On the bright side, the Imam and his followers won't have a navy to use when they finish their takeover of Britain

from trafalgar to laughingstock, 221 years

HMS Iron Duke has been withdrawn from active service, leaving the Royal Navy with just five operational Type 23 frigates, NavyLookout has revealed.

The naval analysis website broke the story today in a detailed piece well worth reading in full. The withdrawal comes less than three years after a £103 million refit that by any measure was extraordinary in its scope. The work took 49 months and more than 1.7 million man-hours, and was described as the most complex ever carried out on a Type 23.

Iron Duke had been laid up in Portsmouth since 2017 and arrived at Devonport in such poor condition that the structural work on her hull was almost twice what had been needed on any previous ship in the class.