Once
upon a time,
animals and plants lived undisturbed by human beings. Now that we have taken over, wildlife in Portsmouth is just an echo of its former self
- but what an echo! We have one of the most exciting places in the
country for wildlife - the mudflats, marshes, seashores, woodland,
grassland and built-up areas of the city mean we can attract all sorts
of different species right to our front door.
Royal Navy in the arctic with HMS Endurance looking at climate, eco-systems and wildlife.
HMS Endurance is the Royal Navy's Ice Patrol Vessel.
She deploys each year in the autumn from her base port of Portsmouth in Hampshire, to the cold and ice of the Antarctica austral summer.
There she carries out operational duties on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Antarctic Survey and the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office.
A commercially built icebreaker she was chartered by the Royal Navy as HMS Polar Circle in November 1991, being subsequently purchased and re-commissioned as HMS Endurance in 1992. She certainly lives up to her name with a range of 24,600 nautical miles at 12 knots on a fuel tank capacity of 1,200 cubic metres. Capable of making 50 tonnes of fresh water per day and she can also store 270 days' worth of dry and frozen provisions. Vital elements of the Endurance capability package are two Lynx helicopters and seven boats, including two specialist nine-ton survey motorboats that operate independently for inshore hydrographic work.
In addition to seamanship, engineering and logistics, the Ship's Company's (Navyspeak for `crew') skillset includes some of the Navy's rarer specialisations - the diving team is led by a specialist diver, there is a six strong Royal Marines detachment trained in cold weather survival techniques, a team of Survey Recorders and a professional Naval Photographer with facilities for still and video work.
HMS Endurance's motto is " Fortitudine Vincimus" ~ 'By Endurance We Conquer'. This motto originates from that of the great Antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton who made history in his ship, Endurance during his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914-15.
For more information on the ship, see The HMS Endurance Tracking Project.
