The former Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad now commissioned into the Brazilian navy as the Garcia D'Avila is expected in the docks for minor repair work later this month before joining her fleet in Brazil.

At a ceremony at Portsmouth Naval Dockyard in December last year, the Sir Galahad, which in 1988 replaced the ship of the same name lost in the Falklands War, was commissioned into the Brazilian Navy as the NE Garcia D'Avila - the name of a distinguished captain and Brazilian war hero who served from 1913 until 1945.

Sir Galahad (8,750 tonnes) and her five sister ships began entering service from the mid-1960s, but from 2001 were replaced by four much larger and more capable vessels of 16,000 tonnes - RFAs Largs Bay, Lyme Bay, Mounts Bay and Cardigan Bay - each of which are equipped with landing craft and can accommodate 356 troops and up to 150 trucks or 24 Challenger battle tanks. The present Sir Galahad was built by Swan Hunter at Tyne and Wear and has served in both Iraq wars. She is unique in the RFA having won two Wilkinson Swords of Peace for humanitarian aid - to Angola in 1995 and Iraq in 2003.