Name HMS Scott Ordered 20 January 1995 Refit Major 2013-2014 Launched 13 October 1996 Draft 8.3 m | Operator Royal Navy Commissioned 30 June 1997 Weight 13,500 tons Length 131 m Builder Appledore Shipbuilders | |
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Homeport HMNB Devonport, Plymouth | ||
HMS Scott is an ocean survey vessel of the Royal Navy, and the only vessel of her class. She is the third Royal Navy ship to carry the name, and the second to be named after the Antarctic explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. She was ordered to replace the survey ship HMS Hecla.
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Construction
The ship was ordered from BAeSEMA in 1995 to replace the ageing HMS Hecla. She was built at the Appledore Shipbuilders in North Devon and launched on 13 October 1996 by Mrs Carolyn Portillo, wife of Michael Portillo, the then-Secretary of State for Defence. She was commissioned on 20 June 1997. Not only is she the largest vessel in the Royal Navy's Hydrographic Squadron, and the fourth largest in the entire fleet, but she is also the largest survey vessel in Western Europe.
Role
Scott is the Royal Navy's only ocean survey vessel. She can remain at sea for up to 300 days a year, thanks to her novel crew rotation system. Her complement of 78 is divided into three sections: two sections are required to keep the ship operational, with the third on shore on leave or in training. When the ship returns to port, one crew section on board is replaced by the section on shore. The ship can then deploy again almost immediately. As with all of the Royal Navy's large survey vessels, Scott has an auxiliary role in support of mine countermeasure vessels.
History
In February 2005 Scott surveyed the seabed around the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which varies in depth between 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and 5,000 m (16,000 ft). The survey, conducted using a high-resolution, multi-beam sonar system, revealed that the earthquake had made a huge impact on the topography of the seabed.
In September 2006, Scott was granted the Freedom of the City of Swansea. From August 2008 until June 2009 she was refitted in Portsmouth.
On 26 October 2009 and again on 25 November 2010 the ship deployed to the South Atlantic and Antarctic to cover for the non-availability of the Royal Navy icebreaker HMS Endurance. In February 2010, Scott hosted artist Rowan Huntley for a month in Antarctica, in a new artist-in-residence programme for the Royal Navy inaugurated by the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI).
In June 2010, the ship visited Cardiff to mark the centenary of Robert Falcon Scott's departure from Cardiff on 15 June 1910 for the South Pole, at the start of the Terra Nova Expedition. In February 2011, Scott hosted Dafila Scott, Scott's granddaughter, in Antarctica for a month as the Friends of the SPRI's second artist-in-residence.
The ship returned to Devonport in April 2011. With the task of Antarctic patrol taken over by HMS Protector in that year, Scott left Devonport in September to resume deep-water surveying, initially in the Atlantic. From November 2013 to June 2014 her most extensive refit to date took place, in Devonport. This included coating the hull with Hempasil X3 non-toxic anti-fouling paint, which is expected to increase her fuel efficiency.