The Linge class are a series of tugboats used by the Royal Netherlands Navy to dock their larger ships at the Nieuwe Haven Naval Base.

History The first four ships were built by Shipyard Bijlsma and Delta shipyard in the Netherlands and commissioned in the year 1987. Ten years later another ship, Gouwe, was built by these shipyards and commissioned in 1997. In addition to their main purpose they are used for trips with guests around the harbour and supporting nautical training skills.

Replacement It was decided that these ships did not provide the required bollard pull to assist the newer larger vessels like . The four oldest ships were replaced by three Damen built hybrid tugboats, the .

Although with the arrival of the first replacement, , the old tugboats did not prove completely useless when the power onboard Noordzee shut off due to contaminated fuel along the coast of North-Holland and Hunze had to assist.

The first four of these well maintained & reliable ships were sold to MTS Towage in Brixham and Falmouth in the United Kingdom.

The last linge class tugboat will be replaced, together with the tugboats of the Breezand class, by a new class of medium-sized tugboats in 2027. The new tugs are based on the EuroTug 2007 design and will be built by Neptune Marine. After entering into service of the RNLN they will be moored at Fort Harssens in Den Helder.

Ships in class Hull number Name Builder Launched Commissioned Decommissioned Status Picture A874 LingeShipyard Bijlsma, Warten (Hull) Delta Shipyard, Sliedrecht (Fitting out) 15 November 1986 20 February 1987 February 2016 Sold A875 Regge 10 January 1986 6 May 1987 February 2016 Sold A876 Hunze 17 December 1986 20 October 1987 February 2016 Sold A877 Rotte 23 June 1987 20 October 1987 February 2016 Sold A878 Gouwe 25 November 1996 21 February 1997 In active service

Namesakes All the ships are named after rivers with five letters ending with an e in The Netherlands: HNLMS Linge's namesake is: Linge HNLMS Regge's namesake is: Regge HNLMS Hunze's namesake is: Hunze HNLMS Rotte's namesake is: Rotte HNLMS Gouwe's namesake is: Gouwe

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