HMS Lindisfarne (P300): 180 Miles to a North Sea Disaster

HMS Lindisfarne (P300)

Built on Trawler Lines

HMS Lindisfarne was built by Hall, Russell and Company and modelled closely on the ocean-going fishery protection trawlers FPV Jura and FPV Westra, launched on 1 June 1977 as one of the Island-class offshore patrol vessels designed for the steady, unglamorous work of guarding Britain's fishing grounds and North Sea oil and gas installations. She commissioned into the Royal Navy on 3 March 1978, entering service just as North Sea energy infrastructure was becoming an increasingly important part of Britain's economic and strategic interests.

Racing to the Alexander L. Kielland Disaster

HMS Lindisfarne took part in one of the most significant humanitarian operations of her career on 27 March 1980, when the Norwegian accommodation platform Alexander L. Kielland capsized in the North Sea, a catastrophic disaster that claimed 123 lives and remains one of the worst offshore accidents in North Sea history. HMS Lindisfarne steamed 180 miles to reach the site, joining the search for survivors and assisting in the grim task of recovering bodies from the water, a genuinely harrowing operation that called on every bit of her crew's seamanship and resolve.

A Long Career of Fishery Protection

HMS Lindisfarne went on to spend the following two decades on the steady, essential work of fishery protection and coastal patrol that her class had been built for, the kind of unglamorous but genuinely important duty that rarely made headlines but kept British waters properly policed year after year.

A New Life as BNS Turag

HMS Lindisfarne was sold to the Bangladesh Navy on 29 January 2004, and made the long 8,000-mile journey from Britain to her new home, calling at ports along the way before arriving at Mongla Naval Base in May 2004. She was formally commissioned into Bangladeshi service on 3 October 2004 as BNS Turag, under the Commodore Commanding Khulna, and has gone on to serve for over two decades in her new navy, with a crew of around 100 personnel, taking part in regional exercises and humanitarian operations, including a successful rescue of nine fishermen in September 2018, a fitting continuation of the rescue and patrol work that had defined so much of her earlier career under the White Ensign.