Bangladesh buys RN survey ship – by David Goodfellow
‘HMS Roebuck’, the Royal Navy survey ship decommissioned in April as victim of an interim UK government defence review, has been sold to Bangladesh for a reported £5m.
Originally commissioned into service in 1986, it has since completed 60 major hydrographic surveys, steamed 431,000 nautical miles and visited 33 countries on four continents.
The vessel’s new proprietors, the Bangladesh Navy, plan to deploy it for hydrographic operations in the Bay of Bengal against a background of territorial disputes with India and Myanmar (Burma) over likely oil and gas deposits. Bangladesh last year lodged objections with the UN to competing claims from the two countries and is presently carrying out seismic surveys in the Bay under the UN’s Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
