Yes­ter­day was la­belled an his­toric day in T&T with the dock­ing of the TTS Nel­son II, a large op­er­a­tional naval ship of T&T De­fence Force.

Un­der the cap­tain­cy of Com­man­der Ja­son Kelshall, who is the son of re­tired Rear Ad­mi­ral Richard Kelshall, and Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Lt Com­man­der Ak­en­ton Isaac, the ship de­part­ed Chi­na for T&T on Sep­tem­ber 10. The el­der Kelshall had cap­tained the TTS Nel­son in 2000 from Eng­land to T&T. That ves­sel is to be de­com­mis­sioned.

From Chi­na the new ves­sel crossed three oceans, three seas, vis­it­ed three con­ti­nents and five coun­tries in a 12,476 nau­ti­cal mile jour­ney that took 35 days and nine hours.

The ves­sel, which was con­struct­ed by the Chi­na Ship Build­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd was com­mis­sioned in Chi­na on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2015.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Capt Kelshall said he was proud he was cho­sen to bring the ship home.

"It was an ho­n­our just to be the face of my crew. My crew is bril­liant, some of the best ever, my crew. I was just the face," Kelshall said.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Ed­mund Dil­lon de­scribed the ves­sel's ar­rival as a defin­ing mo­ment in the life of the De­fence Force (as­signed to the T&T Coast Guard).

He con­firmed the ves­sel was one that was or­dered by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment and as­sured that his ad­min­is­tra­tion would con­tin­ue to re­build T&T's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus and fill in the gaps in the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty ar­chi­tec­ture.

"We will not sim­ply aban­don the ca­pac­i­ty that has been put in place in the past. We will not act hasti­ly in our re­view of our coun­try's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sets and ca­pac­i­ty.

This will not be our modus operan­di. We are a re­spon­si­ble Gov­ern­ment," Dil­lon said.

He, how­ev­er, could not say whether ad­di­tion­al ves­sels for the T&T Coast Guard would be ac­quired.

"We are go­ing to use the ves­sels that we have right now. To say whether we can ex­pect more has to be based on threat analy­sis and there­fore that will de­ter­mine to a large ex­tent if we re­quire more and what type of ves­sels we may re­quire," he said.

In his ad­dress, at the of­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ny for the crew's ar­rival, Dil­lon said Gov­ern­ment's in­tent was to up­grade and re-build ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive de­fence and law en­force­ment agen­cies.

"That is why se­cur­ing our mar­itime bound­aries, as part of our over­all bor­der se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy, is of such great im­por­tance to us as a peo­ple. Our porous bor­ders are a ma­jor source of the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal guns and drugs, which are pri­ma­ry dri­vers of crime in T&T," Dil­lon added.

To neu­tralise that chal­lenge, Dil­lon said Gov­ern­ment would move to es­tab­lish a joint bor­der pro­tec­tion agency that would man­age the se­cu­ri­ty and in­tegri­ty of T&T's bor­ders; en­sure ap­pro­pri­ate mil­i­tary as­sets were ac­quired, de­ployed and main­tained and utilise in­for­ma­tion, in­te­gra­tion and rapid re­sponse of all agen­cies to meet all ex­ter­nal threats.

"The Coast Guard must there­fore con­tin­ue to de­vel­op in­to a mod­ern and for­ward-look­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion which will be able to de­fend T&T's mar­itime in­ter­ests, as well as meet our re­gion­al com­mit­ments, oblig­a­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," he said.