Sweep Deck

The sweep deck is situated aft on the upper deck, the usual position where the Quarterdeck is located on most other warships. 

There are many types of mines e.g. contact mines; acoustic mines; magnetic mines.

It is on the sweep deck that the winch, Oropesa floats, kites etc are kept ready for use in minesweeping operations. These are used to sever the cable of the moored mines from their trolleys which are on the seabed.

In mechanical sweeping the minesweeper will drag the apparatus, which usually consists of kites which control the depth and angle of sweep, the Oropesa floats with serrated wire to cut mooring cables. Also cutters, mechanical or explosive can be fitted to the wires to sever the moored mines.

Mechanical minesweeping can be conducted by just one minesweeper or even two or more with the sweep wire arranged between them.

Once the moored mine is cut from it's mooring it usually floats to the surface where they were usually destroyed by gunfire. However, this has proved less than successful in more recent mines and so the Royal Navy developed a specially remote controlled disposal vehicle called a Scarab. This would retrieve the mine so that it could safely be detonated by remote command.

Another type of minesweeping is various forms of towed influence generators. These can emit sounds at different frequencies  and amplitudes to emulate noise characteristics of different types of ships. A magnetic influence is done with electric current running through a large loop of copper cable. High current levels of 2,000 amps are used.