LANCASTER’s Skye Fall – the Type 23 Frigate LANCASTER has completed a year of training bringing the ship back to life after a 14 month £ 22 million major refit, by taking the Royal Navy’s future navigators around the Scottish Isles, calling at Skye as part of this programme.   The “Red Rose warship” has spent the year undergoing tests, trials and finally two months of Operational Sea Training off Plymouth.    The LANCASTER is likely to deploy to the Caribbean in 2013.

As part of this Scottish Isles programme the LANCASTER passed through the wartime anchorage of Scapa Flow, taking time to honour the loss of the Battleship ROYAL OAK which was torpedoed by a German U-boat in October 1939 with more than 800 souls went down with the ship.    LANCASTER held a Service of Remembrance before a wreath was cast into the now silent waters.