On Friday, 8 July, 2016, the HMCS Kingston, MM700, lead ship of the Kingston class of Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDV), settled into Crawford Wharf in Kingston, Ontario, for a 3 day visit as part of the Great Lakes Deployment. This exercise, which has two ships visiting several ports along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway, is part of the Royal Canadian Navy’s outreach program to connect to people who may not come into contact with Navy vessels as well as promote the RCN programs of reserves and cadets. The ship is commanded by LCdr Paul Mountford who briefed the media from the fo’c’s’le overlooking downtown Kingston. Also transiting through the area that morning was the HMCS Goose Bay, on to its’ next visit.
The HMCS Kingston is a coastal defence vessel primarily designed for mine-sweeping duties but also participates in law enforcement, fisheries patrols, drug enforcement and anywhere else a ship of that size can help out. She was launched in Dec. 1995 and has just come out of refit, is 970 tonnes displacement, 181 feet long and 37 feet wide. Armament is two 12.6 mm machine guns mounted on either side of the bridge. Although suited for close shore duties, Leading Seaman Aikens stated that the ship did not do well in heavy sea states because its’ hull is a hard chine design (the hull is flatter than S-shaped hull vessels because of the mine-sweeping requirements and she rides over the waves rather than cutting through them) so it’s a rocky ride in a big ocean.
Photographing the vessels was a real challenge because for the most part it was not close (over at Wolfe Island) and you are photographing a gray ship with a background of gray skies, set on gray water, with haze, shooting into the sun. A lot of the time, the camera didn’t have enough contrast to even grab focus so a lot of the pictures had taken manually focusing a 500 mm lense. It’s all fun and games.
to see all the pictures, CLICK HERE
