Royal Navy: French warships Rhone and L'Aigle being welcomed to Portsmouth - when

BSAM Rhone and FS L’Aigle will be sailing past The Round Tower in Old Portsmouth and onto the harbour tomorrow morning (September 20). According to the King’s Harbour Master (KHM) shipping movements, FS Rhone will visit at 7am and FS L’Aigle at 10am.

They will be stopping off at the North Corner Jetty and the North Wall respectively. BSAM Rhone was last in Portsmouth on September 2 after completing search and rescue manoeuvres at sea with Danish and Icelandic navies in July.

FS L’Aigle is a Tripartite-class minehunter which has previously operated in the Arabian Gulf in 2019. Commissioned in 1987, the ship has been used for various missions to find explosives at sea. She is equipped with DUBM 21B sonar to classify ground and moored mines to a range of 260 ft. Three machine guns are also fitted to the vessel.

Portsmouth has welcomed international ships from various Nato allies. This includes the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, American dock landing ship USS Gunston Hall and others. They stopped off in the city before heading off to Exercise Steadfast Defender - Nato’s largest operation since The Cold War.