22nd April 2025 at 1:08pm
HMS Richmond has left her home port of Plymouth to join the flagship on the Royal Navy’s biggest deployment of the year.
The submarine-hunter will spend most of the next eight months protecting aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales and other ships which make up the UK Carrier Strike Group.
She was waved off by families who gathered as sailors have done for decades at Devil’s Point.
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An hour later, she was followed into Plymouth Sound by Canadian frigate HMCS Ville de Québec, who is also assigned to the carrier force for much of the remainder of 2025.
CSG 25 will work with Nato allies in the Mediterranean before moving on to the Indo-Pacific region with major exercises off Japan and Australia, before making the return journey and home in time for Christmas.
HMS Richmond is part of the defensive “ring of steel” drawn around the task group to protect it from hostile eyes and ears as well as potential threats.
Her first duty, in sync with her Merlin Mk2 helicopter from 814 Naval Air Squadron from RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, is to keep hostile submarines well away from the CSG.
Beyond that she can be called upon for a host of duties and missions such as board and search operations to counter smuggling, drug-running or terrorist activity.
She can also provide air defence with her Sea Ceptor missiles and naval gunfire support should targets ashore need pounding.
Leading Hand Martin Tutchings, one of the frigate’s weapons engineers, said: “I’m really excited to deploy and do what I joined the Navy to do, travel the world and contribute to operations around the globe.”
Also excited are the crew of HMCS Ville de Québec, which sailed from Halifax earlier this month. Her crew have enjoyed a couple of days in Plymouth before departing Devonport.
The Canadians have been training more than a year for their part in the deployment – the first to the Indo-Pacific in the 30-plus-year career of the Ville de Québec.
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