Some great images from the MoD showing the three River class vessels of the Fisheries protection Squadron (click to enlarge)
All three River Class patrol vessels of the Fishery Protection Squadron, HMS Severn, HMS Tyne and HMS Mersey are pictured exercising off the coast of Cornwall. The Fishery Protection Squadron (FPS) enforces UK and EU fisheries legislation in order to ensure the long term sustainability of the UK fishing grounds. In addition, the three UK based Ships are the only warships on permanent patrol around the UK, contributing to the policing of UK waters and delivering an intrinsic element of the UK’s Maritime Security
HMS Tyne Makes a Sharp Turn on Exercise with Fishery Protection Squadron
HMS Severn on Exercise with the Fishery Protection Squadron
The Fisheries protection Squadron gets bugger all attention so its great to see the MoD releasing these great photographs.
A good overview from Wikipedia here and the official page from the Royal Navy, here.
The images are from a recent exercise;
Royal Navy Fishery Protection Vessel HMS Mersey was joined by her sister ships HMS Severn and HMS Tyne for the annual Fishery Protection Squadron Exercise last week. The exercise saw the ships put through their paces in a series of challenging combined evolutions at sea as well as team-building and knowledge-sharing events ashore.
Read more here
Lovely ships.
The USCG call a good number of the same class meeting together or an annual exercise by a particular branch a “roundup”.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have some more of these, modified and fitted out to serve on anti piracy missions in the Indian Ocean and backed up with strong powers of arrest and trial from the UN. Could be useful for anti drugs patrols and smuggling etc. in other parts of the world as well.
Love these patrol ships, especially the way they are shaped; not exactly stealthy by a long shot, but the faceted structure and overall design reduces radar signature to a decent level.
Afterall, you never know, some Icelandic trawler could be stalking about…!
Fishery Protection Squadron = Coast Guard !
Give em a nice blue and red stripe on fwd’ hull, an A pennant number and RFA crews, might be able to afford another 3 that way
Very nice stick a 57mm on the front and a wildcat on the back or mcm gear and I’ll take a dozen or 2
Agree with Mike, the RN desperately needs simple hulls to take on the policing roles where you are currently using frigates.
West Indies guard ship and chasing pirates in the Indian ocean are utter misuse of first line warships.
But be wary of coast guards, that is an entire additional chain of command and all the shore costs that implies, it is not just ships crews you know.
Two ideas:
One, What about a Coastal Command within the Navy (like the FAA) which specialises in the littoral and coast guard duties?
Two, does a MSO ship have to be small and cheap? What about large and cheap? Size gives you extra range, and ability to carry more stores, equipment, etc, as well as being more sea worthy?
Aussie Johno
It depends on your view point; we already have a maritime and coast guard agency i.e the shore side HQ’s etc. We also have a model for civilian mariners carrying out para-military national security roles for HMG, its called the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
RFA crewed blue ensign coasties would be much, much cheaper than RN crew. Your boarding parties could be RN, RM or bloody Transport Police depending on the task at hand.
MSO activities like windies guardship don’t need ships crewed by RN, in fact to Gareth’s point it would be much better served by a Bay class acting as mother ship than by a poxy River class!!
x,
They are lovely little things, aren’t they? I miss Vosper Thorneycroft. “VT Whatever Our Directors Want to Sell Off Services” doesn’t have the same ring. Thanks for bringing up USCG, they’re a genuinely fine bunch and probably the world’s most accurate representation of what a “maritime gendarmerie” would actually look like, resourced to the scale of one’s own country.
Jed and A.J., also Gareth (who brings us back to Bays),
Another tack to which I’d be tempted is restoring the RNR’s role in this sort of work (well, the Fisheries Squadron at least.) There’s certainly the option of RFA, and for WINDIES station the Bay there pre-SDSR makes the best sense of any of the potential hulls for the job (combined anti-smuggling mothership and disaster relief. So let’s play the budget game like more sensible European states and get internal/external development agencies to help front for building a “fourth”/fifth Bay. The plans are on record and at least two firms turned out the first batch — what’re Harland & Wolff up to these days since the Points?)
But back to this, RNR on the Fisheries detail (much like handling of the Kingstons by the RCN) would be a third path to much the same result. I’d also bring HMS Clyde back home, pop MSI’s SIGMA mount (the combined 30/35mm gun and seven-tube LMM launcher) on the front to give it some pointy-ness, and run it with RNR on patrol between HMNBs Portsmouth and Devonport. The Falklands job (per other recent threads) should really be divvied between local-agency coastguarding and fisheries on one hand, and an actual frigate on the other as a substantial piece of South Atlantic deterrence. Then you’ve covered a few baseline standing tasks (Caribbean dependencies, North Sea fisheries/oil, naval bases/traffic into the Channel) with RFA and/or RNR. Lets one concentrate on a class of “minesweeping sloop” with good seakeeping for more sensitive support and presence tasks. Not necessarily TD’s SIMSS concept but he got the right discussion going. Let the Rivers do their jobs with RFAs or Reservists and there might indeed be room for more, or at least a sister for Clyde (HMS Tweed?) to rotate the South Coast patrol.
Agree with the comments so far and a mixed RN / RNR for Fisheries and some extent EEZ patrolling makes a lot of sense. Young RN officers would still have something to cut their teeth on.
I would go further and scrap the University Squadron and merge it into the RNR. I would also replace the P2000s / Scimitars with a few more Clydes and a smaller number of larger “fast” patrol boats.
I would also add that in future HMS Clyde’s role in the FI should be done by a MHPC. The frigate / destroyer on station is actually for the whole of the south Atlantic.
@ Repulse / others with nautical know-how,
What’s the minimum ship needed for bimbling around the South Atlantic in fairly crap weather? I saw that Swedish stealth corvette (Visby?) tied up in London a couple of years ago, looking a bit sexy, but the RN officer I was with was quite dismissive in terms of sea-going ability. Big waves and small ships don’t mix well he said. What would be the minimum acceptable for Falklands waters out to 100 miles to allow you to put sea in 98% of weather?
i had always got a figure of 2500t as the general agreement among the warships1 crowd.
Jed, I am not sure of the scale of the UK coast guard operation. I am aware that it contracts for SAR helicopters but the issue of coastguard ships is unknown to me.
However, once you start to build up a significant blue water coastguard operation it becomes a competitor for funding and that is probably the last thing the RN needs.
Using the RFA would be fine but you would end up with a RFA working crew plus a RN party to operate armament, RHIB’s, and a helicopter when carried. You could easily end up with more RN on a reasonably small ship than RFA which, would kind of defeat the purpose.
Looking from the outside, since the late 1980′s the UK has produced a series of very effective designs, the pair of big replenishment ships (Fort George?) the Type 23, the Type 45, the new carriers. But the same thing has happened time, you have over reached the budget and either the projects gets cut back someway, or you sell hulls(T23).
The fact that nothing much has been heard of the T26 recently suggests`that the RN has been having trouble fitting its desires into the budget proscribed by your current government.
In the picture I have painted making up numbers with some simple ships for secondary tasks solves a problem in current and likely threat sçenarios. At the moment the West doen’t face WWIII but it does face ongoing pin pricks and middling crisis’s where a selection of vessels would be of use.
And I am aware of the ‘C3′ but that looks like it is growing too. Someone said ‘ship steel is cheap’, that is only true when it is lying in a steel yard!
A hull length of 100m was what I thought was considered ocean going but Clydes mid 80s length and visby mid 70s. But visby very nice for littorial work/mcm as it has water jets and better signature management.
@James
That is what I heard too. Corvettes get tossed about a lot in stormy weather. From the looks of it, the only class which I stopped hearing bad things about in terms of weather are destroyers, ~3,000 tons+
What about using modified containerships for MSO? They are designed for long range cruising and are relatively cheap.
@ James
Tied up? Tied up? Boots are tied ships are secured alongside.
It is all to do with hull form (length to beam ratios, transom vs cruiser stern, knuckles, stem angles, depth of hull, c-o-g, even technical solutions like stabilisers and transom flaps etc. etc.) and hull construction (modern ships use lighter stronger metals or in the Visby’s composites in more efficient load bearing structures.)
As for the RN officer’s comments note how the bow of the Visby is formed to pierce waves and push through. In lumpy seas due to her low displacement and high volume she would be lively in heavy seas. And though she would take such punishment it would fatigue the hull. Like all machines it is about the right design for the job. A bit like taking a 1.3 for a trip down the motorway OK occasionally but if you did a lot of motorway driving not the ideal solution. Another thing to consider is that not all ships are equal just because they look the same. Look at Cunard’s ships. The QM2 is a true liner designed for ocean seas in all weathers. Look at her strong bow. Note how the sides flare gently away so the ship falls down the through the water in a controlled manner helping the stabilisers keep the voyage smooth for passengers. Note the heavy large breakwater on her foredeck. She is built out of heavy grade steels. But Victoria and Elizabeth aren’t liners they are cruise ships. Designed more for volume and passenger numbers. Though they can transit oceans they aren’t designed for use in all weathers. That isn’t to say they aren’t safe in caught out. More that the master will avoid extreme weathers; they are design primarily for the relative benign waters of the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Their hulls will be lighter and their engine fit out more modest.
Now compare the Visby to the old RN Island class. The Islands are traditional steel ships so they displace twice as much as Visby. They have a similar beam measurement but the Visby is a third longer. And the draft is interesting because the Islands at 4.3 is twice that of the Visby. The former is designed for the North Sea and North Atlantic in all weather while the latter is for pottering about the Swedish littorals and archipelago in relatively good weather. Note the Islands bow with its knuckle (flare) for keeing water off the fore deck. Note that though the stem isn’t steeply raked it is short meaning the keel is long. Couple that with deep draft and you can that the she will sit down in water. The amount vessel above the water line matches roughly what is below. This helps to fight windage. And it keeps the propeller planted in the water so maintaining steering weigh. Compare that to the Visby. Massive construction not only maintain ship’s integrity but means there is “weight” to keep her in the water. Short length and deep draft give a low centre of gravity even in bunkers are low (keeping the meta-centre within stability limits.) Obviously the c-o-g is the most “stable” point in the ship as it is the point around which the rest of the vessels moves If you note the deckhouse and crew accommodation are found as close to the c-o-g to reduce crew fatigue.
http://www.kingstonmouldings.com/Images/IslandClassOPV-line-L.gif
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Visby_class_corvette.png
Oh yes I forgot the aft end…….
Note the Islands have a rounded cruiser or yacht style stern. In following seas the water has more surface are to push against dissipating the load. There are odder effects to do with sectional density and low pressure zones that are a bit more complicated to discuss. Note though the Visby has a transom. Basically a flat facet. If the sea hits that it will be more akin to a hammer hitting a nail. But there reasons why transoms are better than cruiser style sterns for warships such as weapon handling and flight deck loading. Sometimes looks can be deceiving. The QM2 appears to have a rounded cruiser stern but in fact it is a transom; well more of a hybrid. This is so that there was a flat area on hull bottom to hang the podded propulsion units. Payne rounded the stern above the waterline to give QM2 a more traditional look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RMS_Queen_Mary_2_in_Hamburg_1.jpg
Note the cruiser stern on the Danish Thetis class.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/HDMS_Vaedderen_(F359).jpg
Note the transom stern on this Leander……
http://www.leander-project.homecall.co.uk/Leander/cleo%20top.jpg
The Thetis and Leander have similar dimensions but the former displaces more due to being ice strengthened.
It is interesting to compare the bows of the two ship. The Leander is designed primarily for fast ASW. While the Thetis is designed to ride out extreme weather. Shows how you can’t just go on dimensions to weigh up a ship.
X,
I am now awash with more nautical knowledge than I know what to do with
Being a simple cavalryman, I am content to class all RN ships as “floaty little boats” (and SSNs / SSBNs as ships), because it really winds up the Andrew. They talk about Tonka Toys when referring to my beautiful and functional Challenger, so that’s all right.
I can see the wider point you make. Visby is probably not the ideal choice for the FI.
@ James
I am a bit rusty on it all to be honest. Any way yes I like tanks,
http://www.tomtownsend-toyland.com/toyland/IMG_0446.jpg
http://cdn01.boeren-spul.be/full/201109241352360.jpg
http://www.4wdonline.com/Mil/Short/PiCs37/shorland01f.jpg
http://i.ebayimg.com/16/!B,Gf!S!CGk~$(KGrHgoH-EUEjlLl0EpmBKp8U,i(Uw~~_35.JPG
X,
I worked alongside an ex-RAF officer who was a PM in my old company. In his pre-RAF youth he’d been the 17th officer or something on a commercial cargo ship that did cross-ocean trips. He said that on his ship there was a central “corridor” that went from front to back of the ship, and the cargo was load left, right and on top of the corridor. Apparently, in a heavy sea you could see it flexing and twisting, and that was designed in.
If I’d have seen that flexing and twisting, I’d have been straight onto the lifeboat, and then only after casting off from the clearly doomed ship, have wondered whether that was a smart decision. To be honest, you know where you are with a Challenger (actually, sometimes you don’t and manage to monumentally foul up a BATUS exercise with some navigational embarrassment, but that’s a different story), and no Challenger I have ever been near looks as though it is going to break up on contact with some lumpy countryside.
“For those in peril on the sea” etc.
If you were going to create a Coast Guard, wouldn’t it make sense to at least include the Border Agency’s 42m Customs Cutters in it (which share a base design with the US Coast Guard’s new Sentinel class) and ideally the Scotish Fisheries Protection Agency’s patrol ships which includes two Jura class ships that are a bit larger than the River class. Of course none of them are currently armed (as far as I know) but if you were going to create some mixed Civilian (current Border Agency personnel and some RFA?) and RN/RNR manned Coast Guard command then the RN/RNR could man any weapon systems as required.
This Coast Guard/Coastal Command; would you also throw in Hydrographic and In-shore MCM?
As x pointed out Thetis Class was designed for the roughest of the N. Atlantic weather.
They were built long before RN got this recommendation from BMT for globally deployable (small) ships with good seakeeping (S. Atlantic being even rougher than the North):
” it was concluded that a vessel of 105 to
110 metres length offer significant advantages in
seakeeping performance. The beam chosen
represents a good balance between stability and
resistance characteristics, again drawing on
previous analyses.
Waterline Length 108 metres
Beam 15.4 metres
Full Load Displacement 3,500 tonnes
Draught at Full Load 4.5 metres ”
And (figures drawn from Wiki)they come very close to that recommendation
Displacement: 3,500 tons full load
Length: 112.3 m (368 ft 5 in)
Beam: 14.4 m (47 ft 3 in))
Draft: 6.0 m (19 ft 8 in)
An interesting article about war time roles for the USCG; it is written fron a US perspective but should highlight some capabilities a UKCG/RN CC could offer.
http://cgblog.org/2012/02/10/what-might-coast-guard-cutters-do-in-wartime-part-2-coast-guard-roles/
This is the current FIG FP vessel the Pharos,
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4051/4474536124_b9fa73019c_z.jpg?zz=1
Chartered from Byron Marine,
http://www.byronmarine.co.fk/index.htm
http://naval.review.cfps.dal.ca/pdf/BMT-STX_Industry_Day_Presentation.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Coast_Guard
Interesting:”The Norwegian Coast Guard, or Kystvakten in Norwegian, is a military force and part of the Royal Norwegian Navy, but has separate vessels, many of which are purpose-built.” From x’s link above.
Could we have a single class of ship which could perform Coast Guard/Command roles and “true” naval roles? If it were modular you could up-grade the CG/C vessels for war time roles, so it acts like a naval reserve and you have ruthless commonality of at least the “platform” (don’t worry, won’t start using the term warfighter ;p):
http://www.nps.edu/Academics/gseas/TSSE/docs/projects/1995/cpcx.pdf
http://www.nps.edu/academics/gseas/tsse/docs/projects/1995/pres.pdf
it was called C3.
What about something like a modular Leander – about 3,000 tons, diesel-electric drive for range and quietness, crew about 100? Equiped like a USCG for most duties but up-gradable with I-mast, towed sonar array, CAMM self-defence missiles, etc?
TD’s SIMSS/his earlier Presence Ship concept?
James,
Here’s footage of a corridor on a container ship flexing in heavy seas.
Makes your legs go all funny just watching it.
@ Gareth Jones
Thanks for those links. A thing to remember is that USCG vessels aren’t cheap. Take the NSC which is highly specialised and costs a fortune. There is little cross over between say NSC and LCS. But it is very interesting avenue to explore. I am always surprised by how few books there are on the USCG. I have a lovely thick glossy one with lots of photos but it is written in French.
x,
That was a lovely shorthand class in design, felt my fingers itching for the home laptop and my copy of Springsharp just to run the formulas, useful little calculator even though it has its time-period bugs ….
Lewis and James (can’t decide if that sounds more like a firm of solicitors or a breakfast spread
, I’ve been there on civil shipping when a corridor flexes, a reminder (as I would imagine you, James, have had jumping ditches in a CVR(T) or “remodelling” buildings) that physics is a lively thing and once in a while cares to remind you that it will bite you squarely on the arse if you don’t respect it. My sealegs are really quite good even for people who’ve spent more time than me on shipboard (don’t have many virtues but that’s one 
and it’s much, much worse in the interior spaces like that, under such conditions, than topside watching the North Atlantic bite at the breakwater. Only time I’ve ever got a little blurry afloat. And I’d echo x’s comment that, God bless hulls that sit well. It’s a world of difference in a Force 9 on the Irish Sea when you and the naval bods are the only folk out.
Also (and this is no knock, I’m quite sincerely interested in knowing much more cavalryman’s argot than I do, which is damn near none) submarines are “boats” because they lack funnels. In the post-sail age, funnels define ships not so much in law (though sometimes in maritime regulations) but in custom. And over here in the wilds of N. America they talk about (heaven help the usage) “driving” submarines. But then a heavy portion of the Americans’ submariners (not so much the RCN) are part of the USN’s famous “Catholic mafia” and there’s no helping Irish grammar ….
Back to the thread,
More’s the foolishness that the US did not “dual-key” a new frigate design off the NSC rather than chasing the Scotch mist of the LCS.
The more I think on it, besides the sheer utility of a Bay in the Caribbean, RNR is probably the simplest “third way” through the Fisheries issue, until there’s a much less Canadian (inspection and SAR) and much more American/Norse (active, sometimes armed, law enforcement) coast guard in the British system. Not a fan of the Border Agency, like the Americans’ awful “Homeland Security” department it sounds better in the original German
(and the Germans themselves have moved well past the mentality.) Back to good old Customs & Excise on one hand, Coast Guard on the other.
Per the FI, I will keep sticking by my idea in the other thread: APT (S), covering everyhing from Curacao to Walvis Bay, is a job for an SSN, not a “looks pretty in the Sunday supplements” ship. And the FI, as the only militarised border of British soil (not counting the SBAs here), deserves an actual warship. I’d stop at a frigate, and leave fisheries/SAR in the hands of Islands civil authority, but a warship nonetheless.
@ Jackstaff
Thank you!
I am very rusty on that stuff and it was dashed off. I should hit the books for some revision….
The Thai navy has bought one of these slightly larger with a 76mm gun and a flight deck for a super lynx. So you could say the works been done. I would like a fort 1 class stores ship with a hospital facility with one of these in the carribean as opposed to a bay.
@ Jackstaff re Irish Sea
The only time I have been really sick was a day trip to the Isle of Man in the late and much Lady of Mann. Too light a breakfast. The Irish Sea can be very lumpy; I am sure we were going up hill most of the way there.
Damn the lack of edit function!!
Submarines are boats because they don’t have more than one continuous deck above the waterline.
Technically a ship is vessel with 3 or more masts.
Can anyone explain what is in these ships that takes up so much space? I know that modern ships have a lot more electrical and electronic equipment than those of WWII but a Loch class Frigate or Black Swan class sloop seem to pack an awful lot more weaponry and crew into a smaller hull!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_class_patrol_vessel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_class_frigate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_class_sloop
Two reasons. One it easier to build bigger ships more cheaply. What you don’t get from reading the spec’s, um, it isn’t so much the River is “bigger” but that the Lochs/Black Swans are actually smaller. Ships from that era displace more (a re heavier) for a given volume. If both ships displaced 2000t the 21st would be bigger. Don’t forget either that a 100t of steel doesn’t actually add much in terms of length, beam, or draft. The other driver is accommodation standards are much, much, (and one more) much higher. In a Loch or Black Swan there would be 3 dozen men (roughly the crew of a River) in the space that about 8 would occupy in a River. (If anybody can give precise figures I would be grateful as that was for illustrative purposes.) And don’t forget the River has extra berths for 20 more. In WW2 era (and prior) vessels crews were fitted in around the ship’s systems. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a piece of machinery to be found in the middle of a mess deck. Steam ships have messy insides with pipes everywhere carrying steam to auxiliary systems etc. and tech’ of that era was large! (We forget how much the chip has helped to shrink mechanical systems.) And the sailors just had to live with it.
Oh yes weapons!!!!! The crew had to live around those too, well their support systems.
Accomodation on the River Class is in single or 2 berth en suite cabins. Singles for Co, XO, 1 Lt and Navs everyone else in 2 berths. With 3 watch manning you share with someone on an oppposite watch hence only actually share on 1 patrol (for the UK vessel). Do not think they have 20 spare bunks but prob 8 to 10 and 3 in sickbay but they have plenty of space for camp beds etc.
Re. the Norwegian Coast Guard.
The Norwegian (Bokmal) Wikipedia says that in 2005 it had 800 personnel and a budget of 800 million kroner. That included some air patrols. About 400 hrs annually according to this. But definitely no part of SAR helicopters as they are the Justice Ministry’s business.
The present budget looks to be nearly a billion kroner. For both quoted figures there has to be just the slightest suspicion that there are other costs that show up elsewhere in the budget. Probably under Defence Logistics/Forsvarets logistikkorganisasjon which looks to have an operating budget of around 5-6 billion kroner.
@ APATS said “Accomodation on the River Class is in single or 2 berth en suite cabins. Singles for Co, XO, 1 Lt and Navs everyone else in 2 berths.”
I meant square foot per man not how many per cabin. I should have explained the accommodation arrangements in the Rivers. My bad.
Actually I am waiting for Jed to pop up and tell us when he joined the Andrew he was shackled to an oar for the whole commission. And Pusser had made him pay for the shackle.
x,
And all they served was Satan’s Suppositories three times a day and God help you if you weren’t double jointed to get unshackled ….
You’ve highlighted the key change in crewing arrangements — park a T45 alongside HMS Belfast and you get ships of nearly identical size and quite similar displacement, but even if you crammed every birth for Andrews and marines full aboard the newer hull, you’re still talking about a total figure smaller by a factor of at least three. All without knocking your head on a steam valve or a magazine (unless you’re aboard a proper sailor’s vessel like a Hunt-class
@ Jackstaff
Hatch rash is very, very serious and very, very funny if it isn’t you.
Of course it is also easier to give over more space if smaller crews are needed.