NAVY NEWS, NOVEMBER 2010 THIS is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the
end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. In the glare of the weakening autumn sun, to a tumult of blaring horns and sirens, a thunder of applause, the clatter and clank of chains, and cheers of ‘hooray’, the most advanced shipbuilding programme the nation has ever undertaken drew to a close with the launch of the sixth and fi nal Type 45 destroyer, HMS Duncan. A crowd some 14,000 strong enjoyed Indian Summer- weather on the Clyde as the £1bn warship gathered pace
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‘terrorists’, and music from the Band of HM Royal Marines before, at 3.47pm precisely on October 11, the ship’s sponsor Marie Ibbotson, the wife of Deputy Commander-in-Chief Fleet performed the honours and Duncan was launched with fanfare, fi reworks and a ‘fl ock’ of colourful balloons rising into the brilliant blue Glaswegian sky. And thus the curtain begins to fall on a £6bn shipbuilding
programme over the past seven years which has seen shipwrights on the Solent, at Scotstoun and Govan build sections of ships hailed as the most advanced in the world.
And thus the curtain also falls on the traditional method of launching warships – at least for the foreseeable future. The only other British warships currently on the order books, carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, will be fl oated out of dry dock at Rosyth.
down the slipway of BAE Systems’ Govan yard before chains brought her to a halt. Guests were treated to air displays, commandos taking down
As for Duncan, named for the victor over the Dutch at Camperdown in 1797 – and launched on the anniversary of that triumph - she joins her older sisters Dragon and Defender already being fi tted out a short distance down the Clyde at Scotstoun. That will take around two years, plenty of time for her growing ship’s company to foster affi liations with Belfast and Dundee, the two cities with which Duncan will be bound throughout her 25-year-plus career. She is due to enter service in 2014 when she will take her place alongside the rest of the Type 45s shielding the Fleet from air attack. Picture: PO(Phot) Ian Arthur, RNR
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