Royal Navy sailors on Portsmouth warship HMS Westminster 'held their breath' for 110 days at sea over Covid-19 fears

HMS Westminster sailed back into her home city after her latest spell at sea, which saw the Type 23 frigate notch up 17,500 nautical miles.

During the ship’s latest tour of duty, her crew was forced to remain pent-up with limited time off the frigate, to slash the risk of sailors being infected with Covid-19.

Sailors also had to spend two weeks in isolation before eventually setting sail on May 1.

But the pandemic didn’t stop Westminster from carrying out a number of critical missions, which included exercises with Nato and, more recently, monitoring nine Russian warships near UK waters.

Lieutenant Commander David Armstrong, Westminster’s executive officer and second in command, said: ‘It’s been a really successful deployment and we’re pretty proud of it.

‘We were asked by the fleet to do our bit during this time of national Covid struggle so we’ve been doing our job but doing it in a slightly unique way and making sure that we are definitely available should there be any operational tasking required.

‘To achieve that, in late April we closed ourselves off from the rest of the country, held our breath for two weeks as we worked out whether we were infection-free and from the moment we discovered we were, we were available to the fleet with no worry that we would need to bring ourselves alongside with infection. We then jealously guarded that status.’

Most port visits were scrapped, with the exception of a trip to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, which had a relatively low number of Covid-19 cases.

But that only gave three days of respite away from the ship.

‘Effectively we’ve been stuck on board as a ship’s company for 110 days. No one’s gone home and we haven’t seen our friends and family for that length of time, which is unusual, and the extra stress of Covid-19 has made it a more challenging,’ added Lt Cdr Armstrong

Westminster is now back alongside in Portsmouth for the next few months undergoing planned maintenance. Her crew is on leave.

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