THE DENT IN THE HMCS SACKVILLE

by Charles O’Dale CD

HMCS Sackville commissioned Saint John NB – 30 Dec 1941. Look very closely between the “K” and the “1” on her starboard bow.

My military career consisted of 6 years in the regular force RCN (1964-1970), and another 20ish years in the Canadian Naval Reserves. Employment at Nortel as an engineering technologist allowed me time off to serve deployments with the naval reserve.

In the summer of 1987 I was assigned as Cox’n of one of our Canadian R-class vessels. My mission was to get the crew qualified to pass their Sea Readiness Inspection (SRI). All training was successful but during our early morning journey to our SRI performance evaluation we had an “incident”.

The reserve R-class vessel, HMCS Rapid, collided with HMCS Sackville 30+ years ago. My application of a large fender over the bow of this vessel prevented major damage to the corvette.

My reserve R-class ship was alongside a jetty positioned 90° to the Sackville (pointing directly at her). As Cox’n I was responsible for evolutions and safety on the upper deck and the chief ERA was responsible for engine functioning. After securing for sea and the pipe “hands to stations for leaving harbour, special sea duty men and cable party close up, assume damage control condition YANKEE”, we slipped and secured all lines proceeding slow ahead with all systems functioning (INCLUDING THE ENGINE!).

Suddenly, we had a main engine failure. We had way on but not enough for helm efficiency and we were HEADED DIRECTLY AT THE CORVETTE’S BOW! With my station on the upper deck, I grabbed an inflated fender and placed it over our bow. Did it ever go “BANG” at the collision! Without the fender I’m sure the corvette would have had a small hole punched through her side! Hence the Chuck Dent.

This a close-up of the WWII corvette HMCS Sackville’s starboard bow . Observe the dent between the K and the 1.

The engine problem was eventually solved, and we proceeded to and passed our SRI.

My insert of a fender at this point prevented maybe a hole punctured here.

With my deployment complete, I departed the ship. That evening I was dining on lobster in Lunenburg. And by Monday, I was back in my lab at Nortel in Ottawa.