Ship’s impending sale saddens former crewman
A former coast guard employee says his heart left the Canadian Hydrographic Service after the federal government retired the only midshore science vessel on the East Coast five years ago.
“One of the reasons I retired was the fact that I knew she wasn’t going to sea the next year,” said Michael Lamplugh, the hydrographer in charge when the former CCGS Matthew was docked for good.
The hydrographic service produces underwater charts, and the midshore vessel specialized in coastal regions using high-tech multiscan equipment, he said.
It never made sense to retire the CCGS Matthew, Lamplugh said, especially since many of the coast guard’s other science vessels, which are not designed for hydrographic mapping along the coast, are older.
“She was a youngster,” he said. “She was the youngest ship in the fleet.
“The Hudson, she’s pushing 60 years, for goodness sakes. Most ships, you look at lifespans – highperformance vessels you might not get more than 20 or 30 years, but for the coast guard, most of those ships are 30 or 40 years old.”
The CCGS Matthew, built in 1990 and based in Dartmouth, was 22 years old when it was taken out of service in 2012. It was decommissioned last year.
“When we tied her up, there was a little bit of work that needed to be done on her,” Lamplugh said. “You know, just normal wear and tear ... it was just ongoing maintenance.
“There was no reason to tie her up except they did not want to put money into diesel or crew to keep her going.”
The government has put the ship on auction five times since January 2016, but failed to attract any bids.
The minimum bid was initially $2.25 million. The new minimum is $1 million in an auction that closes on Friday.
The ship was originally valued at between $2.25 million and $2.75 million, but two independent
contractors have since downgraded its value to about $1 million, coast guard spokesman Vance Chow said in an email on Tuesday.
“The change in market value is partly due to the downturn in the offshore oil and gas industry and the investment needed to bring the vessel back to regulatory standards,” he said.
The ship was taken out of service because the government changed its approach to mapping and is using a variety of more costeffective survey methods to cover more areas, including shore parties, ship-based surveys and airborne hydrography, Chow said.
In addition, the government has installed a multi-beam
sounder on CCGS Louis S. StLaurent and four more will be installed on coast guard ships by 2020, he said.
Lamplugh said it’s possible the former CCGS Matthew’s mechanical and electrical systems are no longer functioning properly, but it should be worth more than $1 million.
“Here’s a ship that was basically in the prime of its life,” Lamplugh said. “It was the best survey platform we had in Canada at the time.
“I did a lot of survey work with her under two launches, and we just tie it up, and now we’re just treating it like it’s a hunk of scrap metal.
“I find that incredibly sad.”