4th Commission
December 1952 - October 1954
(extracts from the ship's magazine)

Every ship, and every commission has its own character. I remember one as entirely occupied with rugby football and trout fishing, and another in a ship calling herself 'The Spearhead of the Fleet' which (to me) was nothing but 15 inch gunnery and middle watch evolutions for the junior midshipmen - a horrible period of my life. The things that one remembers easily are not necessarily those of great importance but in the case of this ship the one continuous element cannot be in doubt.

HMS St Brides Bay must to all her company recall the sea: day after day of it. Not, that is to say, a sea of sunlit blue, but the ruder sort: the colour of good strong tea under a dirty purple sky - the whole firmament making the noise poets call soughing, though that is a word I have never learnt to pronounce. Sea and Seamanship! What a lot of it we have seen - starting from Commander Western's dive over the stern to test the alertness of the lifebuoy sentry; going on to a charming encounter with that best-beloved of salvage tugs, the 'Castle Peak', and perhaps finishing with some excruciating experience which I feel sure is awaiting us during our last Formosa Straits Patro1.

On the whole, you will agree, bad weather has brought us luck. Typhoon 'Nina' accompanied the 'Nigelock' incident though it lost us our very good chance of winning the Fourth Frigate Squadron Pulling Regatta. 'Tess' gave us several extra days in Sasebo in September instead of a northerly patrol, while 'Cora' brought our little period in the limelight with the 'Tefkros'. Christmas off the White Dog Islands, two anchors down and rolling the quarterdeck under, was just another one of those Formosan occasions we came to welcome as our fate.

In our commission in St Brides Bay we have been lucky in the fact that we have kept running. No very extended refit, no very worrying casualties (I write it with fingers crossed; there is time yet!) and, in general, insufficient lengthy inactivity to bring dullness. The only great restriction on our contentment is that inevitable disadvantage of service at sea - the long separation from our families. It is good to have seen the beginning of an era in which this burden will be, at least, lightened.

For my own part I have been almost unbelievably fortunate. To command one of Her Majesty's Ships almost always at sea, repeatedly on the spot where 'things happen', supported by officers and men who have never failed to rise to every sort of occasion with, sensible efficiency and ebullient keenness, is an honour I hardly thought to achieve. Let me wish you a happy return to the joys of the land and the fruits of your labours, and as I imagine you will all re-engage - many fine commissions in the future.

Commander C Le M Scott
Captain