HMS Queen Elizabeth will return to Portsmouth today (Tuesday) after four months of repairs at Rosyth and a short spell at sea to test her systems.

The 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier left the dockyard and sailed under the Forth bridges last week after arriving in March for unscheduled work in dry dock to her shaft lines.

The ship emerged sooner than initially forecast from repairs and has spent the last seven days at sea being put through her paces.

This has included marine engineering trials, sailing at high speed for extended periods of time and manoeuvring as aggressively as possible to give the command team full confidence in her systems.

Commanding officer of HMS Queen Elizabeth, Captain Will King, said: “Whilst no warship wants to find itself spending unscheduled time out of the water, I am enormously proud of the work that has gone on in Rosyth.

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"Everybody on board is looking forward to getting back to sea, where we belong, and picking up a busy programme in the autumn.”

In February the carrier was supposed to be leading the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War but during final checks an "issue" with the starboard propeller coupling was discovered.

It was replaced by sister ship the HMS Prince of Wales which itself underwent months of repairs and upgrading work at the Babcock yard, before finally returning to Portsmouth in July last year.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is now shipshape after repairs in Rosyth.

While testing her systems, the carrier has also been carrying out a wide variety of training, including boat drills, damage control exercises and intelligence briefings to get sailors and officers back up to speed after their time on the Forth.

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Commander Alex Davies, head of the marine engineering department, said: “An enormous amount of work has taken place over the last few months to get us to this point.

“This is at the larger end of the scale for Royal Navy marine engineering, and it has taken a really effective team effort from our own engineers, Defence Equipment and Support, and our industry partners to return us to sea.”

While alongside in Rosyth, the ship hosted visits from the heads of the Swedish and Chilean navies, and senior Royal Navy and British Army officers based in Scotland.

In addition, a team from the Fleet Operational Standards and Training organisation provided a week of firefighting and damage control training for the entire ship.