Royal Navy's oldest front-line warship HMS Ledbury celebrates 39th birthday in the Gulf

Only Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory is an older active warship to fly the White Ensign than Portsmouth-based minehunter HMS Ledbury.

The glass-hulled ship and her 50-strong crew is playing a critical role in keeping vital sea lanes in the Middle East open and free of mines.

Ledbury was ordered on the last day of March 1977 – when Abba filled the dancefloor with Knowing Me, Knowing You – and laid down that October at Vosper Thornycroft’s yard in Woolston, Southampton.

The £65m spent on the ship at the time – more than £360m today – made Ledbury the most expensive vessel in the fleet – metre-by-metre.

It took Vosper more than two years to build her, with Ledbury eventually being launched in December 1979.

When the ship entered service she could sweep mines, the traditional method of eliminating the threat, using mechanical, magnetic and acoustic to render mines harmless.

And she could hunt them down individually, using explosive charges placed by divers or submersibles to detonate the devices safely.

As mines become more advanced, the navy updated the old technique of minesweeping – and with it the kit inside Ledbury.

She now uses sonar to hunt out deadly underwater explosives, unmanned submersibles like SeaFox to pinpoint it and destroy them – or elite divers to carry out the same task.

Her latest captain, Lieutenant Commander Matt Ellicott said his ship was ‘39 years young’ and still ‘very much at the tip of the sword of freedom, delivering on operations, regardless of conditions or climate’.

‘Her excellent condition and enduring readiness is testament to crews past and present and the supporting engineering organisation in maintaining her material state,’ he said.

The ship served in both Gulf wars – when the danger of mines has never been greater in recent decades – and has been stationed in Bahrain as part of a UK minehunting flotilla since 2017.

She’s due to hand over duties shortly to her sister ship HMS Chiddingfold, which sailed from Portsmouth yesterday, and begin the 6,000-mile journey back to the UK.

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