The RV Triton is a trimaran vessel owned by Gardline Marine Sciences Limited and a former prototype British warship demonstrator for the QinetiQ defence research company. The Triton name is presumably a reference to the maritime god Triton who carried the three pronged spear, the trident, which relates to the vessel's three parallel hulls. The outriggers are thinner and much shorter than the dominant central hull.
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Service with QinetiQ
The Triton was designed as a demonstrator to prove that the trimaran concept would work successfully in a large warship. Following its launch in 2000, the ship began an extensive series of trials in 2001, which covered general ship handling, performance, sea-keeping behaviour, but also more specific areas to its design that the Royal Navy had no experience of — for example, a series of docking manouveres were undertaken by the pilot boats of HMNB Portsmouth to determine the problems of docking a large trimaran, while the ship underwent underway replenishment alongside HMS Argyll and the tanker RFA Brambleleaf to ascertain the characteristics of a trimaran and a monohull replenishing at the same time. The Triton also undertook the first helicopter take off and landing on a trimaran.[1]
Service with Gardline Marine Sciences Limited
Following the end of the Future Surface Combatant project, it was decided that the Triton was no longer necessary, so in 2005, she was sold to Gardline Marine Sciences Limited and has been converted into a multi-role survey vessel; among other projects she is being used as part of the Civil Hydrography Programme on behalf of the United Kingdom's Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
Australian service
In December 2006, Gardline contracted the Triton to the Australian Customs Service to patrol Australia's northern waters as one of the service's fleet of patrol vessels. Triton has been fitted with two .50 calibre machine guns and carries up to 28 armed customs officers. The ship arrived from the UK in mid-January 2007 and started operations immediately[2].
