
VIDEO: First look at new warship built at Rosyth docks
A new warship built at Rosyth has been seen for the first time.
The Royal Navy's Type 31 frigate, HMS Venturer, was rolled out of the build hall at the Fife yard on Tuesday.
Built by Babock, the ship will be floated in the coming weeks.
The 455ft vessel – which has a capacity for 115 people – is the UK's first Type 31 working warship and will serve around the world.
The general-purpose frigate will perform a variety of roles, including maritime safety operations, counter piracy missions, humanitarian aid and disaster relief.
HMS Venturer's flight deck is the largest of any Royal Navy frigate or destroyer, and can accommodate aircraft including Wildcats and Chinooks.
It also has three boat bays for smaller vessels.
Construction of HMS Venturer began in 2022 within the state-of-the-art assembly facility at Rosyth, where defence firm Babcock is building five Type 31s.
The ship's sponsor is Princess Anne, the Princess Royal.
Sir Nick Hine, chief executive of marine for Babcock International, said: 'This is a great day for Babcock, a great day for Scotland, a great day for engineering in Scotland and a great day for UK international shipbuilding.'
He added: '(We) employ 10,000 people in Scotland and spend £500 million in the Scottish economy, and much of that goes through the local area.
'A lot of our workforce is locally employed – we are a locally important employer and we want to keep doing that.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Glasgow Times
5 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Paul Sweeney: 'Shipbuilding has bright future in Glasgow'
As a boy, I remember pressing my face up to the glass cabinets to see the amazing ship models at the Transport Museum. My papa worked at John Brown's in Clydebank building the QE2, and my dad worked at Yarrow Shipbuilders in Scotstoun. The sense of community and collective pride as thousands gathered to watch a vast wall of steel rumbling down the slipway into the river on launch days has imprinted itself on my subconscious. Building these great ships matters to Glaswegians. Although we don't launch ships in quite such a dramatic way these days, I recently had the privilege of attending the naming ceremony for the first of eight Type 26 frigates built at that same shipyard in Scotstoun for the Royal Navy by BAE Systems. The first ship is aptly named HMS Glasgow – a salute to the city and the people who made her. I was there as a representative of our city, but before I was elected to Parliament, I followed in my family tradition by working in the Clyde shipyards, and I worked on the early design for the new class of Type 26 frigates as well as the modernisation plan for the shipyard facilities at both Govan and Scotstoun, so it was a particularly proud moment for me to be there with my old colleagues to witness the culmination of our great collective endeavour. Most Glaswegians will have a family member or know someone who is, or was, a Clyde shipbuilder – it is part of our city's foundation myth. But equally, everyone also knows someone who felt the hardship and humiliation as many of our shipyards closed and laid people off during the period of deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s. Although those scars still linger in many of our social problems, times have changed, and the future of shipbuilding on the Clyde is more positive than it has been for many years. With seven more ships in the pipeline for the Royal Navy and hopefully the biggest export contract Glasgow has ever seen, with a potential deal to build Type 26 ships for the Norwegian Navy to be finalised in the next few weeks, there is real confidence in Glasgow's shipbuilding industry today. A continuous conveyor belt of ship orders will sustain thousands of skilled and well-paid jobs for Glaswegians. These jobs are integral to the UK's defence, and Glaswegian workers should rightly be proud of that. BAE Systems and the UK Government have ploughed £300 million into modernising Clyde shipbuilding, most notably with the vast new indoor shipbuilding assembly hall at Govan Shipyard, named after the pioneering WW2 electrician Janet Harvey, officially opening later this month. One of Britain's largest buildings, this tremendous facility will allow for uninterrupted indoor ship construction and higher productivity so that the shipyard can compete with the best shipbuilding facilities in the world. On top of that, BAE has opened a brand-new Applied Shipbuilding Academy at Scotstoun Shipyard, which will help underpin workforce skills for years to come. These new investments will now be boosted by the commitment that the new UK Labour Government is making in our defence, rebuilding the Royal Navy after years of Tory cuts. While the UK Government is investing in the future of shipbuilding in the west of Scotland – still the region's biggest manufacturing employer – the SNP Scottish Government's own procurement agency awards CalMac ferry contracts to Turkey and Poland, disregarding social value for the Scottish supply chain. And just this week, while the Prime Minister was in Govan Shipyard announcing new funding for the industry as part of the Strategic Defence Review, the SNP withdrew public funding for a new shipbuilding welding skills centre on the Clyde being developed by Rolls-Royce and Strathclyde University. Not only is it industrially naive, but it's hypocritical, too. The only thing keeping the Scottish Government-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard at Port Glasgow open is subcontract work from BAE Systems Naval Ships for the Royal Navy's Type 26 frigate programme. Scottish Enterprise also recently grant funded the Applied Shipbuilding Academy in Scotstoun, so far from this being a cast iron principle, the SNP policy on state support for defence projects is also selectively applied. The First Minister, John Swinney, needs to quickly get a grip of economic and geopolitical reality by formally ditching his government's juvenile policy of industrial self-sabotage and work with the new Labour government to back Glasgow's world-class shipbuilding industry.


The Sun
13 hours ago
- The Sun
Cash-strapped Government trying to flog half-built warships amid claims it can't afford to finish them
THE Government is trying to flog half-built warships amid claims it can-not afford to finish them. Military top brass invited Norway to buy £1billion frigates HMS Belfast and Birmingham, which are midway through construction. 2 Selling them would give Defence Secretary John Healey and the Treasury breathing space to find the time to pay for them, a source said. But they added that the Navy would have to wait years to get its promised eight vessels if Norway jumped the queue. They said: "The Royal Navy only has eight frigates, the smallest number in its history. 'It desperately needs these new Type 26 frigates as soon as possible. 'But the MoD budget is under so much pressure that selling the half-built hulls to Norway would give the Treasury breathing space to find the time to pay for them.' It comes after the Strategic Defence Review warned the Navy needed a 'cheaper, simpler fleet'. The MoD said Norway was 'one of the UK's most important allies'. A Norwegian source said: 'The government of Norway is in the final phases of making a decision, but no date has been set.' Proud Scots workers watch latest Royal Navy frigate roll out at Babcock Rosyth shipyard 2


Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Rolls-Royce value tops record £75bn: Defence stocks soar as governments are pushed to increase military spending
Rolls-Royce's value has topped £75billion for the first time in its 119-year history as pressure on governments to increase military spending sends defence stocks soaring. As it emerged that Nato plans to force Britain to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2032 – far more than the 3 per cent 'ambition' outlined by Sir Keir Starmer this week – shares across the sector rallied once again. Rolls-Royce, which makes engines for Royal Air Force fighter jets and nuclear reactors that power Royal Navy submarines, closed the day up 2.9 per cent, or 25.4p, at a record high of 894.2p. That gave the engineer a value of £75.7billion. The shares have risen almost ten-fold since 'Turbo' Tufan Erginbilgic took over as chief executive at the start of 2023 when the company was worth just £7.9billion. BAE Systems also hit a record high, rising 2 per cent, or 37.5p, to 1957p, giving it a value of £59billion and taking gains this year to 69 per cent. The company supplies the Ministry of Defence, providing everything from munitions to battlefield communications while also building warships, submarines and planes. Babcock – which was seen as a big winner from plans announced this week to build 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines as it plays a key role in servicing the Royal Navy fleet – gained another 0.9 per cent having risen more than 8 per cent on Monday. The three FTSE 100 defence groups have a combined value of £140billion having been worth just £28.5billion at the start of 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine. Countries across Europe – including Britain – are racing to rearm in the face of Russian aggression after US President Donald Trump said the Continent must take more responsibly for its own security. In his strategic review of UK military spending announced on Monday, Starmer outlined plans to raise defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2027. He also outlined an 'ambition' for it to rise to 3 per cent but refused to set a date. However, Nato members are under pressure to sign up to a much higher target of 5 per cent of GDP in total – made up of 3.5 per cent on defence and 1.5 per cent on wider cyber and security.