HMS Forth has delivered vaccines to the remote British territory of Tristan da Cunha.

Tristan da Cunha is a remote group of volcanic islands in the south Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately 1,732 miles off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa, 1,514 miles from Saint Helena and 2,487 miles off the coast of the Falkland Islands.

Philip Rushbrook, Governor of Tristan da Cunha, said:

“Very pleased HMS Forth has arrived at Tristan da Cunha with Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine supplies. A big thank you to Royal Navy & many others who completed this logistics challenge so smoothly.”

HMS Forth is a Batch 2 River class offshore patrol vessel and in January 2020, she replaced HMS Clyde as the Falklands Patrol ship, looking after British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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51 COMMENTS

  1. Great work from the RN. Well done.

    I hope the good citizens don’t get the shivers, chills and aches like I did from the AZ vaccine. Still better than getting Covid though.

    • Good for you taking the vaccine, pity some are not as responsible as you (of course no blame to those who can’t take it for medical reasons)

      • I’ve a mate who has knocked it back because he’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Its frustrating as he’s a clever guy who is going out with a ‘high up’ nurse and has a sister (also a nurse) who has long covid. I don’t get it myself and apparently his missus can’t even talk to him about it.

        I couldn’t wait to get mine, didn’t care whether it was AZ, woke up with the shivers and noticed I had the sore arm and was ‘washed out’ until about lunchtime the following day but will be more than happy to get my second. Thankfully my 87 year old mum has had both doses and had no ill effects. The missus (under 50…. just) got her blue letter today.

    • Not half! Had my first jab Monday and still feeling the effects. Teeth were chattering and felt washed out with no energy.
      Still, had to be done. Seems to be common enough.

      • Daniele,

        Woke up in the middle of the night with ‘teeth chattering’ too! Put on a sweater, had a couple of paracetamol and dived back under the covers to sweat it out. It wasn’t pleasant but much better than Covid. I’ve a friend who is a Doc and she says that the better your immune system the more likely it ‘rebels’ when you get the vaccine so perhaps that is good news? Keep safe. I’m going back for vaccine 2 because there is no point taking half the dose.

      • Had my first one in early February (I’m an old person!) AZ, and almost no side effects at all. Second one next week. Now, if only the MOD procurement process could be made to work as well!

      • Had my first last month, but out of breath and felt like a weekend hangover, like the old days, but not to bad.

  2. Have to say the Armed Forces have done a sterling job in making sure vaccines are being delivered en-masse and in a timely fashion, particularly to our overseas territories and dependencies. Excellent job!

    • Agreed the three services have stepped up to the mark as usual ,From the services medics backing up the NHS in all areas , the rest of the services providing both air and land logistics throughout Geat Britain and N Ireland

  4. helluva journey to such a remote island(s) – sounds like it was Portuguese at some point. I wonder how many cases they’ve had in these islands, if any?

  5. Good job, well done RN.

    My Pfizer shot also caused fatigue and a slightly sore arm: but that is what I got from all sorts of jabs in the past so I wasn’t very surprised. Was back to 100% 48hrs later.

  8. I would love to see a simple airstrip on Tristan dC. Nothing fancy, just big enough for a Beech King Air. Perhaps on the early 1960s lava field, that is doing nothing & in the way. Blow it up, grade it, & use it to make a simple runway.
    I had my 2nd vaccine jab (Pfizer) last night. Felt slightly odd for a while, but no other side effects.

    • Just interested in what sort of range a beach King would have as TDC is a long way from anywhere and I would assume it would have to have a range great enough to abort a landing and return home if it had to, Was it Pitcairn that built an Airstrip that was pretty much un usable ? I’m probably wrong but something rings a bell…..
      Just looked it up, Doh ! it was St Helena……

      • King Air 360 has the range to do Tristan to Cape Town. Given the small population on Tristan, you do not need bigger than that. It allows you to do medevac & even bring a tiny number of adventure tourists.
        St Helena is doing fine with Embraer regional jets & A318. It did have difficulty with larger B737-800, which created the bad press. Like St Helena, the Tristan flights would be subject to last minute cancellation if the weather was not right.

        • I had a little look on Wiki and all I could see was a range of @ 1300 NM for the 100 version which is @ 200 less than the nearest Land, so I guess there must be other longer range versions now ? either way, that’s a long way to fly with nothing in reserve I would have thought.

        • Just to follow on from your comments and fill in some detail for everyone-Flights to St Helena Airport(SHA) have to carry enough fuel for an abort to either Namibia or Ascension in the event of bad weather. This restricts the number of passengers carried on some aircraft. I would also add the Boeing 757 as an ideal aircraft for this route. Many idiotic comments appeared in inter alia, the Mail online suggesting that there was corruption involved in this project-one bright spark asking how we could spend 350 million pounds on a “strip of tarmac”!!!
          To put a perspective on the cost consider this. Basil Read the SA company that built the Airport had first to buy a seaworthy long distance capable freighter to bring in materials and heavy equipment. Then by stages construct a docking facility at Ruperts Wharf. This was followed by Storage for heavy materials and infrastructure. A tarred road through a steep valley then had to be constructed to access the site which was some kilometres on the other side of the island. The site selected from only two possibles then saw a cut and fill plus retaining exercise involving the handling of tens of thousands of cubes of material-one of the biggest such exercises in the world at that time-all of this before they could even start any actual construction work!!This was followed by an almost 2km long concrete runway, a passenger terminal with baggage handling equipment, parking, shop, ablutions admin etc etc. Then a control tower with all the IT and electronics,radar,weather gear, comms etc etc.
          Finally, Basil Read went into liquidation shortly after this project on which they made so much money according to our “strip of tar” idiot!!!
          Glad i got that off my chest
          Cheers Gents

      • Hi Cap’n. My subject-firstly there is nothing unusable about St Helena Airport. That stupid ill informed myth concocted by a Westminster committee was the most ill informed report to come from MP’s in decades and cost a huge delay in opening the facility. Most Airports in the world have wind shear issues and yet operate safely and efficiently. St Helena’s issues are no different and the advantages to the population there outweigh any problems by a hundred to one. All they needed was to fing the tight aircraft which they have now done and all is good.
        As to Tristan-an Airport there is mission impossible. the only vaguely suitable land would be in the vicinity of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. An even rudimentary airstrip would gobble up the only arable land in the settlement. In addition you would need an aircraft that could cope with the vast distances and finally the cost could never be justified for only 242 inhabitants. The uninformed complained about the 350 million pounds it cost to construct SHA which incidentally was a bargain so Tristan will never happen

          • Tristan is 2500 Km from Cape Town. Range of a loaded King Air 350 is 3350 Km. You would not take off unless weather was perfect at Tristan & en-route. A last minute double check 1500 km out, for abort. Beyond that, you could abort to St Helena as it is a couple of hundred miles nearer to Tristan than Cape town. The lest few hundred KM to Tristan, you would be committed to landing in Tristan. The same as other basic airstrips on islands or mountains around the World. They all say an airstrip would destroy the potato patches, but the early 1960s lava, gives you a solid base & much material for a runway. Deep sea nodules full of valuable minerals & metals, could give the same economic boost that North Sea Oil did in the 1980s. Britain should take care of its dots on the map, as they & their 200 mile economic zones could be very profitable over the next century.

          • John, according to wiki King Air 350ER needs 1200m runway, so if you were going to build that big you could put a C-130 or A400 down on it. For emergencies A400 could be accompanied from MPN by the Voyager if unable to land refuel and go home?

          • Hi John. Thanks for email. Even a basic airstrip will need infrastructure so might not justify at present unless as you say there are riches in them thar shores 🙂 Tristan has a helipad at the Administrators residence so another lateral thinking route is for Industry pursue the goal of producing a viable commercial VSTOL aircraft for such locations. i know that is a big challenge but possible and with huge benefits. Agree with you entirely about our 16 Overseas Territories-a mutually beneficial relationship with the last bits!!

          • Morning geoff.

            Always enjoy reading your posts regards St Helena, you know your stuff my friend. Thanks.

            Sunny for a week in Surrey! Bit breezy though.

          • Good Day Daniele-enjoy your stuff as well-knowledge in detail especially about the Army and weaponary. Last of the Summer rains here in Durban-26 degC with thunderstorms in the evening.

  9. Living on an Island so remote and cut off from the World should have offered as much protection as possible really but It’s good to see help being given. Not sure what’s to do on an active Volcano with so few people and just the one Town ? but I do sometimes wish I was there !

      • Lol, that’s a story I read years ago after watching a documentary about the Bounty. Seems like a whole load of issues living so far from others with the Internet possibly not helping.

  11. I visited Tristan back in 2001. We did some demo work on the old lava field In an attempt to open it up to the sea as a new harbour.
    On that job I discovered that Lava rock is really lightweight and flies a lot further than regular rock when you put a couple of boxes of PE4 sticks in it… Like 200m further than the safety zone!
    “firing… 3…2…1” Boom!
    And the rock went up…

    And up…

    And up,

    over our heads 200m down range and kept going, landing in a field some 100m short of the school where the Islanders where having a BBQ with selected crew members who also got ashore
    Anyway the island rebuilt the existing harbour instead.
    Great fishing and sea food… Fantastic scenery. Nice people, very friendly. Its a bit weird in that some of the islanders look very similar in appearance… Perks of a small gene pool.

      • Hi Cap’n. The Volcano dominates the island. The inhabitable stretch is but a small thin strip at the base. The Volcano is dormant but future eruptions are always a possibility. Thanks for info Gunbuster-lucky to have visited Tristan!

      • It’s hard not to be near it as it is literally the island. However we didn’t climb it. Last volcano I climbed on an island was monserratt and 2 years after that it all went a bit Pete tong for the island.

        • I kind of did know that bit…. I did a school project on it years ago but it was the Pointy Growly bit I was referring to !!!! Never really got why so many people want to live so close to Active ones to be honest….

          • I must have a thing for volcanoes I lived in Lago Patria outside Naples for 3 years whilst working for NATO …you could see Vesuvius from my villa bedroom window.
            The plus side…The grapes growing on the mountainside and the wine they made, Lachryma Christi made in some of the small family vineyards was some of the best I have ever tasted.

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