Museum Ship
The original intention had been to acquire HMCS Louisburg, which had been sold to the Dominican Republic and renamed Juan Alejandro Acosta but this vessel was wrecked (along with another Flower-class corvette - Cristobal Colon, the former HMCS Lachute) by Hurricane David in 1979. This left Sackville as the sole remaining Flower-class corvette.
The ship was transferred to the Canadian Naval Corvette Trust (now the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust) on 28 October 1983 and restored to her 1944 appearance (apart from minor details in her camouflage and the presence of the "barber pole" red and white pattern around her funnel which had been removed before 1944). It had originally been planned to restore the ship to her 1942 appearance but this proved too expensive.
She currently serves the summer months as a museum ship moored beside the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, while spending her winters securely in the naval dockyard at CFB Halifax under the care of Maritime Forces Atlantic, the Atlantic fleet of Royal Canadian Navy. Sackville's presence in Halifax is considered appropriate, as the port was an important North American convoy assembly port during the war.
In September 2003, Sackville broke loose during Hurricane Juan and struck the schooner Larinda, a yacht inspired by the 1767 Boston schooner HMS Sultana, moored beside her. The schooner's owners sued the Naval Memorial Trust in 2009 but the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled in Sackville's favour on August 4, 2011, concluding that the Trust had taken all necessary and appropriate precautions to secure Sackville.
Sackville makes her first appearance each spring when she is towed by a naval tug from HMC Dockyard to a location off Point Pleasant Park on the first Sunday in May to participate in the Commemoration of the Battle of the Atlantic ceremonies held at a memorial in the park overlooking the entrance to Halifax Harbour. Sackville typically hosts several dozen RCN veterans on this day and has also participated in several burials at sea for dispersing the ashes of RCN veterans of the Battle of the Atlantic at this location.
Read more about this topic: HMCS Sackville (K181)
Famous quotes containing the words museum and/or ship:
“A fallen tree does not rise again.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2412, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“A ship may belong to her captain, but the lifeboats belong to the crew.”
—John Farrow. Winkler (Claude Akins)