HMCS Micmac (R10) - Retirement

Retirement

Hull cracks, feed water and fuel tank leaks, structural failures and turbine damage were a commonplace in Tribals even when they were new. Successive ShipAlts which addressed these issues with stiffener plates, frames, stringers, braces and even turbine blade redesign had limited success. Likely it was this consideration which influenced the RN's decision to dispose of their four surviving Tribal destroyers before 1950 even though none of those ships were then more than 12 years old.

As the years passed all of Canada's Tribals, both British and Canadian built, developed more frequent and more extensive structural defects necessitating increasingly long yard time for repairs and restrictions placed on their employment. Eventually, the growing cost of their maintenance and their demands on the Navy's restricted manpower no longer could be justified by their decreased capabilities. Thus, in late 1963 the RCN decided to retire the entire class. Micmac finally paid off to disposal in March 1964 along with her sisters. She was sold and in 1965 went to the ship breakers at Faslane, Scotland.

The original Micmac's ship's bell is installed on the mast of HMCS Acadia in Cornwallis, NS. HMCS Acadia being the name of the gunnery training ship assigned to HMCS Cornwallis from 1944 to the end of hostilities. By strange coincidence immediately prior to her assignment to Cornwallis HMCS Acadia had been commanded by the same LCdr. Littler who captained Micmac at the time of her collision.

In the 1970s the name HMCS Micmac was allocated to the Sea Cadet Summer Training Centre located on the lower section of CFB Shearwater. Also, of the five General Training divisions at HMCS Acadia, one is named Micmac. All of the RCN Tribal class ship's names have at various times been assigned to training divisions of officer cadets at the former Royal Roads Military College.

One Canadian Tribal class destroyer, the British built HMCS Haida, survives as a museum ship docked in Hamilton, Ontario.