HMS Tyne British River-Class Offshore Patrol Vessel

HMS Tyne is the sixth Royal Navy ship to carry the name Tyne. She is a River-class offshore patrol vessel built by Vosper Thornycroft in Southampton to serve as a fishery protection unit within the United Kingdom's waters along with her two sister ships Mersey and Severn. All three were commissioned into service in 2003 to replace the five older Island-class patrol vessels. Tyne was featured in the first episode of the BBC series Empire of the Seas, "How the Navy Forged the Modern World, Heart of Oak", presented by Dan Snow. The ships have large working decks to allow the vessels to cope in several roles, such as disaster relief, fire fighting, rescue work, and interception of other vessels. For this purpose a crane capable of lifting 25 tonnes (28 tons) is fitted, to enable standard containers to be used. The deck is also large enough to permit the transport of other craft such as oil spill recovery tractors and landing craft. Her affiliations included North Tyneside Council, St Catherines Primary School, Hadrian Special Needs Primary School, TS Caledonia (Peterhead Sea Cadets unit), TS Tyne (Newburn Sea Cadets unit), and the Worshipful Company of Butchers. Aside from her day to day fishery protection duties, Tyne was occasionally been called upon to undertake escort roles in the UK Area of Interest, two such examples occurred in the autumn of 2016 when Tyne was twice assigned to escort Russian warships through the English Channel. In March 2017 it was announced that Tyne would be manned by personnel usually assigned to Hunt-class mine countermeasures vessel; this would allow her crew to transfer to the Batch 2 River class HMS Forth in build in Glasgow.