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BOSKALIS GETS PORTSMOUTH
READY FOR ARRIVAL OF
NEW AIRCRAFT CARRIERS
In 2017 the port of Portsmouth will
become the home of two new aircraft
carriers. Boskalis was responsible
for widening and deepening the port
and the entrance channel. The main
challenge involved detecting and
removing large quantities of
obstructions and unexploded
ordnance (UXO). The local project
team developed advanced equipment
for this work in collaboration with
colleagues from UXO detection and
clearance specialist Boskalis Hirdes.
“Portsmouth is not only a busy container and ferry port, it is also home to many
navy vessels,” said Boskalis project leader Gerrit Jan van den Bosch. “The British
Royal Navy is building two huge aircraft carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and the
Prince of Wales, and Portsmouth will be their home port. Boskalis was appointed
by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, a part of the British Ministry of Defence,
to prepare the port for the arrival of these ships.”
CHALLENGE
The project included the clearance, widening and deepening of the port and its
entrance channel. The navigation channel was too narrow and shallow for the
aircraft carriers and needed to be widened from 200 to 500 meters and deepened
to 11 meters. The inner harbor and the turning basin were also deepened.
A large proportion of the dredging work, which involved a volume of 3.1 million
cubic meters, was executed by the trailing suction hopper dredger Shoalway and
the backhoe dredger Manu Pekka.
“The challenge was that the port area was littered with obstructions, including
ordnance,” said Van den Bosch. “The history of Portsmouth as a military port
dates back to the Middle Ages. Since then all sorts of things have ended up on the
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