HMS Dagger (P296): Guarding the Rock at 41 Knots

Built for Sovereignty Protection

HMS Dagger was built by Marine Specialised Technology as one of the Royal Navy's Cutlass-class fast patrol boats, a nimble type capable of speeds around 41 knots and purpose-designed for exactly the kind of close-in coastal security and sovereignty protection work that a place like Gibraltar demands. She was commissioned into the Royal Navy on 14 July 2022, having already arrived on station that April.

Joining the Gibraltar Squadron

Dagger and her sister ship HMS Cutlass arrived together to reinforce the Gibraltar Squadron, replacing the older Scimitar-class patrol vessels that had been withdrawn from service in 2020, part of a £10 million investment in the unit that saw each new vessel costing some £5 million. Their job is straightforward but far from trivial: patrolling British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and asserting British sovereignty in one of the most geopolitically sensitive patches of sea in Europe.

Shadowing Spanish Warships

Dagger's short career so far has been anything but quiet. In April 2023, she escorted the Spanish patrol ship Infanta Cristina during a disputed transit through Gibraltar's waters, precisely the sort of tense but carefully managed encounter that has defined naval activity around the Rock for generations. She followed this with a foreign port visit to Tangier, Morocco in May 2023, before repeating her escort duties in August 2024, shadowing the Spanish Navy vessel Rayo through another contested passage, a reminder that even the newest and smallest vessels in the fleet can find themselves at the sharp end of long-running disputes over sovereign waters.