WHO SAYS CIVILIAN PROFESSIONS ARE IRRELEVANT AT SEA?

As you know, the Naval Reserve has been shifting over to the Kingston-class for the last few years as the Gate vessels become a thing of the past.

I was fortunate enough to be able to get leave from my civilian job (I'm an Auditor for Revenue Canada), and was able to sail in HMCS Whitehorse for two years.

Both during this time and later, I heard a number of stories about these ships and thought I might share them with STARSHELL readers. I make no claims with respect to the accuracy of the facts, but as the heading suggests, they sound good!

As most are aware, six of these ships were assigned to the West Coast. Subsequent to their launch and acceptance, they were normally kept on the East Coast for a few months to enable the crews to become familiar with them, as well as to pass a Sea Readiness Inspection.

The first of the class to sail for her base at Esquimalt was HMCS Nanaimo, commanded at the time by Cdr. Paul MacNeil of Victoria. In civilian life, Paul was trained as an electrical engineer, and his skills were to come in handy. Somewhere off the west coast of Central America, Nanaimo experienced some severe electrical difficulties. Essentially, the ship's computers kept telling the main diesels to shut down, usually without warning. This problem continued intermittently until Nanaimo was left "stalled," dead in the water in the middle of nowhere (albeit with HMCS Ottawa close by). Needless to say that in this age of modern communications, a great deal of time was spent on the "phone" between the ship and headquarters ashore discussing the problem. In the end however, it was to be Paul's training that discovered the problem-a series of sensors in the diesels were too sensitive and needed "tweaking." It was good that he had a knowledge of electronics.

The second MCDV to "sail round" was HMCS Edmonton, commanded at the time by Cdr. Gordon Wong of Calgary. In civilian life, Gord is employed as a Crown Prosecutor, putting bad people in jail for a living. I'm told that he's good at his job, but he had to make some adjustments in his thinking when one of his sailors ran into a spot of trouble in some Central American country. It would appear that the local gendarmerie placed this reluctant matelot in the hoosegow for some undoubtedly trumped up reason. Gord was forced to rely on his skills as a lawyer to get this poor fellow out of jail. A bit of a change for Gord, but one could argue that the cause was indeed worthwhile.

The fourth MCDV to make the journey was HMCS Yellowknife, commanded at the time by LCdr. (later Commander) Doug Bancroft of Victoria. As a civilian, Doug works as a meteorologist, and in fact, is SSO METOC for MARPACHQ. When Yellow-knife sailed from Halifax, she ran into a storm and the crew was somewhat worse for wear and looking forward to some time ashore. Unfortunately the harbour they happened to sail to had been declared a disaster area, and this put a bit of a damper on their eagerly anticipated festivities. When they sailed shortly thereafter, they encountered another storm and found another disaster area to stop in, and so on. I'm not certain how long this went on, but you figure a weather guy could have done better.

My ship, as I said, was Whitehorse and we sailed from Halifax for the West Coast on August 27, 1997. The roughest weather we experienced was about a two foot swell off the coast of Oregon. None of the sailors got into trouble and the main machinery performed excellently (except for a bit of a problem with the air-conditioner). On October 17, we sailed into Esquimalt harbour and I got to see my wife for the first time in about five months. Three days later, I received a notice in the mail from my civilian employer advising me that I had been selected for a "routine" audit. Hmmmmm … I think there's a definite trend here!

(A member of NOAC Calgary Branch, Derek commanded HMCS Whitehorse from January 1997 to December 1998, which included her trip around, original work-ups and commissioning. He currently serves as the Executive Officer of HMCS Tecumseh in Calgary.)

(Originally Published in Vol. VII, No. 12, Autumn 2000 issue of Starshell)