Britain prepares for new Cod War with £580m gunship f leet

THE first gunship that will form part of a fleet to ‘protect our fisheries’ after Brexit has been delivered to the Ministry of Defence.

The five patrol vessels will ensure the UK is fully prepared if acrimonious talks on fishing spark a new Cod War, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said.

Purchased at a cost of £116million each, the gunships will be the UK’s ‘eyes and ears’ as it prepares to take back control of its historic fishing grounds, he added. The vessels will also be used for border control and anti-smuggling work, as well as counter-piracy and counter-terrorism.

HMS Forth, now with the Royal Navy, is the first of the five being built at BAE Systems’ Glasgow yards at Govan and Scotstoun.

Two more ships, HMS Medway and HMS Trent, have already been built and HMS Tamar and HMS Spey are due to be completed by 2020.

The gunships, which have a seafaring range of 5,500 nautical miles, are each armed with a 30mm automatic cannon, two miniguns and four machine guns, and are equipped with two Pacific 24 sea boats.

Each vessel also has the capacity to land Merlin helicopters on its decks and can carry 50 Royal Marines. Mr Williamson said: ‘The Royal Navy has a proud tradition of protecting the UK’s coastline and keeping a close eye on our fishing waters.

‘With these state-of-the-art, vastly capable ships, we stand ready to protect our fisheries once Britain leaves the EU.’

The last Cod Wars were waged in the 1970s, when the Royal Navy deployed vessels in an attempt to protect British fishing waters in the Atlantic in a series of disputes with Iceland. Mr Williamson’s decision to raise the prospect of military clashes over fish stocks caused alarm in Whitehall.

One senior official said it was ‘not helpful’ to talk up the possibility of conflict when the UK is negotiating with EU countries about fishing.

But his tough stance is likely to play well with pro-Brexit Tories, who want Theresa May to make full control of Britain’s fishing grounds a red line in the talks.

The Prime Minister faced a backlash this week after agreeing a Brexit transition that will allow the EU to fix fishing quotas in Britain’s waters until 2021.

It emerged yesterday that allies of the Chancellor Philip Hammond are calling for Mr Williamson’s parliamentary aide Anne-Marie Trevelyan to be sacked for joining a fishing rights protest on Wednesday.

During the demonstration, former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage threw a tray of haddock from a trawler into the Thames.

Although Mrs Trevelyan, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, did not board the vessel with Mr Farage, her presence at the protest is said to have irritated other parliamentary aides, including allies of Mr Hammond. Tory whips had ordered their MPs to shun the protest on Wednesday.

Ministerial aides are said to have demanded her removal at a meeting with No 10.

‘Protect our fisheries’