 On 9 October 1959 the Admiralty announced that Vanguard would be scrapped, as she was considered obsolete and too expensive to maintain. She was decommissioned on 7 June 1960 and sold to the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain for £ 560,000. On 4 August 1960, when the ship was scheduled to be towed from Portsmouth to the breaker's yard at Faslane, Scotland, the whole of the Southsea sea front was packed with people who came to see her off. As Vanguard was being towed towards the harbour entrance, she slewed across the harbour and ran aground near the Still & West pub. She was pulled off by five tugboats an hour later, and made her final exit from Portsmouth. Five days later she arrived at Faslane, and by mid-1962 the demolition process was complete; she was the last British battleship to be scrapped.
