WATCH: French ship FS L'Aigle sails into Portsmouth in glorious sunshine as Royal Navy welcome visitors

FNS L’Aigle travelled past The Round Tower in Old Portsmouth just before 10am in the glorious sunshine. Her compatriot, BASM Rhone, arrived in Portsmouth at roughly 7am.

Footage shows a police boat greeting the Tripartite-class minehunter and playing an accompanying tune to mark her arrival. The Royal Navy regularly welcomes international guests - primarily Nato allies - to HMNB Portsmouth as part of routine collaboration.

BSAM Rhone was seen operating in the Portsmouth area earlier this month after carrying out exercises with Danish and Icelandic navies in July. FS L’Aigle, translated to Eagle in English, has previously operated in the Arabian Gulf near Bahrain 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. 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.