HMS Devonshire is a fictional Type 23 frigate of the British Royal Navy. She was on routine patrol sailing in the South China Sea when she was meaconed off-course into Chinese-held waters and sunk by media mogul Elliot Carver. At the time of her sinking she was captained by Commander Richard Day, who was killed alongside his crew. The ship appeared in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, as well as its accompanying novelisation and video-game adaptation.
History[]
Tomorrow Never Dies (film)[]
HMS Devonshire was a British Royal Navy frigate under the command of Commander Richard Day. The ship was intentionally sent off-course into Chinese-held waters in the South China Sea by Henry Gupta using a stolen GPS encoder. This prompted two Chinese J-17 MiGs to investigate the frigate's unauthorised presence. Unbeknownst to both the fighter pilots and the Devonshire's crew, the frigate was being used in Elliot Carver's plot to provoke war between China and the United Kingdom in order to secure broadcasting rights in the former. Carver's Stealth Ship, undetectable by either the Devonshire or the MiGs, launched a sea drill at the frigate, which cut through the hull and caused the frigate to start sinking. Believing it to be an aerial torpedo fired by the MiGs, the crew sent a message to the admiralty and proceeded to abandon ship, though only seventeen survivors escaped. The Stealth Boat launched a missile at one of the MiGs to frame the frigate for an unprovoked attack and dispatched divers down to the sunken vessel to steal one of it's cruise missiles. The ship's seventeen survivors were brutally murdered with Chinese weaponry to frame the Chinese for the frigate's sinking. The truth was discovered by James Bond and Wai Lin, who explored the Devonshire's wreck and discovered the missile theft.
Tomorrow Never Dies (novelisation)[]
Closely following the plot of the film, the Type 23 Duke Class Frigate was on routine patrol circa 1997 sailing from the Philippines to Hong Kong when she is meaconed off-course into Chinese-held waters by Elliot Carver. While the crew believe they are in international waters, seventy-five miles from the Chinese coastline, they are in actuality only eleven miles off their coast, inside their territorial waters. The ship is overflown by two Chinese MiGs who, believing the ship is spying, insist that they will open fire if the Devonshire doesn't turn around and go to a Chinese port. As in the film, the frigate is shadowed by Carver's stealth ship - given the name Sea Dolphin II - and sunk by means of its sea drill. As with its sister ship HMS Chester, the Devonshire was presumably equipped with the same armament of eight McDonnell Douglas Harpoon 2-quad launchers for Surface-to-Surface missiles, and a British Aerospace Seawolf GWS 26 Mod 1 VLS for Surface-to-Air missiles.[2]
Crew[]
- Commander Richard Day ... Captain
- Lieutenant Commander Peter Hume ... First Officer
- Wood ... Crew
- J. Tutt ... Crew
- R. Churchouse ... Crew
Behind the Scenes[]
To be added
Gallery[]
See also[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 TYPE 23 FRIGATE, royalnavy.mod.uk, accessed: 8th May 2018
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Tomorrow Never Dies, Raymond Benson, Hodder and Stoughton, 1997, Chapter 2: Shadow on the Sea.