ALMIRANTE CONDELL was laid down as HMS MARLBOROUGH ( Sierra Leone 2001 - SG 3858
) on 22 October 1987 and launched on 21 January 1989. Commissioned into the
Royal Navy on 14 June 1991.
HMS MARLBOROUGH was the first naval ship on the scene to assist the stricken USS
Cole after she was attacked in Aden, Yemen in October 2000. MARLBOROUGH, under
the command of Captain Anthony Rix, RN, was on passage to the UK after a
six-month deployment in the Gulf and had a full medical detachment on board;
when her offer of assistance was accepted she immediately diverted to Aden.
HMS MARLBOROUGH played a key role in the second Gulf War, under the command of
Captain Mark Anderson, RN.
In July 2004, it was announced that HMS MARLBOROUGH would be one of three Type
23 ships to be decommissioned by the end of 2006.
In October 2004 HMS MARLBOROUGH again came to the aid of a stricken ally when
she was dispatched to assist HMCS Chicoutimi, adrift off the northwest Irish
coast and arrived at the scene where RFA Wave Knight and HMS MARLBOROUGH's
sister-ship HMS MONTROSE were present. Montrose had been the first ship to make
contact with the boat along. Other ships were also dispatched, including RFA
Argus.
HMS MARLBOROUGH was the only non-US warship to have a US Navy officer
permanently assigned. Reciprocally, a Royal Navy officer is permanently assigned
to the destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill.
The 2003 defence cuts committed HMS MARLBOROUGH to pay off by March 2006. In
June 2005, it was announced that HMS MARLBOROUGH would be sold to the Chilean
Navy. The Chilean Navy officially welcomed their new ALMIRANTE CONDELL into the
fleet at a Commissioning Ceremony on Wednesday, 28 May, 2008. The vessel was the
last of three former Royal Navy Type-23 frigates to be handed over to Chile,
under a £134 million pound sales agreement arranged by the MOD's Disposal
Services Authority and signed in September 2005.
Builder: Swan Hunter – Wallsend on Tyne, England.
Decommissioned: 8 July 2005
Displacement: 4,900 tonnes
Length: 133 m (463 ft 3 in)
Beam: 16.1 m (52 ft 10 in)
Draught: 7.3 m (23 ft 11 in)
Propulsion: CODLAG (Combined Diesel-electric And Gas)
2 × Rolls-Royce Spey boost gas-turbines
4 × Paxman Valenta diesel engines
2 × GEC electric motors
Speed: 28 knots (52 km/h)
15 knots (28 km/h) on diesel-electric
Range: 7,800 nautical miles (14,400 km) at 15 knots (28 km/h)
Complement: 185
Armament: 2 × ASuW Harpoon quad launchers
Vertical launch system Sea Wolf missiles
1 × BAE 4.5 inch (110 mm) Mk 8 gun
2 × Oerlikon 30 mm guns
4 × Sting Ray torpedo tubes
Seagnat and DFL3 decoy launchers
Aircraft carried: 1 × Lynx HMA8.
2011 In service.
Chile 2010 sg?, scott?
Sources: Wikipedia. Combat Fleets of the World 2005 – 2006.
Peter Crichton