HMS Fearless is one of the veterans of the Fleet - but the amphibious assault ship still has an important role to play in one of the Royal Navy's core capabilities.

She was launched just before Christmas in 1963, and commissioned almost two years later, displacing 12,120 tons under full load - although when launching or recovering landing craft through her stern door, compartments are flooded to lower Fearless in the water, giving her a total displacement of almost 17,000 tons.

Officially classed as a Landing Platform Dock, Fearless is the Royal Navy's last front-line steamship, but her two Babcock and Wilcox boilers still allow her to reach 21 knots.

She has a complement of 550 (50 officers), plus an air group of 22 and 88 Royal Marines, and while under normal circumstances she will have a military lift capability of up to 400 troops, in emergency some 1,000 could squeeze on board.

Troops and their equipment are ferried ashore by four 115-ton landing craft housed in the dock and four ten-ton craft kept on davits.

The dock head doubles as the ship's flight deck, with rooms for up to four Sea King helicopters.

For protection, Fearless has two Vulcan Phalanx 20mm guns, fitted during a two-year refit in the early 1990s.

When Fearless leaves her home port of Portsmouth, her deployments tend to be impressive.

The summer of 1999 saw her involved in Exercise Aurora off the coasts of Devon and Pembrokeshire, featuring more than 2,000 personnel and 18 helicopters in day and night assaults on cliffs and beaches.

Later that year Fearless was in the van of Exercise Argonaut 99, when the Amphibious Ready Group got its first full run-out in a series of Mediterranean exercises.

The highlight of Argonaut was Exercise Bright Star, which featured more than 70,000 troops from 11 nations - including 5,346 from the UK - with a flotilla of 17 British warships and auxiliaries led by Fearless.

She then proved age is no barrier by completing operational sea training in record time in mid-2000, having spent six months alongside. She then joined Exercise Argonaut 2000, although her onward trip to Sierra Leone was cancelled after an engine-room fire.

Her next major trip is scheduled to be Exercise Saif Sareea 2 in the Middle East later this year, when the Amphibious Task Group Commander will again fly his pennant from the veteran warship.

(Ship of the Month June 1994)

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