The Middle East is in turmoil, yet the Royal Navy is abandoning it for the first time in generations

Once HMS Lancaster embarks for Britain, no major Royal Navy warship will be based in the Middle East for the first time in 45 years

Five plumes of white spray shot into the air with all the force of volcanic eruptions and the red cargo ship sank helplessly beneath the waves.

This was how explosive charges laid by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sent a freighter called Magic Seas to the bottom of the Red Sea, as shown in chilling footage released by the Iranian-backed group. Three days later, on July 9, the Houthis sank another passing vessel, Eternity C, with a fusillade of rocket-propelled grenades.

These were only the latest attacks in a campaign against commercial shipping that escalated after the onset of the war in Gaza and has now forced a 60 per cent reduction in transits through the Red Sea.

The Royal Navy used to keep ships on station to deter exactly this kind of assault on vital trade routes and the principle of free navigation.

Yet Britain is about to withdraw its last frigate from the Middle East, leaving the region without a major Royal Navy warship for the first time in 45 years and possibly since the mid-19th century.

HMS Lancaster, a type 23 frigate, will soon leave the Navy’s base in Bahrain and steam home to be scrapped by the end of the year. Since 2022 she has patrolled some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, intercepting drugs that might otherwise have reached British streets, hunting for arms smuggled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and protecting the flow of trade on which British prosperity depends.

In May, Lancaster seized heroin, hashish and amphetamines worth £30 million from a dhow in the Arabian Sea; in March, her boarding party confiscated another stash worth £5.4 million. In 2022 her sister ship, HMS Montrose, twice intercepted vessels carrying Iranian missiles to the Houthis.

But soon there will be no British warship to perform any of these tasks. The job of countering the weapons and narcotics smugglers, and the Iranian threat, will be left to the navies of the United States and other allies.

“You take the ship away and you take all of that swathe of activity away,” says Tom Sharpe, a former Royal Navy officer who served for 27 years. “You lose it all.”

HMS Lancaster was the fourth of the Type 23 frigates to be built and joined the Fleet in 1992 - Will Haigh/Royal Navy

Any crisis in the Gulf would be a crisis for Britain

No one would argue that the Middle East has suddenly become less important for Britain. On the contrary, more than 300,000 Britons live in the Gulf states – more than ever before – mostly in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

British exports to the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (which also includes Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman), totalled £36.7 billion last year, making these countries the UK’s third biggest global market after the EU and the US.

British interests in the region are so strong, in fact, that diplomats privately acknowledge that any crisis in the Gulf would be a crisis for Britain from day one. Keeping a frigate or destroyer permanently deployed was supposed to be the UK’s contribution to preventing any such emergency.

Hence the Royal Navy re-established a base in Bahrain in 2018, paid for by that country’s government. HMS Montrose, a type 23 frigate, arrived there in 2019 and the value of her presence became clear after Iran captured a British-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero, and threatened all UK shipping.

Montrose responded by escorting British vessels back and forth through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital choke point at the entrance to the Gulf, ensuring that no more fell prey to Iran’s campaign.

Back then, Britain also kept a squadron of four minehunters in Bahrain, designed to foil any Iranian effort to mine the Strait of Hormuz. In addition there was a 16,000-ton supply ship, RFA Lyme Bay. This force meant that Britain contributed more to regional security than any other Western country apart from the United States.

In 2022, HMS Lancaster succeeded Montrose as the “forward deployed” frigate in Bahrain, but Lyme Bay returned to Britain for a refit and was not replaced. Two of the minehunters were later withdrawn. Another was damaged in a collision.

‘Removing your warship removes your voice at the top table’

When Lancaster leaves, Britain’s only operational warship in the Middle East will be a lone minehunter, HMS Middleton. Just four years ago, there were six British ships based in Bahrain; soon there will be one.

That drawdown could have far-reaching diplomatic as well as operational consequences. Bahrain is the base of the US Fifth Fleet and of the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), a naval partnership between 46 nations dedicated to protecting 3.2 million square miles of ocean.

HMS Lancaster patrolling the Arabian Sea – a stretch of water rich in drug smugglers - Ministry of Defence

The commander of the CMF is the US Admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet and the deputy commander has always been a Royal Navy officer, reflecting the size of Britain’s contribution.

But what if that presence amounts to one minehunter? Sharpe predicts that questions will be asked about Britain’s position. “The Brits have always had the deputy role and one of the reasons why we’ve always had it, despite the French being after it for years, is that we’ve always had ships there,” he says.

Removing your only big warship means “you remove your diplomacy, you remove intelligence-gathering, you remove deterrence and you remove your voice at the top table,” adds Sharpe, who commanded HMS St Albans, another type 23 frigate, in the Gulf in 2011-12.

At a time when Donald Trump’s Administration is demanding that allies do more for their own security, Britain’s near total withdrawal of naval forces from the Gulf could raise tensions with the US.

There may also be consequences for Britain’s relationship with Bahrain. King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa agreed to pay for the construction of the Navy’s facility on the basis that a frigate or destroyer would always be present, reflecting Britain’s commitment to the security of his country.

‘A huge backward step in our global posture’ 

The officer who was instrumental in securing that agreement and re-establishing the British presence was General Sir Simon Mayall, then the Senior Middle East Advisor in the Ministry of Defence. The square in the middle of the British facility in Mina Salman port is named Mayall Square in his honour.

Sir Simon, now retired, is dismayed by what he calls the “strategic failure” of Lancaster’s impending departure.

“The establishment of the Naval Support Facility in Bahrain was based on the premise that the Royal Navy would now be able to sustain a permanent presence in the wider Gulf region, offering help to our allies, reassurance to our friends, and helping advance our own security and prosperity,” he says.

“The withdrawal of HMS Lancaster, with no dedicated replacement, is a huge backward step in our global posture and a shocking reflection on the current combat readiness and strength of the Royal Navy.”

And it is the threadbare state of the Royal Navy, not a deliberate British decision to turn away from the Middle East, which explains the frigate’s coming departure. Thanks to the parsimony and neglect of successive governments, the Fleet is simply too small to sustain its deployment in the Gulf.

The newest type 23 frigate, HMS St Albans, was commissioned as long ago as 2002. In the 15 years that followed, no British Government even started to build another warship of this kind. It was only in 2017 that work began on the first of the new type 26 frigates, which will replace the type 23s. This ship, HMS Glasgow, is not expected to enter service until 2028.

Lack of successor ships leaves a worrying gap

The unprecedented 15-year gap between the last type 23 frigate joining the Fleet and the beginning of the construction of their replacements explains why the Royal Navy is desperately short of ships today. Put simply, the type 23s are going out of service while their successors are still being built.

The older type 23s must be decommissioned because they were designed for a service life of 18 years, which can be extended – but not forever. Lancaster has been in the Fleet for 33 years and she cannot be kept at sea any longer.

Once Lancaster is decommissioned later this year, the Royal Navy will be down to just seven frigates and six destroyers – a total of 13 major warships, fewer than the navies of both France and Italy for the first time ever.

HMS Lancaster undergoes maintenance work in Port Sultan Qaboos in Muscat, Oman, February 2023 - Royal Navy

As for the last time when Britain had no frigate or destroyer in the Gulf, a permanent naval presence began in 1853 with the signing of a Perpetual Maritime Truce with the rulers of what became the UAE. British warships remained based in the region right up until 1971 when Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar became independent and Britain closed its military facilities in the Gulf.

Even after the bases were shut, British frigates and destroyers continued to pay regular visits. In 1976, for example, the Royal Navy dispatched a Task Group to the Middle East consisting of two destroyers and six frigates. The following year, four frigates – Mohawk, Zulu, Cleopatra and Amazon – visited Salalah and Muscat in Oman and Basra in Iraq.

Then, in 1980, Iraq invaded Iran and started a brutal eight-year war, causing Britain to create the Armilla Patrol to protect shipping in the Gulf.

From then onwards, between two and four frigates or destroyers were kept in the region at any given time. Even in 1982, when the Royal Navy dispatched a Task Force to the South Atlantic to regain the Falkland Islands, there were never fewer than two British ships in the Gulf.

The Armilla Patrol continued until 2011 when it was succeeded by Operation Kipion, which will have kept one frigate or destroyer in the Gulf right up until Lancaster’s final voyage.

Once she embarks for home, the Navy will have no such warship in the region for the first time, certainly, since 1980. If regular deployments happened throughout the 1970s – and the public records are not definitive – then this will, in fact, be the first time that Britain has not had a frigate or destroyer in the Gulf since 1853.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said that the Navy “continues to conduct complex operations around the globe”, pointing to the deployment of the Carrier Strike Group, led by HMS Prince of Wales, which is now in the Indo-Pacific.

As for the Gulf, the spokesperson added: “The UK has a long-standing maritime presence in the Gulf, and the UK Maritime Component Command in Bahrain continues to be central to the UK’s military operations across the Middle East.”

Soon those operations will have to proceed without a frigate or destroyer for the first time in two generations – and probably for almost two centuries.

Sign up to the Front Page newsletter for free: Your essential guide to the day's agenda from The Telegraph - direct to your inbox seven days a week.