HMS Protector, the Royal Navy’s only ice patrol ship, was towed into Devonport by tugs today for, what officials say is to allow “investigations into a defect take place”. She remains part of the fleet for now, but it is likely she is beyond economical repair.

Protector’s difficulties began well before this summer. She entered dry dock at UK Docks on Teesside in May 2025 for her five-yearly docking, left the dock in August and sailed in December, arriving back at Devonport on 12 December for trials ahead of deployment. She did not go south for the 2025-26 summer season as would have been expected and remained in the UK. She was back on Teeside for much of this year but did not leave under her own power and was towed by tugs for the whole journey home. Other than preparation for disposal, it is hard to understand what can be achieved in Devonport that could not be done in Middlesbrough.

Temporary, for 15 years

Protector was originally completed in October 2001 as the MV Polarbjørn, a polar research and subsea support vessel for GC Rieber Shipping. She was chartered by the RN in April 2011 as a three-year stop-gap, commissioned that June and bought outright in September 2013 for £54M, including one year’s contract support.  She is now 25 years old, typical of the maximum service life commercial ships of her type are built for.

She has worked hard in RN service; between 2015 and 2019 she was based in the southern hemisphere, maintained in South Africa with crews rotating to keep her deployed around 330 days a year, and her tasks ranged from the first RN patrol of the Ross Sea in 80 years to the search for the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan in 2017. A propulsion defect in the Caribbean in 2019 brought her home for a £14M, ten-month refit on Teesside and she missed the 2020-21 season. The 2025 docking ran to seven months and was followed by a further spell in the same yard this year.

After her 2020 refit, she split her year between the poles. In June 2021 she reached 80°41’N in the Greenland Sea, within 1,050km (567nm) of the North Pole and further north than any RN surface ship in recent memory, before returning to the Antarctic that winter for the first time since 2019. She made her first visit to Canada in 2022. In the summer of 2024, she worked through the Hudson Strait into Hudson Bay with a Canadian Coast Guard ice adviser embarked, then went through the Panama Canal and joined Exercise UNITAS off Chile ahead of a 2024-25 Antarctic season that ended at Punta Arenas in February 2025.

Depite being rarely seen in her home port, HMS Protector is one of the few remaining Devonport-based ships. Although the base for FOST and submarine repair, just seven Royal Navy vessels are homeported there now: the 5 remaining Type 23 frigates and HMS Scott (plus the small inshore survey vessel, HMS Magpie).Endurance all over again

The RN has been here before. When HMS Endurance was put out of action due to accidental flooding off Chile in December 2008, no ice patrol ship went south for the next two seasons, and it was 2013 before the MoD accepted she was beyond economical repair. She lay at Portsmouth until June 2016, when she was towed to Turkey for scrap. Operating a single second-hand ship on a shoestring means there will be gaps in availability in the event of unforeseen incidents or more frequent defects emerging as a ship gets older. 

Fortunately, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has its own logistic support ship, RRS Sir David Attenborough to resupply its stations. Protector’s role was primarily to conduct work that falls to a government vessel, carrying observers inspecting foreign stations under the Antarctic Treaty as well as fishery inspections in the Southern Ocean, and hydrographic surveys of waters now increasingly busy with cruise ships. Argentina and Chile, whose claims overlap the British Antarctic Territory, both send naval icebreakers south each season. The MoD claims that demonstrating sovereignty over this area and treaty obligations can be met by occasional overflights by RAF aircraft flying from the Falklands.

Holding position in the Antarctic ice to allow a working party to take ice samples, June 2021.Replacement in due course

The Defence Investment Plan published in June commits the MoD to replacing Protector with what ministers describe as “a more modern variant”, intended for the Arctic as well as the Antarctic. Adding the requirement to patrol the Arctic complicates matters. More than a single vessel is needed to sustain a presence in both polar regions.

In July the Defence Readiness Minister, Luke Pollard, told Parliament that funding had been allocated but the timeline depended on a procurement route not yet chosen. Asked in September when those decisions would be made, he said only that “decisions on the method of procurement and the exact replacement timeline will be taken in due course”. The assumption was that Protector would keep going until a successor arrived. Another stopgap solution might be to again charter an existing ice-class vessel.

Main image: HMS Protector towed into Devonport today (Photo K. Clarke).