HMS Swift (P243): From Hong Kong to Ireland's Biggest Drug Bust

Built for the Hong Kong Squadron

HMS Swift was built by Hall Russell and Company in Scotland in 1984, one of five Peacock-class coastal patrol vessels purpose-built for the Royal Navy's Hong Kong Squadron, tasked with policing the colony's crowded and demanding waters against smugglers and illegal immigration.

Sold On After Barely Three Years

Like her sister ship HMS Swallow, Swift served only around three years in Hong Kong before being sold, still a comparatively new vessel, to the Irish government, which was looking to modernise its own patrol capability with well-built, relatively young ships.

Commissioned as LE Orla

Purchased in 1988, Swift was delivered to Cork Harbour and formally commissioned into the Irish Naval Service alongside her sister ship in January 1989, taking the name LE Orla, honouring a grand-niece of the legendary Irish High King Brian Boru.

The Biggest Drug Seizure in the State's History

LE Orla achieved genuine national significance in 1993, when she intercepted and boarded the 65-foot ketch Brime at sea, resulting in what was at the time the biggest drug seizure in the history of the Irish state, a landmark operational success that established her reputation within the Naval Service for years afterward.

Retired After Thirty-Five Years

LE Orla and her sister ship finally departed Cork Harbour for the last time on 22 April 2024, escorted by Port of Cork pilot boats and tugs on their way to an overseas scrap recycling facility, retired due to their age and Ireland's ongoing Naval Service crewing shortages, closing out an unusually long and eventful career that had begun three decades earlier in the waters of Hong Kong.