Sailors help major evacuation effort

BUT if you’re thinking ‘HMS Cumberland’ or 'HMS York' and ‘Libya’ you’d be wrong.

No, these are Britons caught up in the latest unrest between Ginger and Brownia. Saving their bacon is the good ship Albion, which has dispatched her landing craft to ‘Freeport’ to evacuate them.

The Brownian enclave of Freeport is actually Wilsons Beach, just around the corner from Weston Mill Lake Jetty (hence the unmistakable outline of HMS Ocean in the background).

It was just one of four points around the Plymouth area selected for the mock evacuation as HMS Albion’s pre-deployment training reached its climax.

The nation’s flagship has spent the opening weeks of 2011 enjoying ‘top-up training’ courtesy of the Flag Officer Sea Training before she leads the RN’s task force deployment of the year to the Med and beyond, Exercise Cougar.

The climax of that training was a simulated NEO – non-combatant evacuation operation – from a conflict-ravaged foreign state… something long practised by ships passing through FOST, but given additional relevance in the light of current events in North Africa.

In the latest dry run, helicopters and landing craft were despatched to Jupiter Point, Turnchapel, Wacker Quay (near Antony) and Treluggan boatyard (in Saltash) to round up the scattered civilians – somewhat to the bemusement of locals who woke to a lot of military activity on an otherwise ordinary March morning.

Once collected, the evacuees were taken to a central evacuation point on Wilsons Beach at Bull Point, where green berets from Alpha Company 40 Cdo had been landed to provide security for landing craft to ferry the civvies to Albion.

Aboard the assault ship the evacuees received food, accommodation and medical attention before onward passage once more, this time to RFA Mounts Bay so Albion could resume more warlike operations.

“Albion’s unique capabilities – as a floating headquarters that can also land a military force at a time and place of our choosing – mean we are the perfect platform for a wide range of military or humanitarian operations,” said her CO Capt James Morley.

With the FOSTies happy with Albion’s performance, they declared the assault ship ready for operations of any sort, at any time, anywhere around the world.

After a brief spot of maintenance in her home port of Devonport, she’s due to leave the UK next month in company with HMS Sutherland inter alia as Cougar kicks off.