The Royal Navy say that Portsmouth Naval Base has undertaken a programme of infrastructure upgrades ahead of the arrival of the UK’s second Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales.

In an article titled ‘Naval base ready for the nation’s two supercarriers‘, Captain of the Base, Captain David George said:

“Quite rightly the vast bulk of the preparatory work is physical in nature, but the arrival of the second carrier marks a step change in operational output.”

According to a news release:

“Chief among the changes for the arrival of HMS Prince of Wales was a jetty suitable to accommodate her. Both carriers may need to be harboured at any one time so a second jetty in addition to the Princess Royal Jetty built for HMS Queen Elizabeth was needed.

As a result, Portsmouth Naval Base’s Victory Jetty, built in the late 1990’s, has been strengthened and modernised at a cost of £30 million. This included additional piling to take the increased berthing loads, galvanic protection of the existing structure to extend its life and a pumping system to lift the fresh water required for up to 1600 crew.

A big part of the project has been providing the high voltage electrical system to provide shore power, including large conversion machinery and a massive hydraulic boom to feed the power to the carrier. With limited power capacity on Portsea Island, the power to light, heat and run machinery when this extra small town comes alongside is to come from the base’s new Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP).

This is a standalone energy source to provide off-grid sustainable energy for the base. The £13 million CHP plant produces electricity from mains gas and captures the heat generated for use, reducing the Naval Base’s carbon footprint. At its peak, the CHP can produce 13.5 MW of power, enough to power between 18,000 and 25,000 homes.”

Captain Iain Greenlees, team leader of the carrier infrastructure programme since 2009 said:

“These projects bring to a close a historic period of development for the base, covering 8 years of environmental and costs assessment and 6 years of construction.  Delivering this programme to time and cost has only been possible by MOD and large teams of industry partners working closely together, with the support of the city and harbour users, to get the base ready to support these fabulous ships for the next 50 years.”

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

41 COMMENTS

  1. Andy, “which way up” and on “the Clyde”. You must be referring to the now secret and never mentioned and deleted records fiasco of the two bow sections of the first Astute submarine. Yes?

  2. Just as a point, the Dreadnought was 18,000 tons which is a lot smaller than a QE carrier. So 1 year to lay and launch is broadly proportional…

  3. Hi Andy, Any successful shipyard needs a regular customer: H&W – White Star, John Brown’s – Cunard, Barrow-in-Furness – Royal Navy submarine orders.
    By the way, with the news that Audacious won’t be handed over to the Royal Navy until 2021 – that means only four boats delivered to the client in a programme of well over 20 years. I think you’ve achieved your quest of discovering “the most unproductive yard in the world”!
    Blimey, turns out it wasn’t on the Clyde after all!

    • With Barrow it’s all about streeeeeeechting out those contracts and rake in as much spondoolies as humanly possible, while being the only location able to build subs, and knowing it!

  4. Andy we get it your one of them little englanders and don’t like our Scots cousins. You really need to take your brain out of your ass The navy doesn’t need the Clyde ? Really ? Where do you think they are going locate the Dreadnaught nuclear subs then? If you knew anything about the navy then you’d be more than aware there are no other suitable sites anywhere else in the UK. So I think you will find the navy does need the Clyde .

    • Why use the little England’s comment? Maybe Andy is from Pompey and wants industry to be continued/restarted there. Maybe Andy isn’t totally aware of Naval locations/requirements/basing but no need to start yapping about little Englander chuff. Any please define the term little Englander as I do hear it used in abusive terms but I find it intriguing people’s various meaning?

      • To be fair “andy reeves” has been commenting for years with a load of tosh about this and that, although not exclusive, you have to question the brain cell capacity of any man who does not use a capital letter for his own name

        And the “little Englander”comment is actually a common phrase now used in our union, which is a union of four countries, to describe a certain people in the largest of those four countries, who have a superiority complex towards the other three, as a proud Englishman i do not use it myself but i certainly can see where they are coming from, for evidence, read a number of the comments on here under any of the “shipbuilding on the Clyde” articles, to which a number of our brothers from up north proudly defend

        “andy reeves” comment is nothing about Portsmouth, it follows a common theory on here that the “Clyde” gets more than it deserves, he mentions the Clyde three times, and even ends with the “Clyde needs the navy”

        The Clyde is not mentioned in the article

        Surely you can see this is a snide attack against the “Clyde”

        • A reasonable explanation of the term! I don’t use ‘little Englander’ either….having always found the term ‘petty nationalist’ more appropriate. By the way, isn’t Englander a German expression? You know the one usually coupled with ‘for you, ze war is over’.

        • I dont realy follow andy reeves posts, if i am honest, just a bit suprised because someone mentions work at the Clyde, he gets accused of being a little Englander. Could he be welsh maybe? Possibly Northern Irish? Could he be a chap from one of our commonwealth countries maybe? I just asked as I have heard the term numerous times, and always intrigued in what contex people like to throw it about. As a proud Englishman myself, I find it rather churlish and childish that it gets thrown into the equation, by people using presumption, and we know prsumtion is the mother of all fuck ups. As for the Clyde, does it get to much work, possibly, can it build ships, definatly, do we need locations that build good ships, yes, and the Clyde is that place.

      • To be fair man , this Andy character seems to have a bee in his bonnet about Scotland (which is an equal partner in this glorious union) having any work put its way with regards ship building or any other infrastructure. The little englander comment is to my mind generic it’s like when we Scots refer to someone as a baw bag .As the most hardcore Scotsman wearing a Union Jack 3 piece suit in this room I’m entirely at ease with the term and the sentiments shown

    • The Navy looked at basing the nuclear subs at PORTLAND in the 60s, but it would have taken too long to transit to deep atlantic waters.

    • Portland, Falmouth, Devonport ( least preferred) and Milford Haven have all been looked at and considered should the SNP declare UDI !!

      • Hi Gunbuster, To be fair, the SNP leadership is rather sensible and has always gone down the constitutional route. And indeed, reaffirmed so at its recent party conference.
        The SNP runs a minority administration in Edinburgh, the majority of Scots do not vote for the party. As a single issue party, it’s recent electoral success is based on the “Unionist vote” in Scotland being split between the three main parties.
        A declaration of UDI is extremely unlikely.
        However, if it does well at the General Election, the SNP will certainly ask Westminster to authorise another independence referendum.

        • It seems to me that the legal framework agreements reached prior to a referendum being held should be honoured (yes – to state the bleeding obvious to anyone who is not a politician, perhaps). To that end both the IndyRef and BrexitRef conformed to the same assessment that they were a generational occurrence. Reasonable enough for such profound constitutional events. Thus, with regard to re-running either; that should be a No for the foreseeable future. I don’t think that there are many Brits of any political persuasion who do not believe that, for both Westminster or the SNP, the sole clamour for another is due to anything other than ‘losing’.
          Now, I know that Edinburgh may say that ‘Brexit gives another independence referendum legitimacy’, but the ‘1st’ was held whilst we were definitely in the EU – and that was not of any concern to the SNP’s single issue mindset at the time. Indeed, the only IndRef ‘legitimacy’ now should only arise if the UK Parliament manouvered another BrexitRef.
          Incidentally, I still find it gobsmacking Brass that, having been granted their own referendum, the SNP voted against the whole UK having one on that other fundamental constitutional issue of our relationship with Europe.
          Regards

    • wrong and unnecessarily insulting you are one of those types who can’t stand anyone having a different opinion to yours. And what’s wrong with Portsmouth having a share of the shipbuilding works. You madam are a muppet.

  5. I seem to remember going on Otter at Chatham back in the late 60’s when I was in the Sea Cadets, must have been Navy Day.

  6. When was that main photo taken? I must have missed that because I didn’t know there was one of QE and PoW in the same shot. I thought QE was long gone before PoW was floated out. Was that QE doing a pit stop during sea trials while PoW was still in the final stages of fit out (also at the stage of applying the thermal deck coating by the look of the coverings on the deck)?

  7. If my memory serves me correctly, discounting block sections, wasn’t the last warship built in an operational naval dockyard HMS Clyde, in Portsmouth?

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