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BATTLE HONOURS

The first ship to carry the name DIOMEDE, (at that time and still pronounced DIO-MEAD) was launched at Bristol on 18^th October , 1781. She was a 5^th Rate Man O’ War of 887 tons and carried 44 guns. Just one year after being launched she saw action with HMS QUEBEC (50) off the coast of America and captured the American ship S. CAROLINA (40). She also saw action in 1794 when with HMS CENTURIAN (50) an indecisive engagement was fought with two frigates and two corvettes of the French Navy. From 1974 to 1795 she was employed in operations against the Dutch in the East Indies, but on 2^nd August, 1795 she was wrecked off Trincomalee, having been deployed to begin fresh operations against Ceylon; fortunately all the crew were saved.

The second DIOMEDE was launched at Deptford on 17^th January, 1798. This was a bigger model being a 4^th Rate of 1,123 tons and 50 guns. In the light of present day conditions it is interesting to compare these statistics from 1798:

What a size the Gunners Party must have been. They should have solved the Maintainer/Operator problem! Or is this still a problem!

It was this ship which gained our Battle Honour when in Sir Home POPEHAM, S Squadron at the capture of the Cape of Good Hope from 6^th to 10^th January, 1806.

Between June and October that same year, still with the Squadron, the ship saw action in the River Plate; at the capture of Buenos Aires and at the attack on Montevideo. (Still pronounced Monte - video, was this the reason for the visit in 1972) She then served world wide; on the Jersey Station, as flagship, in 1808, from 1809 to 1811 on the East Indies Station and finally from 1813 to 1815 on the North America Station.

It was here, in December 1814, that the crew earned the New Orleans Campaign Medal for their boat operations on Lake Borgne. Finally, in August 1815, at the ripe old age of 17¹/₂ she was taken to pieces at Sheerness.

The third DIOMEDE was laid down by Messrs. Vickers and launched on 29^th April 1919. She was completed on 24^th April 1922 and commissioned on 2^nd October the same year. Displacing 4,850 tons, with a top speed of 29 knots and with main armament of six 6 - inch guns and twelve torpedo tubes she joined the 5^th Light Cruiser Squadron and served the next three years on the China Station.

In October 1925 the ship re-commissioned at Portsmouth for the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, in which she served until 1936. Between 1936 and the outbreak of the Second World War she was alternately in the Reserve Fleets Chatham, Nore and Devonport. She the joined the 7^th Cruiser Squadron with the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow and spent the first five months of the war patrolling between Iceland and the Faeroes to intercept enemy blockade runners and surface raiders. From February 1940 to June 1942 DIOMEDE was deployed three times to the Pacific, serving and refitting in the Caribbean between each deployment.

She then returned to Rosyth for an extensive refit and modernisation, during which the torpedo tubes were removed and classrooms built in their place. The ship thus began a new career in August 1943 as part of the Training Group (Rosyth), day running in the Firth of Forth Areas for CW candidates’ Sea Training. She remained in this role until the end of the war and was finally scrapped at Dalmuir in May 1946.

DIOMEDE, a Leander Class Frigate, was launched by Lady Mills on 15^th April, 1969, was completed by Messrs. YARROWS (Shipbuilders) Ltd at Scotstoun, Glasgow, on 1^st April, 1971.

After acceptance trials, the ship was handed over to the Royal Navy and commissioned on 21^st May 1971. She later joined the 3rd Frigate Squadron Captain J D E Fieldhouse the Captain and I/C of the Squadron.

HMS Diomede was built at the Yarrows Shipbuilders yard in Glasgow

Sir Alfred Yarrow (1842-1932) established a small marine works on the Isle of Dogs in 1866 where he built some 350 steam launches before producing, in 1876, their first torpedo boat for the Argentinean Navy, Given the contract for the RN’s first torpedo boat destroyers, the first of these, the Havock, was launched in 1893. In 1907 the works were transferred to the Clyde. Although Lord Yarrow retired before WW1, he collaborated with Lord Fisher in developing the methods for the rapid construction of destroyers and river gunboats.