The Royal Navy’s decline is a symbol of so much that is wrong with Britain

It was from the deck of HMS Victory, his flagship, that Lord Nelson directed the defeat of Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar, losing his life in the process. The world’s oceans effectively passed into British imperial control. It’s become a common refrain that today’s Royal Navy is now smaller than at any time since the Napoleonic Wars. But, in truth, the situation is worse than that. I have a good friend, Godfather to my son, who spent years as an officer at the Admiralty, and to hear him talk about the fate of the Senior Service is to share a sense of national betrayal. The Royal Navy has gone from being the envy of the world, the institution which made ours an island fortress, to an international maritime joke. Not Rule Britannia, but a fleet in name only. By unhappy coincidence the anniversary of Victory’s launch fell in the same week that the other great hero of the Napoleonic Wars - the Duke of Wellington - was also having his good name traduced by association. HMS Iron Duke, named after the commander who won the Battle of Waterloo, was - to all intents and purposes - taken out of active service. Iron Duke is a type-23 frigate that, not long ago, underwent a five-year-long £100m refit. After a couple of years back at sea - and due to be decommissioned anyway in 2028 - she has now been stripped of her weapons and sensors early. Technicalities aside, that means the Royal Navy has five frigates. In the late 1980s, we had 41. The situation is actually worse than it looks. Of those five remaining frigates, one - HMS Kent - has been in dry-dock for two years and is not likely to be back at sea soon. HMS Portland and HMS St Albans are similarly laid up. Only HMS Somerset is currently deployable to monitor Russian submarines in the North Atlantic or pursue Russian shadow fleet surface ships in the English Channel. At a pinch, HMS Sutherland could be pressed into service. So, not five frigates, but two. And what of those bigger Type-45 destroyers? One was in the headlines recently, again for the wrong reasons. HMS Dragon limped her way into action in the Eastern Mediterranean.There to offer Cyprus a missile shield that other nations had been compelled to provide. Theoretically, we have half a dozen of these destroyers. Only one other, HMS Duncan, might be able to put to sea soon. The rest are in dry dock. Some have been undergoing repairs for years.It’s a similar story when it comes to submarines. Of our five Astute class boats, only one - HMS Anson - is on active service right now. Last month, I read a moving and powerful despatch from a Sunday Times reporter who had gone to Faslane to see the return-to-port of a Vanguard-class nuclear submarine; one of the four ageing subs which carry our permanently-at-sea nuclear deterrent. The submariners on board had just completed a record-breaking 206-day patrol. That is more than half a year underwater, breathing recycled air and water, with no communications with loved ones at home. These extended deployments were once the exception, but now - because the subs are getting old and need longer to maintain and repair - they are the norm. On the one hand, I find the idea that this nation can still rely on hundreds of young men and women who are willing to live in conditions which are, in some respects, worse than imprisonment utterly humbling.But talk about lions led by donkeys. Our political class has utterly failed those who put themselves in peril on the sea on our behalf. When it comes to spending priorities, we would rather spaff taxpayer’s money on welfare - not warfare.And the chickens are coming home to roost. We couldn’t do anything to protect the rights of international shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, even if Starmer wanted to (we’d pulled our minesweepers). We can’t stop Russia interfering with undersea infrastructure. Cables carrying communications data are vulnerable. Pipelines carrying energy are similarly so. And what of the Falkland Islands? The White House - rightly feeling let down by Downing Street on defence - has recently made less than reassuring noises about Argentina’s historic claims in the South Atlantic. In 1982, the Royal Navy Task Force sent to reclaim the Falklands comprised 43 warships. Now we would be lucky to muster three or four. Those who say none of this matters would do well to consider the Falklands. Whatever you think of Britain’s commitment to defend the rights of our people a long way from home, it was the withdrawal of HMS Endurance from the South Atlantic in 1981 which, as much as any other casus belli, was the spark for conflict.The Argentines took her removal as a sign that Britain was no longer interested in defending the islands. Ships matter. Symbolically, as well as practically. Which is why Donald Trump is promising to spend billions of dollars on a new category of battleship whose usefulness at sea is debatable. We still have a brace of aircraft carriers, of course. But we neither have the submarines to defend them, nor the Fleet Auxiliary vessels to supply them. We have brilliant Royal Marines, some of the best fighting men in the world, but only one amphibious ship with which to land them. We are struggling to retain experienced sailors, and recruitment has, for 15 consecutive years, failed to reach the necessary targets. But the problem runs deeper than that and is not solely of Labour’s making. If anything, the most unforgivable cuts were those ordered by the Conserative/Lib Dem coalition. But whoever is responsible, the effect is undeniable. As the former Royal Navy captain Tom Sharp wrote recently in The Daily Telegraph: “We are trying to run Cold War-level armed forces on less than half of Cold War-level spending, with no real plans for this to change other than relabelling a lot of non-Defence spending.”There will be those who say that, in a world of drones and AI, spending billions on warships is an anachronistic luxury. Others will argue that there will always be gaps in provision, when building a ship takes so many years. Indeed, from 2027, the Royal Navy will start taking delivery of five Type-31 general-purpose frigates from Babcock’s Rosyth yard. From 2028, we will also begin to see up to eight Type 26 anti-submarine warfare frigates launched into the Clyde by BAE Systems. But by any historical sense, these numbers are puny, even as the threats increase. And there are limits in a world which is still two-thirds water, to what a remotely-controlled ship can do. The truth is, we need more warships. One day, hostile powers may try, as the Germans did in the 1940s, to starve out this island. This is existential stuff. As Nelson signalled to his men as he prepared to engage the enemy at Trafalgar: ‘England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty’. It’s time British politicians did their duty by the Royal Navy.