No - The Royal Navy has NOT been humiliated in Gibraltar.

The Royal Navy has apparently been ‘humiliated’ because a ship has returned to port with a possible mechanical issue. This seems to be the nub of the story in some of today’s papers, which breathlessly report that HMS TRENT has retuned to port in Gibraltar for an unspecified breakdown. Is this a case of humiliation, or is it actually fairly routine occurrence?

HMS TRENT recently commissioned and sailed to Gibraltar from the UK, in order to support operations in the Med. There is some speculation that she is also to act as an informal ‘guardship’ in Gibraltar, providing additional presence in the territory in addition to the Royal Navy Gibraltar Squadron, although it is likely that she’ll be on a much larger roaming mission than just the territorial waters.

On arrival in Gibraltar she then spent three days alongside before sailing, before returning just 12 hours later. According to reports she needed to be ‘dragged’ alongside by tugs when she returned to the port. In the eyes of some, this is a humiliation because the ship reportedly broke down, and in turn came back alongside.

Is it a humiliation though? No, it really isn’t.

The reality of operating ships is that they are complicated and challenging to use and maintain. They are at its heart a combination of multiple different machines, systems, technology and circuits all brought together in one hull and designed to operate as a single entity.  Sometimes things may not work as expected – that is a reality of taking advanced equipment, using it and discovering that things can, and do break or not work as planned. That is a reality faced by every navy on the planet, not just the Royal Navy.

Ships have defects, breakdowns and problems all the time – its part of operating ships at sea, and it does happen. Sometimes they need spare parts to replace something that has life expired or broken Is it humiliating if something like that happens – no, not really, its part of life.

For the Royal Navy the challenge is always to balance off the risks between continuing and accepting the defect and trying to fix it locally or pausing and putting into harbour to get support flown out to fix it. In this case the ship appears to have taken the decision to come back alongside, rather than press on.

This seems a fairly pragmatic case of managing the risks appropriately – rather than press on and then have it occur in a more exposed position, for example operating in the Eastern Med without local support, the ship pulled back in to a friendly dockyard to get the problem looked at safely and effectively.

Its rather like driving when the engine warning lights come on – do you press on regardless, or if you happen to be passing a garage, pull in and get it looked at just to be sure?

What seems to have happened is an issue occurred, as the ship was close to her effective base port it was deemed more sensible to come alongside and wait for a spare part, rather than press on and have to make complex port calls later on instead to fix it.

This is both sensible and a good reminder of the flexibility of the military facilities in Gibraltar. The presence of an RAF detachment and runway means that it is easy to fly aircraft in and out with spare parts as required, making effective use of the British Armed Forces excellent global logistics network.

The ship alongside is likely to incur far lower challenges in terms of costs, shore support, force protection and so on than if she had pulled into a random foreign port to wait for spare parts to arrive.

It is much faster and easier to wait in a location where you can easily get military and logistical spares support in to post than it is to push on, and then experience the challenges of getting a spare part out to a port rarely visited.

For example, had the ship had an issue later on and gone into another country’s ports, then suddenly you’ve got issues about getting DIPCLEAR to get an RAF aircraft to fly into country with the right equipment, which means finding an RAF airframe, taking it off whatever scheduled task it was on and spending a lot of money to send it on an additional trip to the new country, rather than rely on scheduled trips to Gibraltar.

There would be all manner of diplomatic issues about getting the equipment to the ship, and potentially significant charges for shore support (e.g. power, security, mooring fees etc) as well as the challenges of local force protection. The cost to the taxpayer would have been significant and generated a lot of work for lots of people to get the spare part to the ship.

Alternatively, by pulling back into port, its possible to resolve the issue as an utterly routine challenge in a port that plays home to Royal Navy warships all the time and houses a Royal Navy shore base. It’s a total no brainer of an option.

The issue of the tugs seems to have upset people based on a single source quote saying that the ship should just have come alongside without them. Frankly this is a spectacularly stupid thing to try and do.

If you are the CO of a warship, operating in confined waters with a lot of merchant traffic about, the last thing you want to do if you’ve had a tiny hint of mechanical issues is come alongside without taking pragmatic steps to ensure you can complete the manoeuvre safely.

Coming alongside is always a risky business and is where things can go very wrong very quickly. If the ship had had machinery breakdown or lost power at a critical point in the docking process, then she may have potentially collided with another vessel or the dock wall, doing substantial damage in the process.

There is always an appropriate level of risk management to be taken into account here – is the most prudent course of action to steam in without tugs, or is it better to make use of the on call support and be certain you can come alongside safely?

Its all well and good to snipe anonymously about how ‘patrol ships are nimble’ – but that’s rather missing the point. Out at sea a patrol ship is nimble, but in harbour a 90m long 2000 tonne vessel (not far off dimensions from early Cold War era frigate classes) is less dainty.

Why would you take the risk of smashing your ship, potentially damaging it and causing harm when you don’t have to? There is nothing macho about coming alongside saying ‘to hell with the tugs’ if you have even the slightest concern – frankly, it would be grossly irresponsible behaviour.

More to the point, the River Class Batch 2 vessels routinely use tugs for docking evolutions back in the UK, so its hardly news that the same process has occurred in Gibraltar. Speak to any CO of a larger vessel and they will tell you that they use, or plan to use tugs if required, on a regular basis – the risks are just too great to not consider it as part of being a responsible CO.

There is also one more point that hopefully puts this utter nonsense to bed. The first time HMS FORTH visited Gibraltar last year, she entered port with tugs in attendance. Look at the link to the Gibraltar Chronicle dated 09 August. It shows an image of HMS TRENT arriving in Gibraltar for the first time with two tugs in attendance as she comes alongside. 

In other words, one minute its not remotely of concern that tugs were present, the next minute due to her coming alongside with a minor issue, suddenly the Royal Navy is ‘humiliated’. What a lot of utter nonsense. 

The good news story here is pretty simple to understand. A Royal Navy ship (one of several now permanently operating in the Med) experienced a very minor issue. She chose to make use of one of the Royal Navy’s several overseas naval bases (a good reminder too that the RN is one of a tiny handful of nations to possess permanent overseas naval bases) to get more effective and timely support, by relying on the global logistics capabilities of the British Armed Forces and defence industry to resolve the problem quickly and effectively. Oh, and she happened to use tugs to come alongside in the manner that practically every CO going would do.

That’s the story – one of global presence, global operations and the exercising of common sense to reduce unnecessary risk and make the problem easier to fix. It’s a struggle to see any bad news here at all except in the eyes of those determined to find fault with anything the RN does.