Yet another Royal Navy warship will suffer the same apparently inevitable ending as seen by dozens of its predecessors, with the announcement that former Type 82 destroyer HMS Bristol will be towed more than 3,000 nautical miles for disposal in a Turkish shipyard.
HMS Bristol was decommissioned in October 2020 after almost 48 years of active service, having been first commissioned into service in 1973. The vessel was more recently used as a harbour training ship at HMNB Portsmouth from 2011 until its dismissal.
According to an 11 June statement by the UK’s Defence Equipment & Support, itself an arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the sale of HMS Bristol had been agreed, with the vessel to be taken to a “specialist recycling facility” within an EU-approved yard in Turkey.
The announcement was ironically made on the same day as UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves spoke as turning the UK into a “defence industrial powerhouse” following the publication of the government’s spending review.
Naval Technology can also reveal that the winning yard in question is Leyal Ship Recycling, and that no UK sites bid for the recycling contract for HMS Bristol.
The departure of HMS Bristol also leaves the open question as to what vessel will be able to take its place as the Royal Navy’s harbour training ship, amid suggestions of using recently axed Type 23 frigates. A decision is still thought to be years away.
The announcement of HMS Bristol follows the sale for recycling of former Type 23 frigate HMS Monmouth in April, also to Turkey. Then as now, no UK yard bid for the recycling contract.
A subsequent investigation carried out by Naval Technology showed the scale of Turkey’s dominance in recycling former Royal Navy warships, with Type 22 frigate HMS Cornwall the last to be broken down in the UK, more than a decade ago.
Should Reeves’ ambition for the UK be realised, it will apparently be a defence industrial powerhouse either unable or unwilling to recycle its own surface warships.
Can UK shipyards recycle warships?
According to a 2021 note published by the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, since 1 January 2021, it has been a requirement for UK ships to be recycled at a facility which is on the UK List of approved ship recycling facilities.
Official UK ship recycling regulations require the publication and maintenance of a list of official ship recycling facilities which are located in the UK and authorised “in accordance with retained UK regulation”.
A wider non-UK list is also maintained, including sites at both European Union (EU) and non-EU countries.
As of December 2022, the UK List included the following UK-based ship recycling companies: Kishin Port (Exp April 2026); Swansea Drydocks (exp July 2025); Inchgreen Dry Dock (exp October 2026); Harland & Wolff (exp June 2025); Dale Marine Services (exp November 2022); and Able UK (exp October 2025).
One shipyard source at the time said that the MoD had previously said it would look to contract the majority of UK warship recycling to UK sites, but the reality was that this “never happens”.
