in the year of her launch, 1855, winning Boxer's first Battle Honour. She was broken up in 1865, and a four-gun successor
Thorneycroft in 1894, spent World War I on patrol duties in the English Channel, but in February 1918 she was involved in a collision with the SS St Patrick and sank. The heavyweight among the Boxers was the seventh, a landing ship of 4,250 tons which was launched by Harland and Wolff in December 1942. She fulfilled several roles, winning Battle Honours as a tank landing ship at Sicily in July 1943 and Anzio in January 1944, before serving as a fighter-direction ship in 1945, and switching to a radar training ship in 1947. She was scrapped in 1958. • Boxer's dome - page 6. To order black and white postcards of the 'Ships of the Royal Navy' series please contact Sarah Geary on 01705 826040
• every student is assigned a personal tutor who is committed to that student's success, is familiar with the challenges involved in studying whilst serving in the RN, and will provide tuition for as long as is necessary to achieve the objective - at no extra cost! • apply using form FEdl94 available from RN Education Centres. Information and impartial guidance freely available from The Marine Society College of the Sea
e Marine Society College of the Sea 202 Lambeth Road London SE1 7JW tel 0171 261 9535 fax 0171 401 2537 Internet <http://www.marine-society.org.uk> Patron HM The Queen
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