HMS YORK is on her way home from the South Atlantic after a high-profile five months on patrol off the Falklands Islands.

The Type 42 destroyer made the headlines earlier this year when she had an encounter at sea with an Argentinian warship. Relationships between Argentina and Britain are currently strained after the UK started making test drills for oil off the South Atlantic islands.

The South American state claims the islands should belong to it and calls them the Malvinas. In 1982, it invaded them and a British task force retook them in the Falklands War.

The encounter between ARA Drummond and HMS York, occurred in January before the diplomatic flare-up and the Ministry of Defence reported that a storm had blown the Argentinian ship off course so that she was too close to the islands. She obeyed HMS York’s instructions to change course and no further action was taken.

Since the war, the Royal Navy has maintained a constant patrol of the Falklands area by warships, often by Type 42 destroyers.

HMS York is now heading north again. Before leaving the Falklands, she celebrated her 25th birthday, having been commissioned in 1985 and a contingent from the ship also took part in a Queen’s Birthday Parade in Port Stanley. She was involved in a dramatic 300-mile rescue in heavy seas of a South Pacific fisherman from the Republic of Kiribati.