Tri-Service

HMS Bulwark Returns Just In Time For Christmas

The Royal Navy’s amphibious flagship HMS Bulwark has returned home to Plymouth.

She and her crew were welcomed into dock by hundreds of waiting friends and family after a three-month deployment to the Middle East.

Crowds lined the jetty to cheer their loved ones home for Christmas.

They were also greeted with an earlier helicopter flypast and a gunfire salute by the ship as she passed through Plymouth Sound.

Deployed as part of the Royal Navy’s Joint Expeditionary Force (Maritime) Task Group, HMS Bulwark left Plymouth in September along with HMS Ocean.

Captain James Parkin, the Captain of HMS Bulwark said:

“HMS Bulwark has had a fantastic deployment. From demanding amphibious operations, through engagement with our partners and allies in the Mediterranean and Middle East, to being constantly ready for emergent tasking, my sailors and Royal Marines have been outstanding ambassadors for the United Kingdom. They, and their forebears over the last five years of this operating period, have delivered a ship with an outstanding reputation for getting the job done in the Royal Navy and far beyond.”

HMS Bulwark's task group took part in amphibious exercises off Albania and Egypt before heading through the Suez Canal and conducting further exercises in Oman.

She then spent a short period training the Somaliland Coastguard, before returning home via Haifa in Israel, where she hosted senior dignitaries from the Israeli government and Armed Forces.

Lieutenant Commander James Robey, the ship’s navigating officer said:

“As my first time navigating a capital ship, during the expeditionary force deployment, this has been a wonderful and challenging experience. It’s not every day you are at the heart of the nation’s Task Group.”

HMS Bulwark has undertaken duties since 2011 including the London Olympics in 2012 through to the 2015 humanitarian operations in the Mediterranean rescuing nearly 5,000 migrants in two months.

HMS Bulwark is also the only warship to have been awarded the Sun Military Award (the ‘Millie’) for Best Unit in the Armed Forces.