THE WATCH STAFF
The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) offshore patrol vessel HMCS Harry DeWolf returned December 16, 2021, to its home port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, after completing a circumnavigation of North America.
The DeWolf is Canada’s first new warship in 25 years and the first in a fleet of Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) built under the country’s National Shipbuilding Strategy. In addition to the circumnavigation, the ice-capable DeWolf’s four-month deployment was groundbreaking for other accomplishments:
- The ship sailed the Arctic’s Northwest Passage, becoming only the second RCN vessel to do so since 1954.
- The DeWolf demonstrated its interoperability with U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) vessels when it took part in Operation Nanook in the Arctic and Operation Caribbe in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The Harry DeWolf, working with USCG law enforcement,made its first two drug busts as part of the later operation, which is a multinational effort targeting narcotics trafficking.
“I am beyond proud of my Sailors and their achievements over this circumnavigation of North America,” Cmdr. Corey Gleason, the DeWolf’s commanding officer, told Trident, the newspaper of Canada’s Maritime Forces Atlantic, in a December 21 story.
Canadian Air Force Maj. Gen. Paul Ormsby, Ottawa’s defense attaché in Washington, D.C., said the DeWolf can operate year-round in the Arctic for missions ranging from anti-submarine warfare to emergency management and search and rescue. It also carries two containers loaded for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to respond to emergencies.
On its Arctic mission, Gleason said the containers’ contents had a real-time military purpose: listening for submarines. “Fortunately, we didn’t find any,” Gleason said, according to a December 13 U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) News story.
“This ship is versatile,” Ormsby said at an event to welcome the DeWolf during its stop at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, according to USNI News.
(Pictured: The HMCS Harry DeWolf pulls into Naval Station Norfolk on December 9, 2021.)
When the DeWolf docked in Norfolk, it also brought home U.S. Navy surface warfare officer Lt.j.g. Kyle Luchau, who volunteered to embark on the ship as a liaison officer. Luchau serves aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill.
“Harry DeWolf is fully equipped to handle almost anything that the Arctic can throw at it during the navigable season,” Luchau said, according to USNI News. “It is technologically advanced in every way. I have learned so much about how the Royal Canadian Navy operates in this area and its plans for this new class of ship.”
The DeWolf is the first of six AOPS built for the RCN. The second ship in the class, HMCS Margaret Brooke, is conducting sea trials. Two more AOPS will be built for the Canadian Coast Guard.
“We have only begun to see what the Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ship class is capable of,” Gleason told Trident. “I look forward to seeing what the next ships in this class improve upon and accomplish.”
IMAGE CREDIT: PETTY OFFICER 1ST CLASS KRIS R. LINDSTROM/U.S. NAVY