HTMs Prasae

Formerly, the USS Gallup

By Grant Cameron

November 27^th, 2018

HTMS Prasae MEMORIAL

One of the many tourist attractions in Klaeng district of Rayong, Thailand, is the HTMS Prasae Memorial.

Most Thais believe this is a Thai vessel, but it is in fact a US frigate which was built in 1943. It was originally named the “USS Gallup".

The USS Gallup was decommissioned in October 1951 and subsequently transferred under the US Military Defense Assistance Program along with her sister ship Glendale to Thailand.

The vessel served thereafter in the Royal Thai Navy as HTMS Prasae (PF2, a patrol frigate).

HTMS Prasae remained in service until struck from the Thai Navy Register and decommissioned in June 2000.

Prasae, as the Gallup, was originally classified as a patrol gunboat, PG-155, when launched on 17 September 1943 at the Consolidated Steel Corporation shipyard in Los Angeles, California, but was reclassified as a patrol frigate, PF-47, when commissioned on 29 February 1944.

Before entering service with the Royal Thai navy the Gallup served in World War 2 in the Pacific theater.

She was then transferred to the Russian Soviet navy under a secretive project, Project Hulu, anticipating a joint US-Russian effort against Japan to bring World War 2 to a close.

In her time with the Soviet navy, 1945-1949, the Gallup was known as EK-22, a storozhevoi korabi or escort ship.

She was eventually returned to the US at the end of 1950. She took her old name of the Gallup, but lay idle for a while before re-entering limited service as a harbor entrance control vessel, and later as an anti-submarine patrol vessel.

Once with the Royal Thai navy the Gallup, now renamed Prasae, performed various naval duties before being decommissioned.

Initially preserved as a memorial at the Sattahip Naval Base, the Prasae was towed to the mouth of the Prasae River in Rayong Province and put on display by the Prasae River Communities Committee on 27 December 2003 and named, as we know it today, the "HTMS Prasae Memorial".

The Prasae is not the first, but the second vessel of the Royal Thai navy to hold the name.

The first was a Flower-class corvette of the British Royal navy, the HMS Betony, commissioned in 1945, and which was immediately transferred to the Royal Indian Navy, where she was commissioned as HMIS Sind.

In May 1946 she was transferred back to the Royal Navy and then sold to the Royal Thai Navy in 1947 as HTMS Prasae. During a snowstorm off the east coast of Korea in 1951, she was beached and eventually scuttled.

The HTMS Prasae is free, and all nationalities are able to explore the boat and climb onto the deck and up to the wheelhouse. Many of the guns are still in place.