Built as ro-ro landing ship logistic under yard No 761 by Hawthorn Leslie, Hebburn for the British Army
14 March 1966 launched as the RFA SIR TRISTRAM (L3505), one of the Knights of the Round Table class.
Displacement 5,639 ton. 6,390 grt ton, 2,180 dwt Dim. 126.0 x 17.9m, length bpp. 111.6m.
Powered by two 10-cyl. turbo charged diesels, 9,520 hp, twin shafts, speed 17 knots. One bow thruster.
Armament 4 Oerlikon 20mm canons and 4 – 7.62 mm machine guns.
Crew 68.
Could carry 340 troops and 16 tanks, munition and fuel or up to 60 4-ton trucks and Landrovers.
Fitted out with a flight deck aft for helicopters, also the vehicle foredeck can be used for landing of helicopters.
14 September 1967 commissioned.
1970 Transferred to the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
After the outbreak of the Falkland War she was at Belize and ordered to Ascension, from where she sailed with troops, stores, a 105mm battery and a Blowpipe missile battery onboard.
She was the second ship in line with the assault force and when she left the anchorage HMS ANTELOPE exploded.
When the ATLANTIC CONVEYER was hit by Exocet missiles she was two miles behind her.
Remained with the battle group till 5 June and supplied accommodation for some officers and men of the SIR GALAHAD and SIR LANCELOT while unexploded bomb damage in their ships was repaired.
08 June 1982 when transporting men and equipment to Fitzroy Cove at 13.15 that day she was attacked and bombed by Argentinean aircraft.
Two of her crew killed and many injured of her troops, and he was abandoned.
Her accommodation burnt out, after the war towed to Port Stanley and used as an accommodation hulk.
16 May1983 sailed from Port Stanley on board a heavy lift ship DAN LIFTER, for repair by the Tyne Shiprepair’s Wallsend Drydock, U.K.
Her aluminium superstructure block was replaced by a steel one. Her flight deck enlarged and she was lengthened with a new mid section. Tonnage 6,824 grt, 2,443 dwt. Length 134.9m., length bpp. 120.5m.
She re-entered active service in 1985 where after she saw service in the Gulf War and the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s
1998 She supported relief operation for Hurricane Mitch off Central America.
2000 Was deployed to Sierra Leone in support of the British operations there. Then she made a voyage to the Baltic in support of the Mine Counter Measure Vessels (MCMVs).
Early 2001 she returned to Sierra Leone to relieve SIR PERCIVALE as the ship supporting the British forces ashore there.
2003 One of the ships in the British fleet in support of the invasion of Iraq.
17 December 2005 decommissioned, and laid up.
May 2007 she arrived by A&P Falmouth for conversion to a static training ship.
2011 In service as a training ship in Portsmouth.
Tristan da Cunha 1995 50p sg593, scott571.
Source: Wikipedia. http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz Merchant ships at War by Villar.
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary by Thomas A. Adams & James R Smith.