Yonderberry Oil and Petroleum Supply Jetty

Drawing fuel

Above: The Green Rover (A268) and Grey Rover (A269) were two RFAs that were regular visitors to Yonderberry Jetty, taking fuels for RAS with RN ships. This photo was taken in March 2013.

The image above shows L14 HMS Albion moored alongside the original Yonderberry jetty on 11 Feb 2011. HMS Ocean is also seen, behind, being pushed into a berth by two tug boats operated by Serco Denholm.

It has been a very rare event for Royal Navy ships to be moored here. It has always been the practice to moor ships of the Royal Fleet Auxilliary here to withdraw oil and petroleum so as to perform replenishment at sea operations with the navy. Ships alongside in HM Naval Base Devonport are refuelled from small barges called lighters that are delivered to the jetty by tug boat and then, once filled, are moved to the appropriate ship needing fuel. Thus shore refuelling of RN ships has never been carried out by mooring them to the Yonderberry jetty.

Above, we see a similar rare event, this time showing HMS Scott being refuelled from Yonderberry jetty on 20 Feb 2015. The lighter, 1503F - shown here - is also present.

Above, is RFA Wave Ruler on 21 Jul 2013.

Above, is RFA Wave Knight on 14 Jan 2015.

Above, we have two images of HMS Argus alongside the old jetty on 5-6 Mar 2017.

For many of the later years of operation, small craft and lighters were able to draw fuel from the inside of the terminal. A floating pontoon was used for vessels to come alongside - in this case, the lighter 1515F. However, any MoD vessel could use this facility, including the MoD police launches and Royal Marines landing craft. This photo was taken on 15 Jan 2018.

Lighter 1714 is another of the vessels used to draw fuel from Yonderberry jetty and deliver it to ships alongside in HMNB Devonport. These lighters are moved by tugs, once of the Port Auxiliary Service (PAS) and now belonging to the contractor Serco Denholm (SD).

SD Deborah is seen here delivering 1503F to Yonderberry on 30 Jan 2013. Of note in the background is that the very large crane that was part of the Nuclear refitting complex has been removed to leave only the four concrete legs standing. This structure was also later removed completely.

SD Eileen is made to look small against 1714 as it pulls in to Yonderberry on 12 Nov 2018.