The HMS Bulwark arrived at Palumbo Shipyards this morning for its sailors and marines to enjoy an operational five-day stand-down after saving nearly 3,000 migrants in the Mediterranean in an intensive three-week patrol.

Nick Cooke-Priest, captain of the19,000-tonne amphibious assault ship, remarked this was one of the largest humanitarian operations in which the British Navy participated in recent years. 

"The numbers here are huge so it is a premeditated search and rescue task, different [from normal operations]," he said.

Last Sunday alone, the ship rescued some 1,200 migrants in a matter of hours. They were then deported to Sicily.

He added it was extremely difficult to predict what would happen in the coming weeks and so it was difficult to say if the present number of ships deployed by various European navies would be enough to address the situation. 

A couple of weeks ago he had warned that some 500,000 migrants were expected to cross the Mediterranean this summer.

Asked about the long term solution to this crisis, he said it all depended on political stability in Libya.

He also pointed out that during their operation they had not interacted with the Libyan authorities as missions were carried out outside the Libyan waters. 

Captain Cooke-Priest noted that most of the migrants would not know how to swim and probably had never been at sea before and so this made the rescue operation even more delicate. He said it was very common for the asylum seekers to be suffering from dehydration, and at times malaria or typhoid.