HMS SOMERSET made a little bit of history when she acted as guardship for the final official ceremonies to commemorate the 60th annivesary of the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

The Type 23 frigate shepherded the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships across the Channel to take pride of place in Dunkirk, assisted by patrol boats HM ships Puncher and Dasher.

The flotilla of 58 Little Ships made a trouble-free crossing of the busy traffic separation lanes, as merchantmen gave way or altered course as a mark of respect. Overhead, the sound of a Spitfire added to the sense of nostalgia.

On arrival in Dunkirk, Somerset hosted an official reception, with guests including World War II veterans, and then she was opened to the public, attracting almost 3,000 visitors in a two-hour period. On the following day, the frigate anchored off the beaches of Dunkirk and a service of remembrance was held, while the Little Ships formed up in a circle.

Cdr Paddy McAlpine, the Commanding Officer of HMS Somerset, laid a wreath during the service, and LS Shane Ludden laid flowers given to him by Miss Ethel Puckett on behalf of herself, her brother Charles, and members of her family, in memory of Ethel and Charles' father AB Charles Puckett, who was killed on board the Admiralty tug HMS St Abbs on June 1, 1940, as it ferried troops from the beaches to the bigger ships.

On completion of the ceremonies, attended by the Prince of Wales, the Little Ships returned to England. The Dunkirk Veterans Association decided this would be the last official ceremony under their auspices, as the membership is growing too old to maintain the annual pilgrimage.

Cdr McAlpine said: "The combined size of this flotilla equates to the world's largest supertanker, and my job was to see them safely across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. "This is not a task you undertake lightly, but with the advanced command and control systems in Somerset, it was a task well within our capability. "It was an honour for me to escort this historic flotilla; their role in the evacuation of Dunkirk will never be forgotten by our country. "The efforts of the Royal Navy of 60 years ago are an inspiration to today's modern Royal Navy, and we will always be in debt to them."

The presence of a Royal Navy warship standing off the coast exactly 60 years on from the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and allies was a reminder of the crucial role played by Navy personnel and vessels in the "Dunkirk miracle". Miracle-worker-in-chief was Rear Admiral, later Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Flag Officer Dover, in 1940, who within a matter of days found himself co-ordinating a force of more than 900 vessels in what became Operation Dynamo, named for the former power-station chamber in the White Cliffs of Dover which had by the Second World War become a conference room.

With more than 400,000 troops trapped around the port of Dunkirk, under incessant attack by land and air, Operation Dynamo got off to an inauspicious start, with fewer than 8,000 troops evacuated on the first day - planners believed a total of 45,000 men could realistically be expected to be spirited away in two days before the defence of the enclave was overwhelmed. But despite the immense risk, smaller boats - drawn from harbours as far apart as Portsmouth and London - plied back and forth from the beaches to the bigger ships, and the bigger ships crossed and recrossed the Channel, speeding up the evacuation by coming alongside the rickety wooden mole in Dunkirk Harbour.

On one day alone - May 31, the sixth day of Operation Dynamo, almost 70,000 troops were lifted, and the only way such large numbers could be moved was through overloading of ships; one Isle of Wight ferry was estimated to have carried more than 2,500, and destroyers were taking on up to 1,000 soldiers, sometimes by picking up survivors from ships sunk by the bombardments and air raids which raged throughout.

The risk was as great to the Navy as a fighting entity as it was to individuals - the Admiralty assigned 38 RN destroyers to cover Operation Dynamo, some 20 per cent of the available force, as well as the cruiser HMS Calcutta, nearly 100 minesweeping vessels, 18 armed trawlers, six corvettes and around 80 other assorted craft. The murderous conditions took their toll of death, injury and distress among the men - the vast majority RN - who sailed ships of all sizes to the rescue of the Army.

Late of June 2, the Senior Naval Officer in Dunkirk, Capt Tennant, who had co-ordinated the operation in the most dangerous of situations for a week, was able to signal to Dover Command: "BEF evacuated." But Operation Dynamo rolled on for two more days, taking off thousands of French troops who had helped secure the perimeter for so long under withering fire. In the end, 338,226 troops were lifted from Dunkirk - almost 309,000 in British ships. But the action had cost six destroyers sunk with another 26 damaged, and nine of the personnel carriers - mainly cross-Channel and Irish Sea ferries - had also been destroyed.

The importance of the warships in both defensive and troop-carrying roles cannot be understated - for example, the old destroyer HMS Sabre managed ten return trips and transported some 5,000 soldiers. The rescued army was exhausted and missing most of its equipment, and as Churchill said: "Wars are not won by evacuations," but the fillip to morale was a key factors in the waging of the war. Ramsay went on to help mastermind the return of the Allies to France in Operation Neptune, the maritime element of the Normandy Landings, but died in an air crash before the end of the war.