HMS Biter (P270): From University Training Boat to NATO's Arctic Flank

HMS Biter (P270)

A Small Boat Built for Big Lessons

HMS Biter was built by Watercraft Ltd at Shoreham-by-Sea, launched on 17 October 1985 as one of ten vessels ordered as the P2000 class, and commissioned on 25 January 1986. An Archer-class patrol vessel displacing just 54 tonnes and measuring 20.8 metres, she is powered by twin diesel engines rated at 873 brake horsepower each, giving her a designed top speed of 45 knots, though her operational speed is kept considerably more modest in practice. HMS Biter initially served with the Royal Naval Reserve's Mersey Division before transferring in 1990 to the Manchester and Salford University Royal Naval Unit, the role she has performed ever since.

Teaching Students to Sail

HMS Biter's primary purpose is providing naval training to university students most weekends, along with more extended Easter and summer deployments to ports around the United Kingdom and northern Europe, giving undergraduates a genuine taste of naval discipline, seamanship and leadership alongside their academic studies. She took part in the Battle of the Atlantic 50th Anniversary Fleet Review in May 1993, helped launch the Round the World Clipper Race in Liverpool in December 2005, and attended the launching of the submarine HMS Astute at Barrow-in-Furness in July 2007, giving her student crews a genuinely memorable front-row seat to a significant piece of modern naval history.

An Unexpected Trip to the Arctic

In early 2024, HMS Biter took part in NATO's major Steadfast Defender exercise with a deployment to northern Norway, a considerable undertaking for a small training vessel more usually found teaching students the basics around Liverpool and the northwest coast, and was subsequently lifted back to the UK aboard the sealift vessel MV Hartland Point rather than making the long voyage home under her own power. She remains in active service today, based at HMS Eaglet in Liverpool under the command of a lieutenant with a permanent crew of four Royal Navy personnel, still doing the essential, unglamorous work of turning students into sailors, one weekend deployment at a time.