HMS Monmouth led a distinctive career at sea and is now being put up for sale by the MOD. — HMS Monmouth led a distinctive career at sea and is now being put up for sale by the MOD

Sea vessels

Royal Navy warships to be sold for spare parts after decades of service

HMS Monmouth and HMS Montrose have been added to the list of former Royal Navy warships that are up for sale so they can be scrapped and salvaged for spare parts.

It marks the final end to a service at sea and the many memories they held for the ships' companies who served aboard them over the years.

The Defence Equipment Sales Authority is inviting interested parties to buy the remains of the two Type 23 frigates along with HMS Bristol and HMS Walney for the purpose of recycling only.

All four vessels are being moored at His Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth, and will be sold from there. Viewings for the warships are expected to take place later this year.

The sale of the two Type 23 frigates marks the final chapter in their respective 30-year careers.

During her time at sea, HMS Montrose clocked up more than 400,000 miles while on duty, and during her deployments in the Gulf and Indian Ocean she became noted for her success fighting drug-smuggling operations.

Over a four-year period she made 10 drug busts, seizing 16 tonnes of illegal narcotics, seized illegal shipments of missiles and cruise missile engines, and helped safely guide more than 100 merchant vessels through potentially dangerous maritime choke points.

HMS Monmouth, meanwhile, travelled in excess of half a million miles and visited over 200 ports.

She was also one of the last Royal Navy ships to sail into Brisbane in Australia in 1995. Another British naval ship would not return for another 30 years. She was decommissioned in the summer of 2021.

HMS Montrose has been advertised as being up for sale by MOD. — HMS Montrose is one of the four ships being sold by the MOD

Some pieces of the naval ships have been priced as low as £1,000, others as high as £1.5m. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) will not pay for the recycling of the ships once they have been sold.

HMS Bristol was the only Type 82 destroyer ever built for the Royal Navy and saw action in the Falklands in 1982 before she was decommissioned in 1991 after 20 years of service.

Minehunter HMS Walney was advertised by the MOD as being up for sale in March 2021 with a guide price of £30,000, having been decommissioned in 2010.