PREPARING THE HOMEPORT The work to prepare Portsmouth for the arrival of HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2017 and HMS Prince of Wales in 2019 was a mammoth and dangerous task. Simon Michell talks to the Queen’s Harbour Master to find out what this work entailed.
‘P
ortsmouth is probably the second busiest port in the country after Dover. We manage about 200,000 movements a year, including the Royal Navy (RN) warships, the cross-channel and Isle of Wight ferries, as well as a growing amount of commercial shipping. Portsmouth is where Fyffes bananas enter the country before ending up in your local supermarket’, explains the man who supervises all this activity, the Queen’s Harbour Master: Steve Hopper. Hopper is very proud of the new commercial enterprises the port has managed to attract. Portsmouth is now also a major national sport and leisure site. ‘We have seven large marinas, there are over 3,500 moorings – more than at the Hamble which is the home of British yachting. Portsmouth even plays host to the world’s most famous yacht race – the America’s Cup’. Portsmouth has only managed to remain such a booming site thanks to its continual evolution and reinvention. The next phase of this process is now complete – the modifications to enable the Royal Navy’s largest ever ships to make the port their home for the next 50 years. The refurbishment has covered a broad scope of activities – a new Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS), a lengthened jetty, dredging, new harbour navigation aids, a special power supply substation and last, but not least, giant gangways so people can get on and off the new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers. The upgrade programme on land One of the early parts of the £100 million Portsmouth upgrade programme was the installation of a new £5.5 million Vessel Traffic Monitoring System (VTMS). Although not strictly part of the Queen Elizabeth readiness programme, the old VTMS was becoming obsolescent and needed changing, having been originally installed in
56
HMS Prince of Wales
1999. The new Kongsberg VTMS provides Hopper and his Harbour Services team improved situational awareness so that they can keep a close eye on the bustling ships, ferries, yachts, and naval vessels that are constantly criss-crossing the waters. ‘We have got more radars, better cameras, better computers. It makes everything more robust and easier to manage’, he explains. With two 65,000tonne aircraft carriers about to be sailing in and out of the harbour, the new system is an essential element for ensuring the safety of all harbour users and operators. There is now a pair of jetties capable of handling the two massive carriers: Princess Royal Jetty, which has already hosted HMS Queen Elizabeth, and the recently refurbished Victory Jetty. The RN has decided that the Princess Royal Jetty will be the maintenance berth for the carriers, and Victory Jetty will be the operational berth. So when HMS Prince of Wales enters Portsmouth for the first time she will go straight onto Princess Royal Jetty. VolkerStevin, the company that built the ammunition storage facility for the Type 45 destroyers in 2012, was awarded the jetty contract back in April 2015, just two
