HMCS Protecteur makes final journey
Posted Apr 18, 2016 05:43:42 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LIVERPOOL, N.S. – After nearly seven weeks at sea one of the former workhorses of the Royal Canadian Navy is about to take its final journey into a harbour on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, where it will be broken up.
The former HMCS Protecteur left its home base in Esquimalt, B-C on February 24th and was towed south through the Panama canal before beginning its final leg north to Liverpool.
The supply ship saw more than 10-thousand sailors serve on board over voyages covering 800-thousand nautical miles, including service in the 1991 Gulf war.
Protecteur will meet its end in the hometown of Rear-Admiral Bill Truelove, who once commanded the ship as head of Canada’s Pacific Naval Fleet.
Truelove says he gained an affinity for the vessel because of his family’s connection to it — his father Larry served three years as the deck officer on the ship.
He says that interest became more intense after dealing with an engine room fire that crippled the ship off the Hawaiian Islands in 2014.
Larry Truelove says Protecteur’s imminent arrival in Liverpool is seen as good news to a community that has experienced a lack of jobs since the closure of the Bowater Mersey mill in 2012.
