HMS Portland

HMS Portland is the fastest and most fearless Type 23 frigate in the Royal Navy. She is also one of the youngest Type 23 frigates in the Royal Navy.  

Hms Portland was accepted into service by the Royal Navy on 15 December 2000 and was commissioned on 3 May 2001.  Present at the commissioning ceremony was Portland's sponsor Lady Brigstoke, wife of Admiral Sir John Brigstoke, a former Second Sea Lord, who had also launched the ship in 1999.

During sea trials Portland attained a top speed of 30.8 knots (57.0 km/h), the fastest speed attained by any Type 23 frigate.

In June 2011 she sailed to Edinburgh to take part in Armed Forces Day (See HERE and HERE for pics).  She is to be the first major warship in the Royal Navy to be commanded by a woman; Lt Cdr Sarah West will assume command of HMS Portland in April 2012 as Commander Sarah West.  She will take command of the ship at Rosyth during the later stages of this refit.

The ship’s last deployment was a seven-month deployment (March – November 2010).  During this deployment she visited the South Atlantic, South America, Eastern Pacific, Caribbean and West Africa spending 217 days away from her home port of Plymouth.  Her previous deployment was in 2009 when she was engaged in operations in the Gulf of Aden to deter pirates.

She is seen here approaching and passing under the Forth Bridges

Type 23 Frigate – HMS Kent

The Type 23 Frigate is a class of frigate built for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. All the ships were first named after British Dukes, thus the class is also known as the Duke class. The first Type 23 was commissioned in 1989, and the sixteenth, HMS St Albans was launched in May 2000 and commissioned in June 2002. They form the majority of the Royal Navy's destroyer and frigate fleet.

Three of the frigates have been sold to Chile and serve with the Chilean Navy. The remaining thirteen remain in service with the Royal Navy.

HMS Kent has received 23 upgrades in a demanding refit, as well as undergoing a full programme of deep maintenance including structural repairs, renewal of hull coatings and refurbishment of all of her systems and equipment.

The 50 week contract was delivered on time by Babcock, who run the Rosyth dockyard, and required 295,000 man hours to see the overhaul of more than 500 pieces of equipment, the application of 15,000 litres of paint and the installation of 13km of cable.

Upgrades and improvements included the installation of Sonar 2087; a variable depth anti-submarine warfare system; a new Command System central to the ship’s fighting capability against air, surface and underwater threats; large and small gun replacements; filters to protect air supplies against nuclear, biological and chemical attack, and an air conditioning system which will stabilise conditions on board in the most extremes of temperatures.

HMS Kent is seen here departing Rosyth on post refit trials on Friday 11^th November 2011.

The assisting tugs were:

MT Deerhound

MT Fidra

Thetis Class Ocean Patrol Vessels

HDMS (Her Danish Majesty's Ship) Vædderen (F359) (Aries) is a Thetis-class ocean patrol vessel of the Royal Danish Navy. She is employed to exercise Danish sovereignty in waters around the Faeroe Islands and Greenland.

The Thetis-class ocean patrol vessels, also called Stanflex 3000, are a class of large patrol vessels built for the Royal Danish Navy. The class comprises four ships, all built and commissioned in the early 1990s. The ships' tasks are mainly maintenance of sovereignty, search and rescue, fishery inspection and support to local (mainly Greenlandic) authorities. The operation areas are normally Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, but the vessels also operate near Iceland on transit between Greenland and the Faeroe Islands, and near Denmark.

The ships each have double-skinned ice-reinforced hulls so that the ships can break through 80 centimetres (31 in) of solid ice. Thetis has undergone a conversion, first to participate in the CANUMAS-project, and later to become the fleet's flagship, a role that ended in September 2007. The Danish Navy has retrofitted the vessels with 12.7-millimetre (0.50 in) heavy machine guns, Stinger launchers and decoy launching systems. The ships can carry and use multiple Stanflex mission modules.

In the most common role (ocean patrol), the standard base crew is 47 persons and 16 conscripts, but in either command ship role or more warfare heavy roles, the base crew is expanded to 60 persons plus 4 aircrew for the Westland Lynx Mk.90B and one or two doctors. Accommodation is available for 101 personnel in all.

Vessels

Thetis	F357
Triton	F358
Vædderen	F359
Hvidbjørnen	F360

For further information and photographs of the class please click HERE  


She is seen arriving here at Leith I apologise for the poor quality of these images as my camera packed in after a few shots and the focus was not working correctly.

Archer Class Patrol Vessels

The Archer class (or P2000) is a class of patrol and training vessels in service with the Royal Navy, commonly referred to as a Fast Training Boat.  They are twin-shaft vessels with moulded glass-reinforced plastic hulls.

The Archers were initially used as Royal Navy patrol craft and as training tenders for the Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) and University Royal Naval Units (URNU). Four identical vessels were ordered for the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service (RNXS) as Example-class tenders. When that service was disbanded in 1994, the Examples were transferred to the Royal Navy for similar duties as their Archer-class brethren.  Until 2005, the 4 Examples were still painted with a black hull.

In 1998 two additional vessels (Raider and Tracker) of this design were commissioned into the Royal Navy as URNU training vessels to the two newest URNUs, serving Cambridge and Oxford Universities respectively. This brought the total of Archer class vessels in the Royal Navy to 16, of which 14 form the 1st Patrol Boat Squadron (formerly the Inshore Training Squadron), each one attached to an URNU (one per unit) under the command of a Lieutenant. The remaining 2 vessels (Pursuer and Dasher), having formed the Cyprus Squadron from 2003 to 2010, and URNU vessels before that, returned to the UK in April 2010 to form the Faslane Patrol Boat Squadron, performing security duties within HMNB Clyde - these can be identified by a number of pintle-mounted L7 7.62 mm GPMG machine guns and armour plating. Ranger and Trumpeter were also formerly allocated to the Gibraltar Squadron for guard ship and search and rescue duties, but were replaced by the dedicated Scimitar class. Unlike the remainder of the class, both these ships remain capable of being mounted with a 20mm cannon on the fo'c'sle.

Vessels

Archer	P264	Aberdeen
Biter	P270	Manchester
Smiter	P272	Glasgow
Pursuer	P273	HMNB Clyde
Tracker	P274	Oxford
Raider	P275	Bristol
Blazer	P279	Southampton
Dasher	P280	HMNB Clyde
Puncher	P291	London
Charger	P292	Liverpool
Ranger	P293	Sussex
Trumpeter	P294	Cambridge
Example	P165	Northumbrian
Explorer	P164	Yorkshire
Express	P163	Wales
Exploit	P167	Birmingham

For more information on the Archer class click HERE

HMS Archer is the first and lead ship of the Archer / P2000 class of Fast patrol Boat and is also known as "The Original and Best".

She is seen here in Leith

River Class Patrol Vessel HMS Severn

River Class Patrol Vessels

                    

The River class is a class of three offshore patrol vessels in the Royal Navy

HMS Tyne P281

HMS Severn P282

HMS Mersey P283

The River Class is deployed for fishery protection and other patrol missions around the United Kingdom.

The three ships are not owned directly by the Royal Navy. Instead they were constructed under an agreement with the shipbuilder, Vosper Thornycroft, under which the Royal Navy charter the vessels from the shipbuilder which is responsible for all maintenance and support for the ships during the charter period. At the end of this, the Navy can either return the ships, renew the lease or purchase them outright.

In order to maximise the availability of the ships, the MoD draw each ship’s company of about 30 personnel from a pool of about 45 men and women allocated to each ship. The additional crew members would be based on shore until called forward to relieve personnel on the ship in order to meet the Royal Navy’s requirements on “harmony rules”, which guarantee seagoing personnel a proportion of each year on shore. The ships have accommodation to a very high standard with all officers and senior ratings having individual cabins with en-suite facilities. Junior ratings will have twin cabins with en-suite facilities.  All accommodation are capable of use by either male or female personnel.  The ship also has sufficient accommodation to be able to embark a small RM detachment.

The vessel includes a flight deck for land based small/medium helicopters and aviation facilities can be enhanced to handle larger helicopters or to provide storage and maintenance facilities for helicopters.

The vessels are of steel construction in a double chine hull form. The fine form ram bow has a very low wave-making resistance which gives fuel efficiency and comfortable sea-keeping characteristics.

The vessel typically has a complement of 28 but can accommodate a crew of 30 plus a Royal Marine boarding party of 18, comprising 12 officers, 14 senior and 22 junior ratings.

The working deck can accommodate up to seven containers, enabling the ship to carry additional stores, workshops, mine countermeasure support containers, a diving recompression container or medical facilities. A heavy crane of 25t capacity is fitted to handle standard containers.

The River Class offshore patrol vessels carry sufficient fuel, stores and water supplies for an endurance of 21 days.

HMS Severn is see here departing Leith

 


The Forth Ports Tug Fidra was on standby and had to eventually take a stern rope

She can be seen HERE on a previous arrival