HMS Cumberland (F85)

HMS Cumberland and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
History
United Kingdom
Name:	HMS Cumberland
Operator:	Royal Navy
Builder:	Yarrow Shipbuilders
Laid down:	12 October 1984
Launched:	21 June 1986
Commissioned:	10 June 1989
Decommissioned:	23 June 2011
Homeport:	HMNB Devonport, Plymouth
Identification:	Pennant number: F85 International callsign: GAAP
Motto:	Latin Justitia Tenax ("Tenacious of Justice")
Nickname(s):	The Fighting Sausage (after the Cumberland sausage)
Fate:	Sold for scrap November 2013
Badge:
General characteristics
Class and type:	Type 22 frigate
Displacement:	5,300 tons
Length:	148.1 m (486 ft 9 in)
Beam:	14.8 m (48 ft 6 in)
Draught:	6.4 m (21 ft)
Propulsion:	2 × Rolls-Royce Marine Spey gas turbines (high speed) 2 × Rolls-Royce Tyne gas turbines (cruising)
Speed:	18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) (cruise) 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) (max)
Complement:	250 (max. 301)
Armament:	2 × Sea Wolf anti air system (Total of 72 Sea Wolf missiles) 2 × Quad Harpoon missile launchers (total of 8 Harpoons) 2 × triple Magazine launched anti-submarine torpedo tubes (total of 36 torpedoes) 1 × 4.5-inch (114 mm) Mk.8 gun 2 × 20 mm GAM-BO1 guns 1 × Goalkeeper CIWS NATO Seagnat Decoy Launchers
Aircraft carried:	2 x Lynx Mk.8 helicopters (but only 1 Lynx in peacetime). Armed with 4 × Sea Skua anti-shipping missiles 2 × Sting Ray anti-submarine torpedoes 2 × Mk 11 depth charges 2 × Machine guns

HMS Cumberland was a Batch 3 Type 22 frigate of the British Royal Navy. She was launched in 1986 and commissioned on 10 June 1989. The frigate was on station during the First Gulf War and was part of the Devonport Flotilla based at Devonport Dockyard. Cumberland was decommissioned on 23 June 2011.

On commissioning she became part of the 8th Frigate Squadron. Her first commanding officer was Captain Mike Gregory. Captain Gregory, a submariner, was previously awarded the OBE for the longest continuously submerged patrol in Royal Navy history.

The ship's first two deployments were to the US and Canada, in 1989 and 1990 respectively. The first in 1989 called at both Fort Lauderdale and Baltimore where the ship became the focus of an anti-nuclear protest over suspicions that the ship carried nuclear weapons. In 1990, she again crossed the Atlantic to visit New York, before sailing North to the St Lawrence Seaway with a brief stop in Montreal followed by a 10-day visit to Toronto. This was followed by an unscheduled 24-hour stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia to repair some ship equipment damaged in bad weather, and then a visit to St Johns, Newfoundland.

She spent the winter of 1990–91 as the Royal Navy surface vessel patrolling the Falkland Islands. She sailed to South Georgia just before Christmas arriving at Grytviken on 22 December. She sailed along the coast of South Georgia and returned to Grytviken on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day she hosted the soldiers of the South Georgia garrison aboard for Christmas Day lunch of venison. The stag had been shot the day before by a sniper from the garrison; part of the garrison's duties being to control the deer population on the Island. While in South Georgia the ship manoeuvred into Cumberland Bay where a glacier sweeps into the sea. A photograph of the ship with the glacier as a back-drop was taken from the ship's Lynx helicopter. Ice was collected from the glacier and kept in the ship's freezers for use at cocktail parties during the return leg of her patrol.

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