ex-USS HARTLEY DE 1029 as ARC BOYACA DE 16 in the Columbian Navy
"This picture I send you was taken in 1985. I was LTJG supply officer of de 16. This was the only ship of the class in the Colombian
navy.
By that time this was the smallest destroyer we had. And the fuel budget for the Caribbean naval surface fleet was real short.
So de 16 was the perfect ship because it burned almost with half the fuel other destroyers did. And also we could raise pressure in half the time. So we had many missions. One of our
missions was serving as target for submarine units of our fleet. We allays held this exercises at Morrosquillo gulf at west part of Colombian Caribbean coast.
Other of our regular missions was carrying 1ST year cadets.
On the other hand she was very active making part of an AGAINST DRUGS TACLET (TACTICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT TEAM). By that time main drug problem was marihuana coming out of the north east
coast of Colombia near the border to Venezuela. She captured more 30 medium vessels carrying drug. All this apprehensions were from in between 50 to 300 tons of grass. This was a
great job. The vessels captured were normally in very bad conditions and soon we had no more space at the Naval Base where to tie them. Some even sunk there. The other major problem was
what to do with all that marihuana. We had to take it with trucks to a place were it could be burned up".
Submitted by Luis Bernardo Castro
LT(r) Colombian Navy
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