IT’S BEEN revealed that Dorset’s adopted warship, the minesweeper HMS Cattistock, was the sole vessel available to intercept a Russian flotilla going through the Channel last August.

When two heavily-armed Kilo Class Russian submarines and an escort ship sailed close to the Dorset coast Cattistock, a plastic-hulled ship with just one 30mm mounted gun, was secretly dispatched to escort them because, it is claimed, the overstretched Royal Navy had no other ship available.

The Navy is normally understood to send a frigate armed with a weapons system which can destroy missiles travelling at supersonic speeds for this type of mission but reportedly had none available and dispatched Cattistock, instead.

It is now being alleged that Cattistock’s deployment – the ships involved in this kind of mission are normally named later – was hushed up to spare Naval blushes at having to send such a lightly-armed ship to maintain safety. The vessel on notice to respond to incidents of this sort, HMS Westminster, was said to be on another task at the time.

The news comes days after fears were raised about the UK’s naval capability by Chief of the General Staff General Sir Nick Carter. He said the Kremlin was a ‘clear and present danger’ and warned of Russia’s ‘eye-watering’ military capabilities.

HMS Cattistock’s normal work is in clearing mines, although she does have a submarine detection capability, too, and she is currently on duty in the Baltic sea. However, she has a long affiliation with the Dorset village of the same name, and with Lilliput Sea Scouts, who have visited her on a number of occasions.

She visited Poole in 2011 to celebrate the opening of the Twin Sails Bridge and joined the Bournemouth Air show in 2009.

She has a number of trained Navy divers whose job is to study and then work out the best way to dispose of the mines which it is her job to clear. She's worked extensively in The Gulf but is equally at home in our waters. Only last autumn she recovered and made safe a World War II mine dredged up off the Norfolk coast by a Dutch trawler, which then dropped it near an underwater gas pipe.