HMS Speedy (P296): The Royal Navy's One and Only Hydrofoil

HMS Speedy (P296)

A Boeing Jetfoil in Royal Navy Colours

HMS Speedy was a genuine oddity in the Royal Navy fleet, a Boeing Jetfoil built on the civilian Boeing 929 design, constructed by Boeing in Seattle and shipped to Britain to be fitted out by Vosper Thornycroft. Ordered in June 1978, laid down that year, launched on 9 July 1979 by Margaret Jay, wife of the British Ambassador to the United States, and commissioned in 1980, Speedy was intended as the first of a planned class of twelve hydrofoils, an ambitious attempt to bring cutting-edge high-speed hull technology into front-line Royal Navy service.

Gathering Data on a New Kind of Ship

Assigned to the Fishery Protection Squadron and North Sea Squadron from September 1981, Speedy's real purpose was to give the Royal Navy operational experience and hard performance data on hydrofoil technology, skimming above the waves on her foils rather than ploughing through them in the conventional way. In 1982 she underwent minesweeping and minelaying trials at Portsmouth, which proved unsuccessful and exposed the platform's real limitations for mine countermeasure work, a useful if disappointing result that helped explain why the planned class of twelve never materialised beyond this single ship.

A Long Second Career as a Ferry

Sold into mercantile service in 1986, the former Speedy found an entirely new purpose as Lilau, a high-speed passenger ferry running between Hong Kong and Macau under operator Far East Hydrofoil, later TurboJET, carrying passengers across the Pearl River Delta for well over three decades, a far longer and busier career than she had ever managed under the White Ensign.

Retired After the Bridge Opened

The opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge steadily eroded demand for the ferry route Lilau had served for so long, and the vessel sat idle from 2019 before finally being scrapped in 2021, bringing to an end the working life of what remains the only hydrofoil the Royal Navy ever operated, a brief but genuinely fascinating experiment in getting a warship to fly just above the water rather than through it.