HMS Cavalier was built by J.Samuel White & Co on the Isle of Wight and was launched on 7th April 1944 as one of 32 C-class destroyers produced between 1943 and 1946. Originally carrying the Pennant No R73, she first served with the Home Fleet and saw action off Norway in February 1945 carrying out convoy protection, for which she earned a battle honour. In late 1945 she was transferred to the Far East and provided gunfire support during the Battle of Surabaya. In February 1946 she was in Bonbay during the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. She returned from the Pacific Fleet in May 1946 and was placed in reserve. Modernised in 1957. She then took part in Operation Grapple, the British nuclear weapons tests at Maiden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in 1958. She responded to civil unrest in the Maldives in August 1959 and in December 1962 she transport 180 troops from Singapore to Brunei to suppress a rebellion which became part of the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. She was decommissioned in 1972 and was purchased by the Cavalier Trust in 1977, following a 5-year campaign led by Lord Louis Mountbatten. She opened as a museum ship in Southampton during 1982 but then moved first to Brighton in 1983 and then to the River Tyne in 1987. Plans for a national shipbuilding exhibition fell through and she was put up for sale in 1996. At real risk of being scrapped, the Cavalier Trust was reformed and she was eventually saved by Chatham Historic Dockyard, moving there in May 1998. The last surviving WW2 British Destroyer in the UK, in 2007 HMS Cavalier was dedicated as a war memorial to the 142 Royal Navy destroyers sunk during WW2 and the 11,000 men lost on those ships. Chatham Historic Dockyard Chatham, Kent, UK