HMS Prince of Wales kept residents awake all night

Royal Navy’s ‘noisy’ carrier HMS Prince of Wales leaves tired Gosport residents ‘sleeping with pillows over their heads’.

Weary residents living opposite the Royal Navy’s newest aircraft carrier have hit out over the £3.1bn warship’s ‘noisy’ engines, claiming it is leaving them with ‘sleepless nights’.

Exhausted harbourside homeowners in Gosport are being forced to sleep with ‘pillows over their heads’ due to the ‘incessant’ whirring drone of the HMS Prince of Wales’s diesel generators, according to the Portsmouth News.

The 65,000-tonne ship is currently alongside at Portsmouth Naval Base and would ordinarily be hooked up to a land-based power supply 24/7.

However, the Navy is carrying out trials with a new power plant which means the ship occasionally relies on her own generators to keep the lights on.

Officials from Senior Service insisted the ship’s generators were used for the ‘minimal amount of time necessary’, with a Navy source claiming this to have been a handful of times since the carrier first arrived in Portsmouth in November.

But annoyed residents claimed the noise has been constant since the ship returned to the city at the end of last month and was becoming tough to bear.

A resident, who has lived with his family in Flagstaff Green on the old Royal Clarence Yard site since 2016, said it had never been noisier.

“No resident, in this long stretch of waterfront, can escape the sound of this ship, particularly at nighttime,” he said.

“In this time of national crisis and forced lock down, when people are supporting the country and the NHS by staying at home in our flats and houses, why can we not open our windows and enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the moment?

“Instead, for many of us, we are forced to close our windows at night or stick our heads under our pillows and, during the day, instead of enjoying the new pleasure of silence and the new experience of unpolluted fresh air, we are bombarded by the noise and pollution of HMS Prince of Wales.”

It is Navy policy to provide shore power to all vessels alongside whenever possible.

The Ministry of Defence has pumped in more than £200m to overhaul the naval base’s infrastructure to support the nation’s two, vast aircraft carriers – including a new power plant to supply them with electricity.

A Royal Navy spokesman says: “The carriers and the power plant remain on initial trials, and there will be occasions when the ships will need to use their own generators. These periods are always for the minimum amount of time necessary.”

HMS Queen Elizabeth

Meanwhile, HMS Queen Elizabeth remains in Portsmouth for crew tests. The carrier had been due to sail from Portsmouth for a period of sea training with 800 crew onboard, according to the BBC.

The Navy had initially planned for it to sail without any of the crew being tested beforehand. However, the decision was reversed saying there was extra capacity in testing.

A Navy spokesman says: “In addition to an isolation period at sea, the Royal Navy is now making use of spare NHS testing capacity to test the crew of HMS Queen Elizabeth prior to sailing.

“This is the right and sensible thing to do to ensure the Navy can continue to deliver on operations now and in the future.

“She will be operating in waters close to the UK coast and the commanding officer has the discretion to cease the training, if deemed necessary.”