The Royal Navy has greeted one of its newest ships in a military port for the first time – and bid farewell to another.

The new survey ship HMS Enterprise arrived at Portsmouth Naval Base earlier this month to continue an extensive period of contractors’ trials.

She was built by Appledore Shipbuilders under a contract from VT (Vosper Thornycroft Shipbuilding), and although the ship will be based at Devonport she is being fitted out by VT at its new Portsmouth base.

She still continues to wear the Blue Ensign until her hand-over to the Navy, scheduled for September, and her commissioning is due in October. Enterprise will then undertake operational sea training before she deploys for the first time next year.

At around the same time as Enterprise was making her debut, strategic sea lift ship RFA Sea Crusader left her home port of Marchwood, Southampton, for the last time as a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel.

Built at the Kawasaki shipyard at Sakaide in Japan, Sea Crusader joined the RFA Fleet in October 1996, initially for a two-year charter. But as world events have unfolded, her charter has been extended to almost seven years service in total.

Sea Crusader has operated at scenes of conflict all around the world, including the recent Operation Telic, and has been fully occupied on operations, exercises and routine freighting runs – in preparation for Exercise Saif Sareea in Oman in 2001 she spent several months running a shuttle cargo service between European ports and Salalah, and has also supported military exercises in the United States and Canada.

She was built as a commercial vehicle transporter, but was taken on as a short-term measure pending a more permanent solution as she was well-suited to a military sea-lift role, with a vehicle capacity of 2,300 lane metres on three decks and a massive stern ramp, easily capable of handling the 64-ton Challenger 2 tank.

Although at 18,000 tons a big ship by Royal Navy standards, she has a civilian RFA crew of just 17.

The Ministry of Defence now operates a Strategic Sealift Service – six purpose-built ships contracted to AWSR Shipping Ltd that will be used for commercial trading when not needed by the MoD.

Sea Crusader sailed to Belfast, where on completion of maintenance work, she will be handed back to her owners, Cobelfret (Luxembourg) SA early next month.