RN frigate to visit Malta

HMS Montrose will arrive in Malta on Thursday for a four-day visit.

The frigate is making her way back home from the Somali Basin after a very successful deployment on anti-piracy patrol in the Gulf and Aden and the Somali Basin.

Montrose has been busy for the last four months undertaking Operation Ocean Shield as part of a dedicated NATO counter-piracy task force.

During this period Montrosehas was involved in the destruction of pirate whalers and the freeing of the crew of the MV Beluga Fortune following a piracy attack.

The frigate also conducted operations to disrupt large merchant vessels which pirates have been using as ‘Mother Ships’; her Lynx helicopter too has been flying hours of sorties up and down the coast of Somalia conducting Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions of the known pirate camps gathering information for the coalition community on the movements of pirate camps and vessels.

The Ship’s Commanding Officer Commander Jonathan Lett Royal Navy said: “It has a been very successful and rewarding deployment where we have sent a very clear message to the Somali Pirates, that the Coalition Forces are still willing to take the fight to them, but it is now time to hand the baton to our successors and return to the UK”.

Commissioned by Lady Edith Rifkind in 1992, HMS Montroseis a Type 23 Duke Class Frigate with a length of 133 metres and displacing over 4000 tonnes. She currently has a complement of 199 officers and ratings and is equipped with the latest weapons, sensors and communications systems, including the vertical launch Seawolf missile system for close air defence, a 4.5 inch gun, anti submarine torpedoes, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and a Lynx helicopter.