HMS Protector (A173): The Norwegian Icebreaker Now Guarding Britain's Polar Interests

Born a Polar Bear

HMS Protector did not begin her life as a Royal Navy ship at all. She was built as MV Polarbjorn, Norwegian for polar bear, a purpose-built icebreaking research vessel constructed for the Bergen-based GC Rieber Shipping, laid down in September 2000 and launched the following July, and spent her early years chartered out for polar research and subsea support work in some of the most demanding waters on Earth. It was precisely that proven ice-capable pedigree that caught the Royal Navy's attention when it suddenly needed a replacement ship.

An Emergency Replacement That Became Permanent

In April 2011, with the Navy's previous ice patrol ship HMS Endurance out of action following serious flooding damage, Polarbjorn was chartered as a stopgap replacement at a cost of £8.7 million a year. A quick ten-day refit in Denmark relocated her helicopter deck from above the bridge to the stern and added a multibeam echosounder for hydrographic survey work, and she commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Protector on 23 June 2011, in a ceremony deliberately timed to fall on the fiftieth anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty coming into force. The stopgap arrangement proved successful enough that the Ministry of Defence bought her outright in September 2013 for £51 million, turning what began as an emergency fix into the Navy's long-term solution for its polar mission.

Firefighting in Antarctica

Protector's work has rarely stayed purely scientific. In February 2012 she responded to a serious fire at Brazil's Comandante Ferraz research station in Antarctica, deploying 23 sailors and firefighting equipment to help an allied nation's scientists in genuinely difficult, remote conditions where outside help of any kind is desperately hard to come by. That same season she delivered 170 cubic metres of aviation fuel to the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera station, the kind of unglamorous logistics work that keeps Britain's entire scientific presence in Antarctica functioning.

Waters No Royal Navy Ship Had Sailed in Decades

Between 2015 and 2016, Protector undertook a twenty-month deployment that took her into the Ross Sea, marking the first time any Royal Navy or British government vessel had operated in the waters south of Australia and New Zealand since 1936, a genuinely historic return to a part of the world Britain's polar ambitions had rather neglected for the best part of a century.

A Search That Ended in Tragedy

In November 2017, Protector was redeployed to join the international search for the missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, which had vanished with 44 crew aboard in the South Atlantic. The submarine and her crew were not found alive, and the loss remains one of the more sobering reminders of just how unforgiving deep, cold southern waters can be; Protector's role in that search, alongside vessels from many nations, reflected the kind of genuine international cooperation that underpins so much of the work done in these remote regions, even when the outcome is not the one anyone hopes for.

Further North Than Any Royal Navy Ship Before Her

Protector's polar credentials are not limited to the south. During a 2021 Arctic patrol she reached a position just 1,050 kilometres from the North Pole, the furthest north any Royal Navy surface ship has ever sailed, a record that underlines just how capable a converted Norwegian research icebreaker turned out to be for a navy that had, for decades, made do with rather less specialised vessels for its polar work.

Still Working Both Ends of the Earth

Based at Devonport since 2014, HMS Protector remains in active service today, continuing her seasonal rhythm of Antarctic deployments through the southern summer, supporting British scientific research, surveying largely uncharted polar waters, and representing British interests in some of the most remote and least forgiving parts of the planet. For a ship that started out simply chasing icebergs for a Norwegian research company, it has been a remarkable second career.