THOUSANDS of Britons trapped in Beirut were anxiously awaiting the arrival of two Royal Navy warships yesterday as an evacuation by sea looked to be the safest option for leaving the besieged city.

Toby Masterton, 41, a former Army officer on a short business trip to Lebanon, found himself cut off in Beirut as the fighting between Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel intensified.

He said: “I haven’t achieved anything here. One of my partners is from south Lebanon and he’s gone there to be with his family. The other is trying to get back to Saudi Arabia.”

A veteran of the war in Iraq, Mr Masterton said that he was used to explosions, “but the bombing has become louder and more frequent and something inside me says it’s time to get out”.

The options to flee the country have narrowed with the intensification of Israeli strikes. Israeli helicopter gunships, tiny mosquito-like specks against the sea haze, fired missiles at Lebanese army radar installations along the coast, while navy gunboats shelled the ports of Beirut, Jounieh, ten miles north of the capital, and Tripoli in the far north.

The British Embassy advised Britons to stay at home while evacuation plans are made. The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious had been preparing to return to Portsmouth from Gibraltar but has been ordered to Lebanon. HMS Bulwark, an assault ship operating in the Gulf, has also been dispatched.

About 10,000 British nationals live in Lebanon, the vast majority of them Lebanese with dual citizenship.

The British expatriate community has dwindled in size since the mid-1990s, when Lebanon’s reconstruction boom was at its height. “We only have 3,500 officially registered with the embassy, but many more are registering with us now,” James Watt, the British Ambassador, told The Times. “We are telling everyone to keep their heads down and sit tight for now.”

Among the Britons inquiring about evacuation was Maureen Ali, who has lived on and off in Lebanon since the early 1970s and has two daughters studying Arabic in Beirut.

She said: “A panicked dash to Damascus is not on the agenda, but we are taking sensible precautions.” Mrs Ali, whose husband is Lebanese, was caught up in an Israeli offensive against Lebanon in July 1993. “I’ve been through this before,” she said, “but if I do leave I will be back.”

For the many tourists who have become inadvertantly caught up in the bombardment, simply getting back to Britain has become the priority. Jolie Boyle, 28, a disc jockey from Hatfield Peverel, Essex, was among the thousands desperate to escape Lebanon.

“I feel quite vulnerable,” she said. “Saturday night was the worst. I heard four bombs going off. They were so loud.

“One of them was just a few hundred yards away [from our hotel], the nearest yet. It hit a communications tower and I was really scared.”

Like others, she had thought of trying to flee by road to Syria, but another hotel guest told her of three men who had taken that route and were killed by bombing on the way.

“That shook me up and gave me a reality check,” she said.

She was advised to wait in Beirut for the British warships.

It was meant to be a two-day trip involving one evening’s work on Thursday night at a Beirut nightclub.

“There were an awful lot of people at the hotel when I arrived on Wednesday,” she said. “There was a real buzz and a great atmosphere. On Thursday everyone had disappeared.

“Now the hotel is really quiet. It’s a bit eerie. The club owners felt really bad because they brought me over here, but there’s nothing they could have done. Nobody knew all this was going to happen.”

Clair Vainola, 31, an addiction counsellor from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, spent last night in the refuge of a small yacht moored in a marina close to the US Embassy in Beirut in the hope that it would be safe from Israeli bombing.

“The worst moment is when I hear planes going over my head carrying missiles. I have just got to have that faith that ultimately I will reach back home,” she said.

“I could make a run for it up to Syria but unfortunately I am a woman on my own. It is very dangerous — I’m a sitting duck.”

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