Built as a tanker under yard No 60 by Swan Hunter, Wallsend, U.K. for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
November 1971 ordered.
30 August 1973 launched as the RFA BLACK ROVER (A273), christened by Mrs Trewby, one of the Rover class of which five have been built.
Displacement: 4,700 tons light, 11,522 tons full load. 7,574 grt, 6,799 dwt. Dim. 140.5 x 19.2 x 7.3m. (draught), length bpp. 131.1m.
Powered by two 16-cyl. four stroke SEMT-Pielstick PC2V ICE, 15.360 hp., speed 19 knots. One shaft with a controllable pitch propeller, speed 19 knots. One bow thruster.
Armament: 2 – 20mm Oerlikon guns and 2 – 7.62mm MG.
Crew 55.
23 August 1974 commissioned. Building cost £7 million.
She is a small fleet tanker and designed to replenish ships underway at sea with fuel, fresh water and stores in all weather conditions.
Fitted out with a helicopter deck for conducting helicopter replenishment, has not a hangar.
.
08 May 1979 a unit of Task Group 317 she sailed from Portsmouth.
12 May 1980 together with the frigate HMS ESKIMO she was dispatched from St Vincent in the Bahamas after Cuban aircraft had attacked and sunk the Bahamas Defence Force vessel FLAMINGO while it was trying to arrest Cuban fishing vessels which were fishing illegally in Bahamas waters. They rescued the crew of the FLAMINGO.
During the Falkland war in 1982 was she under refit at Rosyth and she took not part in this conflict.
April 1996 supported the destroyer HMS GLOUCESTER during the first RN/USN/RUSSIAN Navy exercise off the southwest coast of England.
From May 1997 to 29 August 1997 supplied humanitarian aid in Operation Caxton after the volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, and during the voluntary evacuation of the island.
12 June 1998 towed the inter-island freighter ANESTINE MAC to a safe anchorage off Montserrat.
After hurricane Georges she supplied humanitarian relief at St Kitts and Montserrat on 22 and 23 September 1998. And again after hurricane Mitch had passed on Honduras offshore islands in Operation Mainsail from 31 October to 3 November 1998.
From 6 November till 15 November with other Royal Navy units she supplied hurricane relief at Nicaragua and Honduras after hurricane Mitch had passed.
2000 She participated in Exercise Spirit 2000 and Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 01-1, which took place in the waters off the East Coast and in the Caribbean.
06 October she arrived at Belize to provide hurricane relief after hurricane Keith had passed.
February 2001 left Devonport for an 11 month deployment as an Atlantic Patrol Tanker (South); during the voyage she visited some ports before heading to West Africa to support the British forces around Sierra Leone. Later that year she crossed the Atlantic and took up patrol of the Falkland Islands.
December 2001 she returned home.
2005 Sailed for the Far East and was deployed with the post-Tsunami reconstruction.
She took in August 2005 part in the Exercise Deep Sabre in the South China Sea.
26 November 2005 she returned at Southampton.
2008 She sailed again south to the South Atlantic visited South Georgia.
09 January 2009 she visited Tristan da Cunha.
2010 She visited Tristan da Cunha again and also early 2011.
2012 In service. IMO No 7329338.
St Helena 2011 50p sg?, scott?
Source: The Royal Fleet Auxiliary by Adams & Smith. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFA_Black_Rover_(A273) http://www.historicalrfa.org/rfa-black-rover