Britain’s biggest and most powerful warship ever built has returned to port early after an on board leak, the Ministry of Defence said.
HMS Queen Elizabeth left Portsmouth Naval Base last month to embark on five weeks of sea trials and training before setting sail again to the US later this summer.
READ MORE: Queen welcomes new £3.1bn aircraft carrier as the ‘best of British’
But the £3.1 billion aircraft carrier, which had been due to return to the Hampshire city later this week for a planned maintenance period, was forced to cut short the latest trials.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence said: “Following a minor issue with an internal system on HMS Queen Elizabeth, the ship’s company were required to remove a small volume of water from the ship.
#MondayMotivation is #WESTLANT19🇺🇸
We go into our last week of @FOST aiming to achieve a ✅ to proceed across the pond and conduct operational testing of the F35s🇬🇧
Alongside this evaluation we are also conducting 24hr flying with 4 types of aircraft.#multitasking pic.twitter.com/T9JBnErf96
— HMS Queen Elizabeth (@HMSQNLZ) July 8, 2019
“An investigation into the cause is under way.”
It is understood there was no damage or breach to the hull, with the situation caused by water which leaked into and was then contained in an internal compartment.
READ MORE: Rosyth Dockyard wins £5m contract for HMS Queen Elizabeth maintenance
With the problem dealt with and isolated quickly, the water was pumped out and the vessel returned to Portsmouth as a precautionary measure following the incident on Tuesday.
This latest problem follows a number of other issues including a shaft seal leak which caused water to pour into the ship, and the accidental trigger of the sprinklers in the hangar.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel