HMS Clyde (P257): Twelve Years Guarding the Falklands, and a Rescue at Sea

The First Ship Built at Portsmouth in Forty Years

HMS Clyde was built by VT Shipbuilding at Portsmouth Naval Base, launched on 14 June 2006, the first ship built entirely at Portsmouth Naval Base in forty years, a genuinely notable milestone for a dockyard with such a long shipbuilding heritage. She commissioned on 30 January 2007, the fourth vessel of the River-class offshore patrol vessels, displacing between 1,850 and 2,000 tonnes and armed with a 30mm DS30B gun, miniguns and general-purpose machine guns, carrying a complement of 36 with an impressive endurance of 21 days and a range of 5,500 nautical miles.

Twelve Years Guarding the Falklands

HMS Clyde was stationed in the South Atlantic almost immediately after commissioning, replacing HMS Dumbarton Castle as the dedicated Falkland Islands patrol vessel, and went on to remain there for an extraordinary twelve years, considerably longer than her original contract, which had initially been set to run only until 2018. Her long South Atlantic posting made her an enduring and familiar presence in the region, providing fisheries protection, maritime security and a visible symbol of British commitment to the islands' defence.

Rescuing 347 From a Burning Cruise Liner

In November 2015, HMS Clyde carried out one of the most significant rescues of her career, saving 347 passengers and crew from the cruise ship Le Boreal after an engine room fire broke out near the Falkland Islands, a genuinely major maritime emergency that could have ended very differently without a capable naval vessel positioned nearby to respond. In November 2017, HMS Clyde joined the international search for the missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, a diplomatically significant gesture of assistance to a nation with which Britain's relationship remained shaped by the legacy of the 1982 Falklands War, and a genuinely difficult search operation that ultimately confirmed the tragic loss of the submarine and her entire crew.

A New Flag in the Gulf

HMS Clyde was decommissioned on 20 December 2019, her long Falklands vigil finally at an end, and was transferred to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force on 7 August 2020, renamed RBNS Al-Zubara, continuing in active service with an entirely different navy in an entirely different ocean. Her career, spanning twelve years of steady, essential South Atlantic patrol work punctuated by a dramatic rescue and a poignant search for a lost submarine, stands as one of the more quietly significant contributions of any single Royal Navy patrol vessel of the twenty-first century.