The Royal Navy's new ice patrol ship, HMS Protector left Portsmouth Monday for a seven-month deployment surveying and patrolling the frozen continent of Antarctica. The 5.000-tons ice-breaking ship completed an intensive period of sea trials and training prior to deploying to the Antarctic Peninsula.
Scientists who have discovered previously unknown underwater volcanoes around the remote South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean say the research is important to help understand what happens when volcanoes erupt or collapse underwater.
The next Royal Navy Ice patrol vessel is expected this week in Portsmouth where she will be taking over the navy’s Antarctic mission in November following the accident suffered by HMS Endurance in 2008.
The Royal Navy will have a new ‘Protector’ of British interests in Antarctica. HMS Protector, upholding the famous name of the 1950s and 60s Antarctic survey vessel, is being loaned on a three-year trial with the Fleet while the long-term future of the Antarctic Patrol vessel HMS Endurance is considered.
The South Georgia tourist season is drawing to a close with just one cruise ship left to visit in early April, according to the latest edition of the South Georgia Newsletter.
Royal Navy Portsmouth-based Type 42 destroyer HMS Gloucester, which is nearing the end of a seven-month deployment to the South Atlantic, has rounded off her Falkland Islands’ patrol with a visit to South Georgia.
The Royal Navy has revealed it is replacing flood-damaged HMS Endurance with an icebreaker to be named HMS Protector.
The huge tabular blocks of ice that frequently break off Antarctica get swept towards the Atlantic and then ground on the shallow continental shelf that surrounds the 170km-long island of South Georgia.
The future of the Royal Navy’s ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance may remain in doubt well over a year after it nearly sank in the Straits of Magellan and returned to Portsmouth on the lift ship MV Target, but there is no doubting the UK’s ongoing commitment to the Antarctic Treaty.