HMS Blazer (P279): A Foxhound's Name, Now Training Tomorrow's Naval Officers

A Name With an Unusual Pedigree

HMS Blazer is the seventh Royal Navy vessel to carry the name, a tradition that stretches back to 1797, when the First Lord of the Admiralty named the original gunboat after a favourite foxhound from his own pack, giving HMS Blazer one of the more charming ship-naming stories in the entire fleet list. The current HMS Blazer was built by Watercraft Marine (with Vosper Thornycroft also credited in the design and building record) and commissioned in 1988, an Archer-class patrol vessel, one of a family of small, purpose-built training craft designed from the outset to introduce officer cadets to life at sea rather than to fight.

Training the Next Generation

HMS Blazer's core mission has always been sea training, principally in support of the Southampton University Royal Naval Unit and, at various points, the Portsmouth University Royal Naval Unit, running weekly drill evenings during university terms before heading off on more adventurous deployments during the holidays. Despite her modest dimensions, just 21 metres long and 54 tonnes displacement, HMS Blazer gives officer cadets their first experience of taking the helm and working towards navigation qualifications, and her small size means she can reach ports and harbours that far larger fleet units simply cannot enter, making her a genuinely useful training platform even if she will never make headlines for firepower. She carries a minimum crew of five and can accommodate up to twenty people aboard, with an endurance of 550 nautical miles at 22 knots, and has ranged as far afield as the Baltic Sea despite her size.

Seized Off Cherbourg

HMS Blazer's most dramatic moment came on 29 March 1993, during an otherwise routine visit to Cherbourg, when French fishermen protesting fishing quotas seized the ship as she manoeuvred near the port, confining her crew below decks for three hours and burning the White Ensign in front of them before French authorities intervened and arrested those responsible. It was a genuinely alarming episode for a training vessel with a young and largely inexperienced crew aboard, and a reminder that even the smallest and least martial ships in the fleet can find themselves caught up in international incidents entirely beyond their control.

Still on Duty

In recent years HMS Blazer has taken on a more operational role, joining the reconstituted Coastal Forces Squadron and conducting maritime security patrols in European coastal waters from her base at HMNB Devonport in Plymouth, alongside her long-standing training duties, VVIP visits, and officer cadet training work with Britannia Royal Naval College. In early 2024, HMS Blazer deployed to northern Norway as part of NATO's Exercise Steadfast Defender alongside three of her sister ships, a striking demonstration that a vessel built primarily to teach students the basics of seamanship can still, decades into her career, take her place in one of NATO's largest and most significant collective exercises, proof that the smallest ships in the fleet often do some of its most enduring work.