More than £200m of cocaine seized after Royal Navy warship pursues drug smugglers in Caribbean Sea

A Royal Navy warship has seized £200m worth of cocaine after chasing down drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea.

It is the latest drugs bust by the Portsmouth-based warship HMS Trent.

HMS Trent was alerted to potential smugglers by a United States maritime patrol aircraft.

The crew used radar to track down the suspicious vessel and as the warship closed in, the vessel started throwing bales of cocaine into the sea to try and evade capture.

The crew of HMS Trent then had to recover the drugs thrown overboard, and the extensive search operation ran throughout the night.

The crew eventually recovered more than more than 2.5 tonnes of cocaine.

HMS Trent has been deployed in the Caribbean Sea since December to hunt drug smugglers.

Working with multinational partners, across five months of operations, the ship has seized 6,390kg of drugs worth £511m.

Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps said: "I’d like to congratulate the crew of HMS Trent for this latest bust, but also for their incredible work over the previous 5 months, seizing large amounts of drugs and disrupting global drug networks.

"The Royal Navy continue to show that those who seek to profit from illegal drugs face the full force of justice, wherever they are in the world."

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