Sailors train to board suspect vessels
0 Comments | Plymouth Evening Herald, The, Jul 28, 2010
IN A daring swoop a team of Plymouthbased Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines boards a suspect vessel, writes Defence Reporter Tristan Nichols.
While servicemen examine a diagram of the ship so that a search plan can be formulated, others check over the paperwork with the ship’s master.
Meanwhile other servicemen on HMS Monmouth stand guard while another carries out a search of one of the ship’s compartments.
These pictures might look like a reallife situation, but they are in fact of a training exercise conducted at HMS Raleigh in Torpoint.
The sailors and marines of Devonportbased HMS Monmouth are conducting boarding exercises ahead of an operational deployment next year.
Conducted by Devonport Naval Base’s 1 Assault Group Royal Marines, the Royal Navy Board and Search School course is designed to teach the sailors how to board, secure and search a suspect vessel either by boat or by helicopter.
The training covers a range of scenarios, testing the sailors’ reaction to various situations including crew unrest, discovery of weapons or illegal contraband and an injury to a member of their own team.
In addition to lectures in the classroom, the training includes a series of realistic exercises with the team carrying out practice boardings firstly on the MV Cossack, a land-based purpose-built mockup of a typical merchant ship.
Commander Tony Long, commanding officer of HMS Monmouth, has told The