Remembrance Day 2024 - Natural Hazards of the Battle of the Atlantic

Eighty years ago the Second World War was still in full swing, and the Port of Halifax was humming with wartime activity as convoys and their escorts came and went during their efforts to supply Europe in the face of attacks by U-boats. The enemy wasn't the only hazard, as the North Atlantic had a few tricks up its sleeve as well. 

These photos of HMS Leamington entering what I believe is Halifax Harbour illustrate the natural hazards that the ships were subjected to. These photos were scanned and supplied to me probably 20 years ago by Bill Croshaw, and we believe they were all taken by Gord Condie who provided them to Bill. Gord served in HMCS Gananoque, which coincidentally was commanded for a time during the war by a relative of mine. 

HMS Leamington returning to port covered in ice. The rail of another ship is visible in the bottom of the image.

Ice build up on warships in the North Atlantic was a serious problem, as it could lead to stability problems, and sometimes the capsize of the ship. Leamington was one of the First World War era "flush deck" destroyers given to the RN and RCN under the US Lend/Lease program, similar to the ships of the RCN Town-class, and these ships already suffered from stability shortfalls especially after some of the new equipment (like radar) was installed to modernize these ships for service in the Second World War. The Type 271 radar especially would have contributed to the added topweight issues where it was installed so high in the ship, above and behind the bridge and just ahead of the mast.

Closeup of Leamington's bridge superstructure covered in ice.

As Leamington pulls alongside the jetty you can see that the entire bridge superstructure is encased in ice, and presumably the crew have been active with axes to keep the bridge itself habitable. The 4" gun on the foc'st'le is rendered unserviceable by ice, sections of railing have collapsed due to the weight of the ice, and the cable running from the deck up to the bridge has greatly increased in diameter through ice buildup. The RDF antenna on the front of the bridge is also encased in ice, and even the lantern of the Type 271 radar above and behind the bridge is encased. All of this would have impacted the operational readiness and effectiveness of Leamington as a warship trying to defend a convoy against Uboats. 

The crew works to remove ice from the foc'st'le of Leamington while preparing to secure lines as the ship comes alongside the jetty. 

The view of the bow shows more damage to the railing from the weight of the ice and possibly the action of the seas. Interestingly, the lantern for the Type 271 radar above the bridge and just forward of the mast appears to be most heavily encased in ice on the forward 180 degrees with less buildup on the aft 180 degrees - and the cables behind the bridge are protected and bare. The North Atlantic could be unkind to ships in various ways as the rust and paint issues around the bow indicate. 

Just image trying to shepherd a convoy of freighters and tankers across the Atlantic and trying to keep them safe from Uboats while also battling elements that are simultaneously trying to sink the ship. 

Lest we forget.

Aurora Borealis over Grand Lake

It's not often that conditions are right for viewing the Aurora Borealis from downtown Halifax, but anyone outside on the evening of October 10 won the lottery and got to see an active light show right overhead. 

View of the Aurora Borealis from the Brightwood neighbourhood.

I unfortunately only made it out to Grand Lake a bit after the height of the activity ended, but still managed to get some nice images looking out over the lake.

Aurora Borealis over Shubenacadie Grand Lake near Wellington, NS.

The red colour from earlier in the evening (and which returned after I made it back home) was mostly (but not entirely) gone, but there was still a lot of green present, and made the trip worthwhile. 

The RCN's future River Class destroyers

Back on June 28th, the Halifax Shipyard hosted a ceremonial steel cutting for the new River Class of destroyers that are being built for the Royal Canadian Navy. I attended the event and wrote a piece that is appearing in the September 2024 issue of Warships International Fleet Review - which should be hitting Canadian shelves shortly, if not already. Atlantic News in Halifax usually carries the magazine, as Chapters/Indigo often has it as well. The cover looks like this:

My story appears on Pages 32 through 34:

The new ships will look something like this, based on this rendering provided courtesy of the RCN:

My article covers some of the challenges faced by the program and how they are being addressed. If you are interested, please check it out!

Ceremonial cutting of steel for the first River Class destroyer and the first Canadian Coast Guard AOPV.

Dazzle paint schemes in Halifax

Navies aren’t the only ones revisiting dazzle-type camouflage paint schemes. This is the Captain Paul Watson Foundation’s “John Paul de Joria II” (ex-Vigilant) at COVE in Dartmouth a week or so ago. “Neptune’s Navy” is written on the port bridge wing.

According to Wikipedia, at least two vessels have taken this name - this, formerly the Scottish Fishery Protection Agency's Vigilant, is the second. 

In Halifax alone, there are usually two other examples of this type of camouflage - HMC Ships Sackville (replicating her Second World War paint scheme) and Moncton (wearing a replica paint scheme). 

The last Flower-class corvette, HMCS Sackville, is a museum ship in Halifax, NS.

Maritime Coastal Defence Vessel (MCDV) HMCS Moncton wearing a replica disruptive paint scheme.

Before radar was common on warships, it was common in wartime for these ships to wear dazzle, or disruptive, paint schemes. These designs were intended to break up the outline of a warship to make it more difficult to ascertain the ship's course or bearing (especially important when a U-boat was trying to aim a torpedo at where the target will be in a minute or more after releasing the torpedo). 

Wikipedia of course has an article on this. 

In that article, look for the Arthur Lismer painting of HMTS Olympic - the older sister of Titanic - wearing one of these paint schemes while in Halifax, NS, during the First World War. 

Sail GP in Halifax

Sail GP showed up in Canada for the first time with the Rockwool Canada Sail Grand Prix in Halifax on June 1st and 2nd, 2024. I managed to watch the racing and one of the practice rounds, and my photos are here:

https://smcclearn.smugmug.com/Nautical/Sail-GP-in-Halifax-May-2024

Team Canada making a close pass to the crowd on the waterfront. 

Capturing the Solar Eclipse

A friend of mine (with family in the Miramichi) and I elected to head there for the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, in the hope of capturing totality (where Halifax was only expected to see about 95% coverage). We did some scouting the day we arrived, and decided that the retired CF-101 Voodoo gate guarding at the former CFB Chatham was a good piece of foreground to include in our images.

An image of the CF-101 Voodoo under the eclipse at totality with the phases of the eclipse composited in.

Each of us had multiple cameras set up to capture the event - to create this image I had one camera with a 16-35mm lens mounts on a tripod as low to the ground as possible (which captured the overall image of the plane at totality), plus a second camera on a tripod with the equivalent of 420mm of telephoto lens to capture the sun itself during the eclipse. 

The original image, before the eclipse phases were added, looks like this:

The original image showing only totality of the eclipse. As you can see, the streetlights came on.

I used the smallest aperture possible on that lens (f/4) to get the starburst effect from the sun and lights, but this meant that I had a considerable amount of dust spots to remove from the image - despite having cleaned my camera sensor prior to making the image.

The second camera was a 16-year old DSLR as don't have the adapter for the older lenses, and I wanted the longest reach possible. I didn't have welder's glass or the appropriate filters available, so I had to improvise - I put what ND filters I had on the lens, and to avoid damaging the camera sensor I only pointed the camera at the sun long enough to take each image. To protect my eyes from the sun - I would surely have done damage looking directly at the sun through the camera's optical viewfinder - I held the back of my hand in front of the viewfinder and knew I had the sun within the frame when the sun shone through the viewfinder onto my hand, and I would capture several frames. I had to focus manually using the scale on the lens, based on some homework I had done in advance.

Telephoto image of the sun at a focal length of 420mm during the eclipse.

I captured images of the eclipse on both cameras throughout the eclipse - both to get the multiple phases of the moon's passage across the sun, as well as to record the sun's path over the top of the jetfighter. I used the latter images to draw lines on the overall image so that I could somewhat accurately paste in the phases of the eclipse to the overall image. 

Overall image showing the lines I used to guide where the eclipse phase images were pasted in.

I then chose representative images of the various eclipse phases, reduced them in size to reflect the size of the sun in the base image, and pasted them in on either side of the sun in totality within the two lines. Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot to change my exposure on the camera with the telephoto lens and didn't capture a closeup of totality, so I have to use the one from the base wide-angle image - which seems to actually work. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the "final" product - thought I suspect I will continue to play with it in the coming weeks to see if I can improve it.

I also had a third camera that I used hand-held as a backup to the other two - it provides a slightly different vantagepoint on the Voodoo. 

Hand-held image of the Voodoo with a 28-75mm zoom lens.

These may have to do, as I don't know that I will ever again have the opportunity to capture a solar eclipse. 

MSC Manzanillo off Devils Island

I haven't been able to take as many photos of late as I have in the past, so I forced myself to get out on Sunday and was lucky enough to catch a container ship off Devils Island at the harbour mouth.

MSC Manzanillo off Devils Island from Hartlen Point.

The old lighthouse on Devils Island has been decommissioned and abandoned, and there is a more modern light structure off to the right, but I thought it made for a moody shot when converted to black and white.