"Found a new home": Royal Navy minehunter HMS Pembroke joins Romania forces and renamed after being sold
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A former Royal Navy minehunter has been given a new home and lease of life after being sold.
HMS Pembroke, a Sandown-class Mine Counter Measure Vessel, has officially joined the Romanian Navy. Along with her sister ship HMS Blyth, the vessel - now known as Capitan Constantin Dumitrescu (M217) - will soon be supporting Nato’s security mission in the Black Sea.
The Royal Navy’s Commander Operations, Major General Rich Cantrill, said: “We are pleased to see former HMS Pembroke commissioned into the Romanian Naval Forces. She will play a key role in Black Sea security going forward and this demonstrates the strengthening bond between our two Nations’ militaries.”
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Latest Royal Navy ship to be sold
A ceremony marking HMS Pembroke’s new chapter was held in Rosyth, Scotland. Defence, Equipment & Support (DE&S) organised the sale, as they specialise in disposing of vehicles and equipment no longer needed by the armed forces.
Other minehunters which have been sold include HMS Quorn, Dulverton and Cottesmore to Lithuania; HMS Sandown, Inverness and Bridport to Estonia; HMS Berkeley and Bicester to Greece; HMS Atherstone to the Belfast-based maritime contractor Harland & Wolff, and HMS Grimsby and Shoreham to the Ukrainian Navy in 2023.
Commodore Richard Whalley, Former Head of Sales and Exports at DE&S, said: “We are pleased to have found HMS Pembroke a new home with the Romanian Navy. This agreement highlights the strong relationship we have with our allies and feeds into NATO’s collective mission of supporting global security.”
Romanian Chief of the Navy Vice Admiral Mihai Panait attended the ceremony alongside Maj Gen Cantrill and representatives from the defence firm Babcock. The ship building company refurbished both minehunters before they were transferred to their new owners. HMS Blyth was commissioned into the Romanian Navy as M270 Sublocotenent Ion Ghiculescu in September 2023.
The former HMS Pembroke is 52.5m long, weigh 485 tonnes and has a range of more than 2,500 nautical miles without refuelling. She uses high-definition sonar to scour the world’s seabeds for mines and unexploded ordinances. These are then safely destroyed by the ship’s clearance diving teams, or the ATLAS Seafox mine disposal system.
One of the notable successes of HMS Pembroke’s career was the discovery and safe disposal of a Russian mine from the First World War. A remote underwater vehicle was deployed to identify the device off the coast of Lithuania before it was safely disposed of. HMS Stirling Castle, a newly acquired vessel from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, will house autonomous mine-hunting systems.
Romania will use the ship to tackle drifting mines in the Black Sea, a problem which has become more pressing due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The hope is the former HMS Pembroke will make a big contribution to maritime security in the region.