RMAS ''Lodestone'' (A115) was a ''Magnet''-class

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

degaussing Degaussing is the process of decreasing or eliminating a remnant magnetic field. It is named after the gauss, a unit of magnetism, which in turn was named after Carl Friedrich Gauss. Due to magnetic hysteresis, it is generally not possible to redu ...

ship. She was completed in 1980 by the

Clelands Shipbuilding Company Clelands Shipbuilding Company was a leading British shipbuilding company. The Company was based in Wallsend was nationalised by the British Government. It was founded in 1864 by John and Thomas Cleland, and operated until it was acquired by Swa ...

. The ''Magnet''-class was developed to replace the ''Ham''-class minesweepers that had been converted for degaussing. They are 828

gross tonnage Gross tonnage (GT, G.T. or gt) is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage. Neither gross tonnage nor gross register tonnage should be confused with measures of mass or weigh ...

(GT) and have a top speed of 14

knots A knot is a fastening in rope or interwoven lines. Knot may also refer to: Places * Knot, Nancowry, a village in India Archaeology * Knot of Isis (tyet), symbol of welfare/life. * Minoan snake goddess figurines#Sacral knot Arts, entertainme ...

. They measure 55m x 12m x 4m.

''Bleu de Nîmes''

In 1997 she was sold to an Italian millionaire and towed initially to Devonport for conversion to a luxury yacht, the ''Bleu de Nîmes'' (IMO 7813913). The extensive rebuild in Turkey was completed in 2005. Another rebuild in Italy completed in 2020 increased her length by 16 metres to . In February 2022 she was chartered by the government of

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

for a fifteen day expedition to the

Chagos Archipelago The Chagos Archipelago () or Chagos Islands (formerly the Bassas de Chagas, and later the Oil Islands) is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres (310 mi) south of the Maldives archi ...

following international court rulings that Mauritius is sovereign there.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lodestone (A115) Magnet class degaussing ships of the Royal Navy 1979 ships

''Bleu de Nîmes''

See also

References