On Friday afternoon, a tugboat crew sent out a distress signal after their vessel began to flood approximately 20 miles west of the island of Sint Maarten.
The crew took refuge on the barge they had been towing and waited for assistance.
HMS Medway was nearby and quickly responded to the Mayday call. After consulting with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Martinique, the ship altered its course and increased speed, reaching the tug and barge in less than 30 minutes.
HMS Medway’s crew safely rescued the tugboat crew and took them back to the ship.
This incident marks the first patrol of the year for HMS Medway, which serves as the Royal Navy’s permanent presence in the region.
“The whole ship’s company leapt into action as soon as we made the decision to respond,” said Lieutenant Commander Carla Higgins, Medway’s Executive Officer in temporary command of the 2,000-tonne patrol ship, was quoted as saying.
“The swift thinking and actions of the team were fantastic and we were thankful to be conducting routine maritime security operations in the area to become the on-scene commander working with the local authorities and assist the crew to safety.”
Oh dear the description of the “Crew leaping into action” is straight out of a super hero Mag, Any way well done for rescuing the sinking ships crew
A job well done by all those who were involved in the rescue.
The photo captioned “Patrol ship HMS Medway rescues the crew of an ocean-going tug which started sinking off Anguilla.” may not be actually be of HMS Medway! Of course you have to look really closely to tell.
P223 is HMS Medway, do not really need to look very closely
Will the type 32 replace the river that is deployed in the Caribbean? Seems rather pointless having anything bigger than a patrol boat over there.
T31 not T32 is likely but not certain. As you say these Batch 2 River ships are almost spot on excepting they don’t have an embarked helicopter which as events show would be the only real improvement over the River class in that environment