In August the former HMS Plymouth departed Birkenhead after seven years of efforts to rescue the Falkland veteran frigate failed, and she was finally towed away for scrap in Turkey. In 1989 she was open to the public in Plymouth, and then in Birkenhead as a museum ship operated by the Historic Warship Preservation Trust.
The Trust rented a berth for her in 1990 within the East Float, Birkenhead from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, but when the Trust went into liquidation in 2006, HMS Plymouth became the legal responsibility of Peel Ports, who said: ‘We have no expertise in the preservation and restoration of historic ships and .given the fact that she is deteriorating further at berth, the group feels, reluctantly, we have no practical choice but to dispose of her responsibly.’
Built by Devonport Dockyard, HMS Plymouth, commissioned in 1959, was one of the first Royal Navy ships to arrive in the South Atlantic during the Falklands War in 1982, and was decommissioned in 1988.
