MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
HMS Endurance heads for the Antarctic
The Royal Navy's ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance is on her way to the South Atlantic and Antarctic for her annual deployment.
The 6,500-ton icebreaker left Portsmouth on Trafalgar Day, October 21, for an eight-month stint in the far south, and is not expected to return to Hampshire until early next summer.
The Antarctic is almost three times the size of continental USA, and is the world's highest, windiest and coldest continent. It carries ice sheets up to 4km thick in places, and some 70 per cent of the world's fresh water is locked up in that ice.
Indeed, Antarctica is estimated to hold 90 per cent of the world's ice ? and that ice holds a vital store of indicators hinting at the processes which have shaped the world over thousands of years. Some believe the Antarctic to be the engine room of world climate, as changes here have a bearing across the globe.
Under the Antarctic Treaty all claims to sovereignty over the beautiful and wild land around the South Pole are in abeyance, but the UK, along with 27 other nations, retains a prominent presence in the shape of major scientific and survey work. And it is this work which Endurance ? which has a distinctive red-painted hull to allow her to be more easily spotted amongst the ice floes ? is ideally equipped to support, providing a presence in the area to back the scientists in terms of transport, supplies and survey data.
The ship can break up to 1.5 metres of ?first-year' ice, and she carries two Lynx helicopters, seven boats (including two specialist survey motor boats), a diving team led by a specialist diver, a detachment of Royal Marines, surveying specialists, specialist photographers, and her hold can carry ten standard containers and a Land Rover. Her operational programme is drawn up to meet the requirements of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on sovereignty, presence and inspection issues, the British Antarctic Survey in support of scientific research, and the UK Hydrographic Office for surveying work ? an important role, as more and more cruise ships of various sizes are visiting the region. She also has a defence diplomacy role, visiting communities in South America, western Africa and the Atlantic Ocean Dependencies on her way to and from her destination.
On this deployment, Endurance will call in at Salvador, Brazil, on her way south, while her first concentrated work period in South Georgia will see her through from November until the New Year ? guaranteeing a white Christmas.
From January until mid-March, two further work periods will be spent in latitudes as far as 74 degrees south, in amongst the ice off the Antarctic Peninsula, when teams of surveyors will detach for up to a month at a time. She is due to begin her passage home in March, escaping the Antarctic winter, and will call in on the wets coast of South America on the way.
Source Navy News
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesCommenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!