Royal Navy forces on the front line of the fight against international smugglers have given a rare insight into their work to stop killer drugs from hitting our streets.
The crew of HMS Lancaster is currently on duty in the Gulf of Oman, where criminals disguise themselves as fishermen in dhows.
They use these boats to flood East Africa – and then Europe – with huge quantities of heroin and crystal meth, as well as hashish.
Royal Marine Commandos revealed to the Mirror how their growing knowledge of the trade in the Gulf means just by the touch of a skipper’s hands they can tell if he is smuggling drugs for gangs back in Iran or Pakistan.
Royal Marine Commando Lieutenant Wotton, a 24-year-old from south Devon, backed up by six comrades, is first to board a suspicious vessel.
Lt Wotton, whose full identity we are not revealing, gets the nod to unleash his team after the ship’s Wildcat helicopter reports concerns.
Faced with seven armed Commandos, many of the smugglers know the drill from previous boardings and rarely dare put up any resistance.
Then the Marines’ senses kick in as they analyse those before them.
Lt Wotton told the Mirror: “When we get on a dhow, half of my team will go on first and secure it, clearing it to make sure there is no other threat.
“[With] smugglers you can tell by how they act – there will be fewer people on board typically.
“Less people means a bigger cut. You’ll get that ambience straight away when you’ve interacted with the crew.”
He added: “You can feel it as well, anything from feeling their hands to see if they’re working hands used to pulling nets, or how they’re dressed.
"You can usually tell the difference between a fisherman and a smuggler.”
Many of the smugglers come from the autonomous region of Balochistan, in between Iran and Pakistan but some of them “don’t even know what it is they’re transporting”, said commanding officer, Cdr Paul Irving.
The gangs are adapting, Lt Wotton said, and finding different ways to hide their drugs and are loading boats with smaller parts of a diverse amount of drugs, to avoid losing huge quantities of one substance if they are busted.
Often the first sign of a potential smuggler can be the lack of an automatic identification system, suggesting the vessel is trying to hide itself.
The smugglers can be fishermen and part time smugglers, or more full time smugglers, Lancaster workers told the Mirror.
Captain Irving, a Navy veteran of 20 years, said: “Some of them are often just fishermen on a different day.
“All we do is take away the stuff they shouldn’t have and set them off back to wherever they were going next.
“We’ll just record the details of the vessel and any distinguishing markings and keep that on record for next time if we come across it again. But we don’t report the people.
“Some of them don’t even know what it is they’re transporting, perhaps,
they’re just the crew of a dhow going about their business, such as they know it.
“They’re transporting something from A to B and getting paid for it.
“So we have no sort of thing against them, we’re just trying to disrupt what they’re doing.
“Someone else is paying them behind the scenes and providing the cargo and unfortunately that’s not something we’re able to influence directly from being at sea.”
Boarding a suspicious vessel and identifying items being smuggled is a full ship effort.
While Marines charge on first, Navy investigators then board to help with the search.
Then expert searchers from any branch of the Lancaster can board.
That can include chefs and caterers, or marine engineers, who may spot there is space in a compartment where there should not be one - and where items could be hidden.
“It is the most whole-ship evolution you can possibly do, because everybody is involved in one way or another,” Captain Irving added.
Lt Wotton’s team has conducted several boardings during their four-month deployment.
Yorkshireman Cdr Irving led its predecessor HMS Montrose to a £2million heroin bust last year.
He said: “It’s very important we’re doing boardings all the time as it provides a deterrent, even if they’re not successful.
“They can tell their friends there’s a warship in the area with Royal Marines boarding team. It disrupts the trade.
“If we stop drugs getting into the UK, that’s good in my book.”
The UK has a long-standing maritime presence in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Operation Kipion is the UK’s commitment to promoting peace and stability in the region, and ensuring the safe flow of oil and trade.
In practice, this means upholding freedom of navigation and enabling the flow of commerce along the region’s key shipping lanes; strengthening partner countries’ capacity to protect their waters; tackling drug and arms trafficking in the region and countering violent extremism and terrorist networks.
HMS Lancaster is a Type 23 Frigate that took over the UK’s year-round patrol of the region from its sister ship HMS Montrose last autumn.
Lancaster is supported by a three-strong squadron of minehunters with a Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ship within the operational area.
Her 200-strong crew includes a Royal Marines boarding team and a Wildcat helicopter flight.
Ahead of her arrival in the Gulf in November 2022 via the Suez Canal, Red Sea and Gulf of Oman, she was involved in security missions with NATO task forces in European and Mediterranean waters.
Lancaster’s missions resemble those of HMS Montrose, which worked closely with international partners on maritime security operations to disrupt the illegal drugs trade and seize shipments of smuggled weapons.
In January last year, a Navy team from the warship boarded a suspect in international waters in the Gulf of Oman and seized over one tonne of illicit drugs worth almost £15 million.
It prevented a huge amount of drugs potentially reaching the UK to be sold on British streets and denied organised criminals, often associated with the funding of terrorism, a source of income.
