There’s a saying in the navy that after every grounding there are always three hangings: The skipper, the navigator, and the conning officer. Commander Richard Farrington, 41, Captain of HMS Nottingham, certainly thought so on the morning of 8 July. On the evening of the 7th, Farrington had accompanied a medevaced sailor ashore and was returning in the ship’s helicopter. As it approached the ship at 2200, the junior lieutenant in temporary command turned the ship to allow the helicopter to land. With the helicopter just touched down, the wind and swells forced the destroyer onto Wolf Rock, off Lord Howe Island in Australian waters. By all accounts, Farrington was still on his way from the helo deck to the bridge when they felt the crunch. Moving at 25 knots, the ship ripped several large gashes in her hull and then hung up on the rocks. Many compartments were flooded, including forward engineering, the Sea Dart and 4.5 inch gun magazines, the junior rating’s mess, and several berthing compartments. Several ratings were asleep, but everyone escaped safely. According to the salvage master and every other expert who has surveyed the vessel, by rights she should have sunk. That she did not has been credited to the training and swift actions of the crew and the leadership of the captain. They kept the ship afloat, shoring up weak bulkheads, patching holes, and pumping out flooded compartments. The morning after the grounding, Farrington was quoted as saying that he would “be court-martialled as sure as the sun comes up in the morning.” He was only repeating common wisdom, and certainly reflected his mood after watching his beautiful ship grind on the rocks all night. In the aftermath of the grounding, salvage tugs and other ships arrived, but were delayed by bad weather until Nottingham was finally freed on July 11. She was towed stern-first to Newcastle, New South Wales, where her waterlogged gun ammunition and Sea Dart missiles will be removed and the extent of her damage assessed. Loaded on a heavy lift ship, the crippled ship will reach home sometime in December. And Commander Farrington has earned praise, not condemnation. Now judged to be not responsible for the ship’s grounding (he’d just come aboard, after all), his actions afterward probably saved the ship and the lives of many of its crew. Calum Gibson’s website, Gib’s Naval Pictures at http://www.gibstuff.net/warships/index.html has many photos of Nottingham after the grounding, down by the bow, and also pictures of the engineering spaces, filled with water. The photo above is taken from his site, showing the grounded destroyer off Lord Howe Island. BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #23 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history and related articles are available at http://www.magweb.com