HMCS Saskatchewan, now on B.C.’s ocean floor, was once ‘best in the west’
The HMCS Saskatchewan rests on the ocean floor, 100 feet down, in the mouth of Nanaimo Harbour. On board the Mackenzie-class destroyer escort vessel are the ashes of seven former shipmen, and that number continues to increase as the men who served on the Saskatchewan decide they want a “happy ship” to be their final resting place.
“We get together, tell lies and laugh,” said Ian Williams, the event organizer and a commissioning crew member. “You go and ask any of them what does the Saskatchewan mean to them and everyone will tell you a different story.”The commissioning crew of approximately 250 included 63 ordinary seamen who were marching aboard straight from training in CFB Cornwallis, with most of them never having set foot on a naval ship before.
The commissioning crew of the HMCS Saskatchewan sailed halfway around the world and back. The ship left Esquimalt in mid April of 1963, made it through Panama by month’s end and then anchored off Haiti in case any Canadians needed to be evacuated following a massacre carried out by the dictatorship there. They were in Halifax next, then to Portsmouth, England, back to Halifax, back to Portsmouth, and then up into the north Atlantic where they handled 12-metre waves driven by 110-kilometre gales.
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