The first Ark Royal was built in 1587, just 43 years after the completion of Hurst Castle. Exactly 420 years later, her successor – the fifth Ark Royal – sailed majestically past that same castle.

HMS Ark Royal passing Hurst Castle, June 2007

That first naval flagship, built to the order of Sir Walter Raleigh, was originally named Ark Ralegh; the name change came when she was bought by Queen Elizabeth’s navy to lead the English fleet against the Spanish Armada.

It was to be more than 300 years before her successor took to the seas, a converted merchant ship bought by the Royal Navy for service during World War I.  Like the original Ark Royal, she was broken up at the end of her service, whereas the third to bear the name – an aircraft carrier launched in 1937 – sank off Gibraltar in 1941, having been torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Ark Royal number four joined the navy in 1955, and she too was scrapped – in 1980. But it was the fifth in line that hove into view of the castle in June 2007.  With a draught of 7.5m, she was an unlikely vessel to sail through the relatively shallow waters of the Hurst Narrows.

Built on Tyneside by Swan Hunter, the fifth Ark Royal was – like her two predecessors – an aircraft carrier. She was launched by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1981 and was commissioned by the navy in in 1985, accompanying two other Invincible class ships: HMS Invincible and HMS Illustrious. Some 210m long, and with a crew of more than a thousand, she was capable of carrying both the Harrier jump jet and a range of helicopters.

During her 25 years of service, the navy’s flagship saw active service on two notable occasions.  The first was in the Bosnian War of the mid 1990s, when she was charged with helping to control a no-fly zone in the Adriatic. A decade later, in 2003, she was involved in an operation to secure the Al Faw peninsula in the Gulf during the invasion of Iraq.

Despite her motto, ‘Desir na repos’ (‘Zeal does not rest’), it seems that over the following years rest is exactly what lay in store for this iconic ship. A major refit between 2004 and 2007 was intended to ready her for service until 2016, but during 2010 she fell foul of major defence cuts.  Come October, it was announced that she was to be decommissioned. Following her final voyages, to Newcastle and Hamburg, she returned for the last time to her home base at Portsmouth after 50,762 hours at sea, covering 621,551 miles.

Many ideas were considered for the ship’s future, but in the end she was sold for scrap to a Turkish shipyard. It was an ignominious end for the ship affectionately known as The Mighty Ark.