HMS Anglesey (P277): The Patrol Vessel That Saved Sailors From the Fastnet Storm

Built for an Expanding Fishing Zone

HMS Anglesey owed her existence to a change in international law rather than any military necessity. When Britain extended its Exclusive Economic Zone to 200 nautical miles, the Royal Navy needed more patrol vessels to enforce it, and ordered a further two Island-class ships, Anglesey and her sister Alderney, in October 1977, built to the same rugged fishing-boat-derived design as the rest of the class. Built by Hall, Russell and Company in Aberdeen, Anglesey was laid down on 6 February 1978, launched that October, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 1 June 1979, joining the Offshore Division of the Fishery Protection Squadron.

A Rescue in the Middle of Disaster

Anglesey had barely finished working up before she was called into one of the defining maritime tragedies of the era. In August 1979, the Fastnet yacht race was struck by a ferocious, unforecast storm that killed 15 competitors and became one of the deadliest events in the history of offshore sailing. Anglesey took part in the resulting rescue operations, helping save seven sailors from the stricken yacht Bonaventure II, a genuinely dramatic piece of real-world seamanship for a ship whose day job was the considerably less glamorous business of checking fishing licences and monitoring North Sea installations.

Two Decades of Quiet Patrol Work

Beyond that single dramatic episode, Anglesey's Royal Navy career followed the steady, low-key pattern typical of her class, patrolling British waters and protecting fishing grounds and offshore installations for over two decades, unglamorous work that nonetheless mattered a great deal to the country's economic interests at sea.

A New Flag in South Asia

Anglesey was sold to the Bangladesh Navy in 2002, transferred that September, and formally commissioned into Bangladeshi service on 3 October 2004. In her new role she has continued to earn her keep, taking part in Exercise Aman 2013 at Karachi and paying goodwill visits to Colombo and Visakhapatnam that same year, carrying the same basic hull and purpose, patrol and presence, into an entirely different ocean from the one she was originally built to watch over.