THE PRESENT HMS Ramsey, the mine-countermeasures vessel (MCMV), is the first Ramsey to serve with the Royal Navy that carried the name from her very beginnings – there have been two previous Ramseys, but both of these started life under a different maiden name.

Currently operating as part of the Standing NRF MCM Group 1, HMS Ramsey is busy with exercises in the Baltic and off the West Coast of Scotland, but she will be seen in southern waters at the end of June when she takes part in the International Fleet Review off Portsmouth.

This frontline role follows on from a refit and upkeep period in 2004, but the year before the warship was tasked with the intense work of post-operation mine clearance and survey in Iraqi waters.

Ramsey, in common with her sister Sandowns, was designed primarily to clear mines and conduct survey operations both in harbours and the open ocean as far out as the edge of the eastern Atlantic continental shelf, although she is, and has more than proven herself, capable of a number of other tasks.

The first HMS Ramsey was originally named the Duke of Lancaster and owned by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. She was bought by the Turkish Patriotic Committee in 1911, but despite refitting her engines and boilers her new owners never managed to take possession of her before war broke out between Turkey and Italy.

The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company became her next owners in 1912 and it was under their tutelage that she was named The Ramsey – and so began the affiliation between ship and island.

Two years later, requisitioned by the Navy, the ship began the third stage of her life as HMS Ramsey, an Armed Boarding Steamer attached to the Grand Fleet and based at Scapa Flow.

In August 1915, she intercepted a Russian steamship that revealed herself with gunfire to be the German auxiliary minesweeper Meteor.
Ramsey was sunk with the loss of 55 lives, and the capture of four officers and 39 ratings on August 8.

The next day British Forces overwhelmed Meteor, who transferred her prisoners to neutral ships then scuttled herself.

It was the eventual fate of the USS Meade to become the second HMS Ramsey. This American warship of 1919 was transferred to the Royal Navy in 1940.

After a refit in Devonport, she joined the 5th Escort Group in Liverpool, providing local escort for Atlantic convoys. In 1941 she returned to her near-native shores of Newfoundland as part of the 22nd Escort Group of the NEF. After major works on her engines at both Halifax and South Carolina, she returned to her adopted home in the UK.

She joined B6 Escort Group, Western Approaches Command, but after just one round trip she went back into refit again at Grimsby. The decision was then taken that she should become an Air Target Ship in the Irish Sea until scrapped in 1947.

Facts and Figures
Class:	Sandown class mine countermeasures vessel
Pennant number:	M110
Builder:	Vosper Thornycroft, Woolston
Launched:	November 25, 1999
Accepted:	July 26, 2000
Commissioned:	June 22, 2001
Length:	50m
Beam:	9m
Draught:	2.4m
Top Speed:	13 knots
Displacement:	422 tonnes
Complement:	36
Engines:	2 x Paxman Valenta diesels; Voith-Schneider propulsion; 2 x Schottel bow thrusters
Main Armament:	30mm Bofor gun
Equipment:	2 x remote controlled mine disposal vehicles, team of mine clearance divers

(Ship of the Month June 2005)

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