HMS SOUTHAMPTON to visit Cardiff on Friday
Wales' First Minister will be amongst thousands to board ship...

Royal Navy warship HMS Southampton will be alongside Millennium Quay in Cardiff Bay on Friday (April 4) and will open its gangways to thousands of visitors – including the Welsh First Minister, the Right Honourable Rhodri Morgan AM.

The ship is open to visitors on Saturday the 5th from 10am until 2pm and on the Monday will host a Maritime Resilience Capability Demonstration for the Welsh Resilience Forum which is chaired by the First Minister for Wales.

The “Ship Open to Visitors” programme on the Saturday allows friends, family and enthusiasts to see for themselves the capabilities of a Type 42 destroyer.

The Maritime Resilience Capability Demonstration is a more detailed demonstration of the contribution the Royal Navy could make in the event of a large scale incident or emergency in the region that would require cooperation from a number of different civil and military organisations.

Members of the Welsh Resilience Forum will hear from the Naval Regional Commander, Commodore Jamie Miller CBE, about how the Royal Navy could provide assistance to the civil authorities (as happened, for example, during the flood in Gloucestershire last summer).

The Commanding Officer of HMS Southampton, Commander Richard Morris, said: “This visit to Cardiff is crucial to our relationship with the city and we want to demonstrate that as well as being a highly capable warship we can also play a vital role in peacetime operations - anywhere in the world.

“We are looking forward to welcoming the First Minister and know that he will be impressed by what he sees.”

Last year saw HMS Southampton deployed for eight months in the South Atlantic as the Royal Navy’s ‘on call’ warship in the region, known as Atlantic Patrol Task (South). Her journey to and from the South Atlantic took her to places as diverse as the beaches of Barbados and the glaciers of South Georgia. Over the course of the deployment, the Ship visited fourteen foreign ports, and conducted a large scale military exercise with naval units from Chile, the United States, France and Argentina. During her time in the Falkland Islands she conducted training exercises with other UK forces, and practiced a disaster relief exercise on the island of South Georgia.