Almirante Williams is a Type 22 frigate in service with the Chilean Navy. It entered service with the British Royal Navy in 1988 with the name HMS Sheffield, and served with the Royal Navy until 2002. Initially it was meant to be called Bruiser, but was named Sheffield in honour of the previous Sheffield, a Type 42 destroyer sunk in the Falklands War. In 2003, the vessel was acquired by the Chilean Navy and renamed Almirante Williams.
History
Sheffield was launched on 26 March 1986, by Swan Hunter, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom, and named by Mrs Susan Stanley, wife of the then Armed Forces Minister. The ship was commissioned at Hull on 26 July 1988. Several crewmen of the previous Sheffield were at the launch. A specially minted Sheffield coin was placed in the keel at the keel-laying ceremony on 29 March 1984.
In late 1998, Sheffield provided assistance after Hurricane Georges, visiting the island of St Kitts and also saved a Honduran woman who had been swept out to sea from her home by the force of Hurricane Mitch.[1][2]
8 February 2001 saw Sheffield, under Commander Simon Williams, deployed to the Caribbean for a six-month deployment.[4]Sheffield was deployed to assist the United States Coast Guard, Dutch, French and Venezuelan navies in anti-drug operations and exercises. There were visits to the US as well as Barbados, Trinidad, Antigua, St Lucia, Curaçao and the Bahamas. Sheffield took part in Exercise Tradewinds, which promoted interoperability between coastguards and law enforcement agencies in the area. Other ships in the exercise included TTS Nelson and RFA Gold Rover.[5]
Sheffield was acquired by Chile on 5 September 2003 and renamed Almirante Williams in honour of Vice Admiral Juan Williams Rebolledo, who was Commander of the Chilean Fleet at the beginning of the War of the Pacific.[12]
Since its commissioning, Williams has served as part of the Chilean Fleet, where after various modernization projects carried out in the country, it serves as the flagship of this naval force.[12]
She received a major refit in 2008, which saw her weapons fit change to:
The new equipment was retrieved from decommissioned County-class destroyers.[citation needed]
The main roles of this unit, with its base port in Valparaíso, are the search and attack of submarines, surface combat and support in the event of catastrophes and emergencies. It also has the capacity to transport a Cougar helicopter.[12]
HMS Sheffield Type 22 Frigate (Batch 2A) guide. Directorate of Public Relations (Royal Navy). Printed in UK for HMSO by Roman Press Ltd, Bournemouth. Crown Copyright 1994, London.
Devonport Navy Days guide 1999
Further reading
Lofthouse, Alistair (1998). Shiny Sheff – The Story of Sheffield's Fighting Ships. Northern Map Distributors. ISBN1-901587-03-7. .
