Watching the crippled warship being towed back Michael Penn, a van driver, who was watching from Plymouth's Jennycliff, said: "The ship was under tow, she had no power she was powerless."

He added: “She was surrounded by tug boats, whatever the problem it was clearly very serious.”

The fleet's Type 45 destroyers were hailed as the most revolutionary warships in the world when they were first commissioned into the fleet.

But within a couple of years problems the ships started to report power failures, although the Royal Navy refused to admit there was a problem until this year.

The most concerning incident involved HMS Daring, the first of class, in 2009 when on her maiden deployment to the United States the ship lost power in the Atlantic ocean.

Since then there have been numerous operational incidents reported, including HMS Dauntless which suffered a power outage during a naval exercise in 2014.

In January 2016 the MoD confirmed that repairs would be carried out on all six Daring class warships in order to make sure they are fully operational.

A key factor in the multi-million-pound procurement of the destroyers was that they would not need a refit for at least 25 years, saving the naval budget significant costs in major dockyard maintenance periods.