On 25 April the military sealift vessel Eddystone (IMO 9234070) arrived off Cape Town, from Gibraltar. She entered Cape Town harbour, proceeding into the Duncan Dock, and went alongside the outer berth of the Eastern Mole.
Built in 2002 by Flensburger Werft Schiffbau GmbH, of Flensburg in Germany, Eddystone is 193 metres in length and has a gross registered tonnage of 23,335 tons. She is powered by two MaK 9M43 nine cylinder, four stroke, scrubber equipped main engines producing 10,850 bhp (8,091 kW) each, and driving two controllable pitch propellers for a service speed of 21 knots.
She is a Roll On- Roll Off vessel, with a stern ramp which is 16.4 metres long, 17 metres wide, with a weight carrying capacity of 75 tons/m2, and with a stern door opening height of 7 metres. Her ramp has 12 foldable fingers that can each be operated independently, which allows targeted vehicular loading, or discharge, to narrow linkspans, floats, or barges. She is also equipped with a smaller, starboard side, vehicle loading ramp.
Equipped with three vehicle decks, Eddystone provides 2,620 lane metres for vehicles, equivalent to loading 164 heavy goods vehicles, or a mix of 220 light and heavy military vehicles, which includes up to 130 armoured fighting vehicles, 70 military trucks, plus support vehicles, and ammunition, totaling 13,000 tons.
She also has a container carrying capacity of 411 TEU, including the provision of 60 deck reefer plugs. For operating at ports with no cargo handling facilities she is fitted with a single, starboard side, MacGregor crane capable of lifting 40 tons. She has accommodation for a crew of up to 22 personnel, plus additional accommodation for 12 support staff, or vehicle drivers. To enable Eddystone to operate anywhere on Earth, she has an ice classification of ICE 1A, which allows her to operate in first year Baltic Sea ice thickness of 0.8 metres, or first year Polar ice thickness of up to 0.7 metres.
Owned by Hadley Shipping Group, of London in the United Kingdom, Eddystone is operated by Foreland Shipping Ltd., also of London, whose houseflag is proudly displayed on her funnel, and she is managed by AW Ship Management Ltd, also of London. Casual ship observers may know that AW are the initials for Andrew Weir, who previously owned the Bank Line, a famous British shipping company whose vessels, all named after British Rivers, were regular visitors to South African ports, and who latterly included the last mailship ‘RMS St. Helena’ as one of their fleet.
With Eddystone being the third vessel built of a series of six sisterships, and known as the Point Class Sealift Ships, they were all built as a result of a British Strategic Defence Review, that identified a national need for specially designed roll-on, roll-off, transport vessels, with strengthened decks for the carriage of heavy military armoured vehicles, with all vessels being contracted to the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, and operating under the British flag.
All six vessels were named after Lighthouses of the Trinity House Lighthouse Service (THLS). In 2012, two of the vessels, Longstone and Beachy Head were released from service and sold on, with Longstone now providing military sealift capacity to the Dutch Military Forces, and Beachy Head now providing military sealift capacity to the Singapore Military Forces.
The remaining four vessels continue to provide continuous military sealift capacity to the British Military Forces. They are Anvil Point, Hartland Point, and Hurst Point, and Eddystone. The casual maritime observer will now recall that Eddystone is now the 4th of all of the four remaining British Point Class vessels to call at South African ports in the last 15 months, with Hartland Point first calling into Cape Town in February 2024, followed by Anvil Point which called into Cape Town in April 2024, and with Hurst Point arriving in September 2024, but unusually calling into Durban instead.
The contract for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to use the remaining four vessels was originally scheduled to have expired at the end of 2024. However, in October 2021 the MoD issued a Request for Information (RFI) for an ‘interim’ Strategic Sealift capability, which was to begin in January 2025. In November 2022, Foreland Shipping Ltd. was awarded an ‘interim’ seven-year contract, valued at £625 million (ZAR15.13 billion), to continue the military sealift service until December 2031. At which point, the MoD has requested an RFI for an increase back to six, newbuild, replacement sealift vessels.
An idea of the importance of why these Military Sealift vessels are so important, in today’s dangerous geopolitical world, where Putin is trying to undermine and destabilise Europe with his bestial invasion of Ukraine, is to look at the voyage of Eddystone prior to her current one. Operating out of the Marchwood Military Port, which is located opposite Southampton Docks in the United Kingdom, Eddystone departed from there on 14th March, bound for the Greek port of Alexandroupoli, where she arrived one week later on 21st March.
The importance of this port in Northern Greece is that it is the closest, and available, NATO port to the entrance to the Black Sea. As a result of the Ukraine conflict, Turkey has invoked the Montreaux Convention of 1936, which prevents warships, or military support vessels, of using the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to enter, or leave, the Black Sea.
In 2022, as a further result of Russian aggression surrounding Ukraine, and within the Black Sea, NATO strengthened their Eastern capability within Bulgaria and Rumania, who are both NATO members, and whose coastlines are entirely within the Black Sea. This NATO increase included an enhanced Air Policing (eAP) mission, with a quick reaction force (QRA) being provided by NATO fighter aircraft in Rumania, the hosting of a NATO Battlegroup in Rumania, now being upgraded to a Brigade Level Battlegroup, and a further NATO Battlegroup created in Bulgaria.
NATO set up Exercise Steadfast Dart 2025, to test their rapid deployment capabilities along the Eastern border, with the first deployment of the NATO Allied Reaction Force (ARF), and Eddystone was deployed to load many of the seaborne vehicles in Marchwood, and transport them to Alexandroupoli, for overland transfer to Rumania.
Of interest to South African military historians is that the current NATO ARF is made up of 2,500 troops of the British 7th Light Mechanised Brigade, who are better known to military historians by their historical moniker of ‘The Desert Rats’. The Desert Rats fought in North Africa, and up through Italy, during World War Two, and the 7th Armoured Division, as they were then known, included the South Africa Tank Corps and the 4th South African Armoured Car Regiment.
On her current voyage, Eddystone had departed from Marchwood, for Gibraltar, on 5th April and where she arrived with military supplies for the British Garrison on 9th April, prior to sailing south to Cape Town. Her stop in Cape Town was, as expected, a short one, and after uplifting her bunkers, stores and fresh provision, she was ready to continue her sealift voyage. After just ten hours alongside, she sailed at 22:00 in the late evening of 25th April, now bound for Mombasa in Kenya.
She arrived in Mombasa on 4th May, at 07:00 in the morning, and her discharge there was completed within seven hours, as she sailed from there at 14:00 on the same day. The call at Mombasa is in support of the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), which has a major training base, located at Nanyuki, which lies 200 km north of Nairobi, as well as having a smaller support base in Nairobi. BATUK contributes an estimated £58 million (ZAR1.34 billion) to the Kenyan economy each year.
BATUK provides training to British Army units who are preparing to deploy on operations, or preparing to assume high-readiness tasks. BATUK trains up to six infantry battalions per year, totaling 10,000 soldiers, over eight-week periods. BATUK also includes Royal Engineers (RE), who conduct three exercises per year, carrying out mainly civil engineering projects, such as road and bridge building in the local communities, as well as bomb disposal techniques for both British and Kenyan Army engineers.
BATUK also includes a Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) regiment, who have two medical company deployments, providing primary health care assistance to the local civilian community. The Health Outreach Clinics are delivered in four Counties, over three day periods, in locations where local communities have limited access to permanent medical facilities. Over the past two years 64 clinics have been completed, treating almost 12,500 patients. This is a permanent free service provided by BATUK to the local Kenyan population.
For Eddystone her next port was Duqm, in Oman, where she arrived at 06:00 in the morning of 10th May. Duqm is the location of the United Kingdom Joint Logistics Support Base (UKJLSB), which is based in the port, and facilitates the deployment of Naval forces in the Indian Ocean to provide security patrols, which are provided by the Royal Navy Littoral Response Group (South). Duqm also supports the Joint Training Area (JTA), where joint British and Omani Army training takes place, including Desert Warfare.
For the nomenclature aficionado, Eddystone represents the 1882 lighthouse that is located on the Eddystone Rocks, that are located 12 nautical miles southwest of Plymouth, in the UK. It is a famous location, where no less than four lighthouses have been built on the rocks to warn shipping of the dangers of the reef. The first was built in 1696, and washed away in a winter storm in 1703, and the second lighthouse was destroyed by fire in 1755.
The third lighthouse, built by John Smeaton, was the most famous, as it was the first lighthouse in the world to be built using dovetailed granite blocks, which would tighten together when struck by storm waves. It was lit in 1759 and stayed in service until 1882, when the current lighthouse replaced it, and which is visible from the Plymouth shoreline. The Smeaton Tower, as it became known, was dismantled and re-erected on Plymouth Hoe, where it sits today, as a British national maritime historical monument, and is open to the general public, and available to climb, throughout the year.
Written by Jay Gates for Africa Ports & Ships and republished with permission. The original article can be found here.
