MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

HMS Southampton heading for Falklands and S. Atlantic patrol

HMS Southampton

The venerable destroyer HMS Southampton is in the early stages of a lengthy South Atlantic deployment where she'll take over from her sister HMS Edinburgh which has spent much of this year on duty in and around the Falkland Islands.

HMS Southampton departed Portsmouth towards the end of April and will be away for eight months. Her journey south has taken her first to the Cape Verde Islands, then to the waters off Suriname where she met RFA Wave Ruler for a replenishment at sea. Later she sailed to Bridgetown, Barbados. The Type 42, destroyer visited the Caribbean as part of the UK's continuing commitment to the defense and security of UK Overseas Territories and counter narcotics smuggling operations in the region. In February 2006 she seized cocaine with a street value of £350 million from the merchant vessel MV Rampage. Before heading out into the Atlantic the destroyer hosted naval author Julian Stockwin â€" the man behind the Kydd series of novels â€" and his wife Kathy for passage from Plymouth to Portsmouth. Mr Stockwin chatted to sailors about the life and deeds of their Nelsonian forebears â€" the heroes of his novels â€" and pointed to the many of the similarities between the RN of 1805 and 2007, such as the divisional system and watch keeping, as well as a few of the landmarks around Portsmouth used as navigational aids. At the end of his visit, the author presented Southampton's CO, Commander Richard Morris, with a section of rope from the 18th-Century HMS Invincible which was lost in the eastern Solent in 1758. HMS Southampton is due home in December.