Then Their Was One – the Type 42 Destroyer YORK has made a final entry into Portsmouth Harbour prior to decommissioned after 27 years of service.   The “White Rose” warship made a final visit to the namesake city, well Kingston-upon-Hull being, being the nearest the Type 42 could reach.   Hightlight of a long career saw the YORK make four  deployments to the Gulf in the 1990s and saw front line action in 2003 when the ship was one of three Type 42s assigned to the naval armada mustered for the invasion of Iraq.   Since then the YORK has been seen evacuating British nationals from Beirut during the Israel-Lebanon conflict, ferrying evacuees to Cyprus.   In 2011 – the last operational deployment – the YORK was sent to Malta to assist in the evacuation of British personnel during the Libyan uprising.    That was followed in December 2011 by the high profile shadowing of a Russian task group through British waters (around the top of Scotland) – the Russian ships had been forced into the more sheltered waters closer to the coast to avoid some severe winter storms.   Since then YORK has continued a Russian theme, this time on Anglo-French-American-Russian exercises in the Baltic, culminating with a visit to St Petersburg.   A final overseas visit was made to Brest (France).   That leaves sister ship EDINBURGH as the only remaining Type 42 in service.