Save the Sackville

It would be a tremendous loss of our history if she goes to the wreckers. There is an excellent site about the corvette.

The little ship rides quietly alongside the jetties of Canada's East Coast naval dockyard in Halifax, her box-like, blue-and-white form in quaint contrast to the sleek greyhound lines of the modern destroyers and frigates that surround her. The last of its kind, HMCS Sackville is the only remaining example of the more than 120 corvettes that were built in Canada during the Second World War...

With the tribal class destroyer HMCS Haida now a museum ship in Hamilton, Sackville is one of the few remaining icons of Canada's naval coming-of-age during the grim North Atlantic battles of the Second World War, and likely more than any other vessel can be considered the navy's, and Canada's, emotional flagship.

Now, the survival of this gallant little ship and all that she means to Canada is in peril.

HMCS Sackville was built at Saint John in 1941, and from 1942 to 1944 served in the Atlantic convoy battles as part of the famous Barber Pole Group of ocean escorts, that were distinguished by the red-and-white striped funnel marking that is perpetuated on the ships of Canada's Maritime Command to this day...

Damaged itself in action at sea in September, 1943, Sackville was assigned to training duties, and then was selected for conversion to a Canadian Naval Auxiliary Vessel, an action that saved it from the scrapyard fate of Canada's other corvettes at the war's end.

Sackville sailed for many years as a research vessel until it was again saved from demolition by the remarkable volunteer efforts of a group of dedicated Canadians who took over the ship and led its painstaking restoration to its wartime 1944 appearance. Now the ship is supported by a non-profit organization, the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust.

During the summer months, Sackville is alongside at Halifax's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, where it is one of the most popular attractions on the waterfront. But even with this popularity and the dedicated work of the trust, the survival of the little ship is increasingly in question.

The cost of maintaining the half-century-old hull afloat, the ravages of a winter climate, and the many other expenses of maintaining what is in effect both a ship afloat and a working museum, are rapidly outdistancing the capacity of the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust and other partners to provide for it.

Canada's navy, beset with its own budgetary and operational demands, quietly helps out where it can, but even this vital support is threatened by the navy's need to use every dollar and pair of hands in keeping our modern fleet at sea and capable.

It is likely that, to the great anguish of the men and women of the Memorial Trust, the navy, and every Canadian who understands what the little ship means, it will soon be impossible to keep this central symbol of Canada's naval heritage from the wrecker's hammer...

There is a new initiative in Halifax...that might be the saving of the little ship, and her preservation for all Canadians to experience in a setting of dignity and honour, and one that provides for a much wider learning experience.

A consortium of committed Haligonians has proposed a major waterfront redevelopment that would incorporate the existing Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, and create a dramatic heritage and marine-based activity complex to be known as the Queen's Landing. A central concept in the Queen's Landing project is to place Sackville in an indoor setting, out of water, in a glass-fronted "grand hall" that would be surrounded by a state-of-the-art naval history museum gallery that will incorporate the collections of the Maritime Museum and the navy's own small museum at Halifax.

In this site, Sackville, as Canada's Naval Memorial, would be preserved, animated and displayed for generations of Canadians to experience and treasure. Should this Queen's Landing project find the support it needs, the little ship will have won through its last battle for survival, one that began against the U-boats of Nazi Germany so long ago. For all Canadians' sake, this is a battle she should and must win.