The corvettes were driven off by the actions of the British warship, supported by Italian Tornado aircraft which scrambled from an airbase at Gioia Del Colle.

[4][5] Under the command of Captain Christopher Clayton, she was guardship to the royal yacht HMY Britannia during the withdrawal from Hong Kong in 1997[3] (and served as the control military operations in the months prior to the handover).

In March 2003 Chatham became the first British warship to fire her guns in anger since the Falklands War, when, as part of Operation Telic, she engaged targets on the Al-Faw Peninsula of southern Iraq.

During the deployment, in the run-up to and the conduct of the invasion of Iraq, the ship spent around 90 days at sea continuously at defence watches in the northern part of the Persian Gulf.

Chatham hosted filmmaker Chris Terrill of the BBC for the television programme Shipmates which charted the life of sailors in the Royal Navy.

[6] On 18 April 2005, Chatham sent a party ashore at Alexandria in Egypt to provide a burial for the recently uncovered remains of thirty British sailors and officers who had died during or after the 1798 Battle of the Nile.

[11][12] Chatham was affiliated to a number of military and civil bodies:[13] Ship's Sponsor: Lady Oswald Almost all the commanders of Chatham subsequently achieved flag rank including James Morse, Ian Forbes, Tony Hogg, Paul Boissier, Christopher Clayton, Martin Connell (Dec 2006 - Jan 2009), Trevor Soar and George Zambellas.