The last Flower-class corvette, HMCS SACKVILLE, has been in refit since autumn 2020 in the Navy's submarine maintenance facility at Fleet Maintenance Facility Cape Scott (FMFCS) within the Halifax Dockyard. This refit has seen the ship's entire hull below the waterline (plus selected areas above the waterline) clad in new 1/2" welded steel plate over top of her existing rivetted steel plate. The refit is approaching its conclusion, with only minor work remaining.
The hull has been completely repainted both above and below the waterline, with minor exceptions that I will describe in a moment. The deck was also being repainted when I visited on Thursday (April 1), and the painters were literally "painting themselves off the ship", so I was unable to board or go below - I would have left a trail of footprints in the paint that would have made me extremely unpopular. Also, walking the plank when the ship is high and dry is simply not survivable.
In the photo above, you will note that the ship's load lines at her stem have not been repainted - I'm told that the shipwrights of FMFCS must determine where these are to be placed after all the new steel has been added to the ship, and this isn't something that is simply repainted to replicate the old markings.
The ship sits on a cradle of wood blocking that is laid out by those same shipwrights to ensure the ship is properly supported when she is out of the water, and at these locations the old rivetted steel plate is still visible. The ship will be undocked in mid-April, at which time the blocking will be reconfigured to support the ships in plated locations so that these remaining areas can be clad with new plate and painted. The ship will be redocked, and plating completed, and the ship is hoped to return to the waterfront before summer. You can also see the welds at the joints between the new plates in the above photo.
The ship's bottom may never look this good again - this view shows the rudder, propeller shaft, and bilge keels from aft. The bilge keels have been plated over in new plate, while the rudder will likely be the only portion below the ship's waterline still showing off the original rivets.
I'm told that the pitted piece of steel shown here where the propeller shaft (which itself is capped) exits the hull is a 30-ton component, and I wonder if this was part of the "thrust block" that transmitted the propeller's thrust to the ship. It is presumably original, and has not been clad in new steel.
The bolt shafts that will accept the ship's new sacrificial anodes are fitted, and await the installation of the anodes. The anodes were in very good shape when the ship was hauled out in September 2020, though they had only been in place since the end of the 2018 refit.
A full gallery of photos appears on my Smugmug website, including both refits during the period of 2018-2021. At the request of ship modelers on the ship's Facebook page, we have also taken advantage of the upper catwalk in the submarine shed to capture a number of detail photos from above.
No comments:
Post a Comment