New tugboats for the Navy

New tugboats for the Navy

The first of four new tugs built for the Royal Canadian Navy has arrived in British Columbia two years late and nearly four years behind schedule since the first sheet metal was cut on the $102-million order. The four-ship fleet of tugs will be split between Canada’s Pacific and Atlantic fleets, in Esquimalt, B.C., and Halifax, respectively, with two ships currently delayed for arrival on the east coast until November 2025 and September 2026. The contract to build the new offshore tugs was awarded in April 2019 to Quebec-based Ocean Industries Inc. The boats are expected to service the Navy’s newest vessels, including Arctic and Baltic patrol vessels, as well as future River-class destroyers. The tugs were originally expected to launch in fall 2022, but the Navy and Transport Canada requested changes to existing designs, forcing a “longer than expected” design review process before construction began, a Department of National Defence spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The project delays were further extended by ice conditions on the St. Lawrence River, where the ships were undergoing trials, as well as productivity losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the bankruptcy of a company that supplies the boat’s winches. “It is not unusual for a first-class vessel to encounter supply chain and manufacturing challenges that impact delivery schedules,” National Defence spokeswoman Cheryl Forrest said in a statement. “Canada is working with the shipbuilder to address these challenges and apply lessons learned from the design to deliver future vessels.” The recently arrived British Columbia tugs, named Naval Large Tug (NLT) Haro and Naval Large Tug (NLT) Barkerville, are currently undergoing work at the Point Hope Maritime Shipyard in Victoria ahead of their final acceptance by the Navy, which is expected later this month. The vessels are significantly more powerful than the Navy’s current tugs from the 1970s and will perform a variety of tasks, including towing, port mooring and firefighting. Haro is named for the Haro Strait, a waterway between southern Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands, while Barkerville is named for a World War II tugboat that capsized and sank off Pender Island in December 1945. The other ships bound for Halifax, the NLT Canso and NLT Stella Maris, will also be named for the Strait of Canso between Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, as well as the former tugboat Stella Maris, which was one of the first rescue ships to respond to the Halifax disaster in 1917.

Based on CTV News

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