EDITORIAL - There goes our BRP Rajah Humabon

The Philippines has sent the BRP Rajah Humabon to enforce its national integrity in the contested Spratlys. This should interest Cebuanos because the ship is named after Rajah Humabon, the Cebuano king who first embraced and made peace with a foreign force.

When Humabon came face to face with the Spaniards in 1521, he did so from a position of strength, submitting only to the greater divine power that overwhelmed him in newfound faith, the beautiful faith that is in the hearts of almost all Cebuanos today.

Today’s Humabon, however, is a rusty old ship, resurrected from the days of the world’s greatest war to confront a new foreign force that pays little or no respect for divine power, a godless occupier bent on asserting its will where it can.

The BRP Rajah Humabon used to be a US destroyer escort/frigate, one of the smallest in the American arsenal but the biggest in our navy. Built in 1943, she was named USS Atherton and saw action in the Atlantic. She was credited with having sunk one German U-Boat, the U-853.

She was decommissioned after the war in December 1945 but was recommissioned and given to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in 1955 under the name JDS Hatsuhi. She was decommissioned again in 1975 and reverted to the US, which then gave her to the Philippines in 1978.

The Philippine Navy commissioned her in 1980. She was decommissioned in 1993 but due to pressing needs was recommissioned again in 1995. The term commission, for military purposes, is to put — in this case a ship — into active service. 

In effect, the BRP Rajah Humabon has been in and out of service many times in its 68-year lifetime. It is on the hull of one of the oldest active warships in the world that the pride, as well as the anxiety, of the entire Filipino nation sails precariously. 

At 1,620 tons full load, she is smaller than many interisland ferries in the Philippines and can only go 21 knots max (39 kph). She has three three-inch guns, three 40mm guns, six 20mm cannons and four 50 cal machineguns. Godspeed gentlemen.