The Irish Navy’s fourth Samuel Beckett-class offshore patrol vessel has been launched at Babcock’s Appledore shipbuilding facility in North Devon. The 90-metre ship will be formally named as LÉ George Bernard Shaw and commissioned into the Irish Naval Service this summer. LÉ Samuel Beckett, LÉ William Butler Yeats and LÉ James Joyce joined the Irish Navy in 2014, 2015 and 2016, respectively. 

With a displacement of 2256 tonnes, the ship will have a top speed of 23 knots and a range of 6,000 nautical miles at its cruise speed of 15 knots.