Family and friends welcome home HMS Montrose as four-year mission ends
Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose has returned to Plymouth – the last major warship returning home in time for Christmas.
After more than four years away from the UK, about 800 family members and friends lined the jetty at Devonport naval b ase to welcome home the warship.
HMS Montrose left the UK in October 2018 and has been operating from the Royal Navy's Naval Support Facility in Bahrain since April 2019.
Since leaving home, Montrose has spent the bulk of her time deployed in the Gulf region, carrying out patrols to safeguard merchant shipping, tackle criminal and terrorist activity, including arms and drugs smuggling, and working with allies as part of the international security effort.
Since 2020, Montrose has seized more than 16 tonnes of illegal narcotics over 10 busts, denying criminal/terrorist groups proceeds worth at least £80m on the UK wholesale market.
In a first for the Royal Navy, HMS Montrose twice intercepted boats trying to ship high-tech weaponry, contravening a UN Security Council Resolution, seizing surface-to-air missiles and engines for cruise missiles in the process.
Deployment fact file
During deployment HMS Montrose has:
- Achieved more than 10 drugs busts, seizing 16 tonnes of illegal narcotics worth at least £80m
- Seized illegal shipments of surface-to-air missiles and cruise missile engines in the first bust of its kind by the Royal Navy in the region
- A crew of 172
- Guided more than 130 merchant vessels – cargo carriers, tankers, and container ships – through choke points
- Covered 204,602 miles as of 3 December
- Has been dual crewed throughout her time operating in the Gulf, with a Port and Starboard crew rotating every four months – she has had 11 crew rotations between Port and Starboard Crews since deploying
- Been deployed for 4 years, 1 month and 18 days, since deploying on 29 October 2018
- Spent 1,509 days away from the UK, more than 1,350 of them in the Gulf
- Sailed more than 140,000 nautical miles (two-thirds of the distance to the moon)
Some of those activities – including a succession of drugs busts, plus the arms seizure in early 2022 – earned the frigate's Commanding Officer Claire Thompson an OBE in the King's first operational honours list, announced last month.
Commander Thompson said: "Returning after four years away, in time for Christmas, and with 800 of our families and friends waiting for us on the jetty, means the ship's been excited and alive with expectation all week.
"The homecoming is a huge occasion and one that we have been looking forward to, over the past six months.
"Some of our younger sailors have never experienced the thrill of bringing a ship home and having their families on the jetty to meet them – it's something I'm sure they will never forget."
Cdr Thompson added: "I'm enormously proud of what my team and the ship have achieved over those four years.
"It is fantastic to get them all home for the festive period, especially given we were away last year – we were actually conducting boarding operations on Christmas Day in 2021."
Principal Warfare Officer Lieutenant Commander Shaun Dodd has completed three tours of duty aboard Montrose in the Gulf and is "hugely proud of the work my team and I have achieved".
"Having worked on the ship's homecoming, I knew it would be a poignant, memorable and happy occasion for all involved," he said.
Seaman Specialist Able Seaman Charlie Grant said: "The ship has done some rewarding work and I am proud to have been a part of that."
Although the ship has been away from the UK for more than four years, her sailors and Royal Marines have not.
Her crew changes every four months, with the rotations planned so that the personnel spend at least one Christmas in two at home with loved ones.
The 11 rotations of the crew also spared the ship the month-long voyage to and from the Middle East at the beginning and end of a regular six or seven-month deployment, making the ship available for more operations, and allowing personnel to plan their lives with much greater certainty.
After a short period of maintenance, Montrose will return to sea early in 2023 for operational duties and a 'farewell tour' – including a visit to her namesake Scottish town – before the ship is formally decommissioned in the spring.
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