THE Royal Navy?s most advanced survey ship left Devonport on its first deployment last Wednesday with a Peter Tavy man as its captain.
HMS Enterprise, which was built at Appledore Shipyard, is the second of the Echo class multi-role hydrographic and oceanographic survey vessels.
Her mission is to operate worldwide, collecting and analysing high quality data for use in a multitude of military and
civilian tasks.
Its skipper, Commander Vaughan Nail said: ?We have been working up to this point for a long time through intensive work-up of a brand new ship and training of the ship?s company. Both are at peak readiness for our task ahead.?
Among Enterprise?s duties will be to represent the Royal Navy at the French International Fleet Review in the South of France in August.
She will also join many nations taking part in a NATO exercise at the end of the year, before spending Christmas off Malta.
The deployment will culminate in Monte Carlo with the ship as the British representative at the International Hydrographic Office annual conference.
Commander Nail?s career has included working on building new airfields in the Falklands and taking part in a joint service rain forest expedition as a land surveyor and bug collector.
He then worked on the staff of the officer-training centre Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, before surveying in equatorial South Atlantic and serving on the survey ship HMS Roebuck off Scotland.
He was then an exchange officer with the US Navy in the Gulf and Caribbean, commanding HMS Beagle surveying the Straits of Dover and the Mediterranean on his return.
He then oversaw the building of HMS Scott and assumed command of the Royal Navy Hydrographic School. In 2001 he helped organise the hydrographic squadron, overseeing it into part of the newly formed Devonport Flotilla.
Commander Nail lives in Peter Tavy with his wife, Claire, and their twin teenage sons, Alexander and Lloyd. He enjoys sailing, cycling and gardening.