CCGS ''Terry Fox'' is a
Canadian Coast Guard
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG; french: links=no, Garde côtière canadienne, GCC) is the coast guard of Canada. Formed in 1962, the coast guard is tasked with marine search and rescue (SAR), communication, navigation, and transportation issues in ...
heavy
icebreaker
An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...
. She was originally built by
Burrard-Yarrows Corporation in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
in 1983 as part of an Arctic drilling system developed by
BeauDril, the drilling subsidiary of
Gulf Canada Resources
Gulf Canada was a Canadian integrated petroleum company that existed between 1944 and 2001. Gulf Oil, Gulf Oil Corporation began operating in Canada in 1942, and two years later formed a Canadian subsidiary called the Canadian Gulf Oil Company. In ...
. After the offshore oil exploration in the
Beaufort Sea
The Beaufort Sea (; french: Mer de Beaufort, Iñupiaq: ''Taġiuq'') is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Fr ...
ended in the early 1990s, she was first leased and then sold to the Canadian Coast Guard.
''Terry Fox''s sister ship, ''Kalvik'', is today owned by the Russian
Murmansk Shipping Company
Murmansk Shipping Company (russian: Мурманское морское пароходство), often abbreviated as MSCO, is a Russian shipping company based in Murmansk (hence the name). One of the primary shipping companies operating in Arc ...
as
''Vladimir Ignatyuk''.
Development and construction
In the mid-1970s,
Gulf Canada Resources
Gulf Canada was a Canadian integrated petroleum company that existed between 1944 and 2001. Gulf Oil, Gulf Oil Corporation began operating in Canada in 1942, and two years later formed a Canadian subsidiary called the Canadian Gulf Oil Company. In ...
began developing an Arctic drilling system consisting of two mobile drilling units: a Mobile Arctic Caisson (MAC) that could be submerged and filled with gravel to form an artificial drilling island in waters up to in depth and a floating Conical Drilling Unit (CDU) designed for drilling in water depths between while afloat. The intention of this development was to overcome the relatively short operating window of
drillship
A drillship is a merchant vessel designed for use in exploratory offshore drilling of new oil and gas wells or for scientific drilling purposes. In recent years the vessels have been used in deepwater and ultra-deepwater applications, equipped ...
s during the ice-free season (100 to 110 days a year) and the water depth limitations of artificial dredged islands in the Canadian part of the
Beaufort Sea
The Beaufort Sea (; french: Mer de Beaufort, Iñupiaq: ''Taġiuq'') is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Fr ...
. The drilling units, each capable of completing one exploration well per year, would be supported by four Arctic Class 4 vessels: two large icebreakers providing 24-hour
ice management
Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opa ...
and standby services on the drilling site and two smaller icebreaking vessels responsible for anchor handling and supply runs between the drilling rigs and coastal bases. By 1982, both drilling units and all four icebreaking vessels were under construction in Canada and Japan for
BeauDril, Gulf Canada's drilling subsidiary, and the company had committed itself to a billion-dollar exploration program between 1983 and 1988.
The icebreaker design was provided by the Montreal-based engineering company
German & Milne. During the development phase, the hull form was extensively tested at the Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA)
ice tank
An ice tank is a ship model basin whose purpose is to provide a physical modeling environment for the interaction of ship, structures, or sea floor with both ice and water. Ice tanks may take the form of either a towing tank or maneuvering basin ...
with particular emphasis of preventing broken ice floes from flowing under the hull and into the propellers. The result was a production-friendly
fully-developable hull form with a semi-spoon bow and large ice plough.
The construction of the two icebreakers was awarded to
Burrard-Yarrows Corporation in December 1979 and the work was split between the company's
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
and
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
divisions. In order to expedite the delivery of the vessels, Gulf Canada had already purchased the engines, gearboxes, shaft lines and propellers before signing the C$79 million shipbuilding contract for two hulls.
The keel of newbuilding number 107 was laid at the Burrard-Yarrows Vancouver shipyard on 15 June 1982 and the vessel was launched on 23 April 1983 as ''Terry Fox''.
While the other BeauDril icebreakers and drilling units were given names drawn from the Northern Territories native languages,
''Terry Fox'' was named after
Terrance Stanley "Terry" Fox (1958–1981), a Canadian athlete,
humanitarian
Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional ...
and
cancer research
Cancer research is research into cancer to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure.
Cancer research ranges from epidemiology, molecular bioscience to the performance of clinical trials to evaluate and ...
activist known for his 1980 Marathon for Hope, an attempted cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research, after losing his right leg to
osteosarcoma
An osteosarcoma (OS) or osteogenic sarcoma (OGS) (or simply bone cancer) is a cancerous tumor in a bone. Specifically, it is an aggressive malignant neoplasm that arises from primitive transformed cells of mesenchymal origin (and thus a sarcoma) a ...
. The icebreaker was completed on 16 September 1983, slightly behind the original schedule which called for delivery in April when Gulf Canada's exploratory drilling program was set to begin.
''Terry Fox''s sister ship, ''
Kalvik'', had been delivered by Victoria shipyard in July of the same year. At the time, Beaudril's two icebreakers were the most powerful privately owned icebreaking vessels in the world.
Design
General characteristics
''Terry Fox'' is
long overall
__NOTOC__
Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...
and
between perpendiculars
Length between perpendiculars (often abbreviated as p/p, p.p., pp, LPP, LBP or Length BPP) is the length of a ship along the summer load line from the forward surface of the stem, or main bow perpendicular member, to the after surface of the stern ...
. She has a beam of and draws of water when fully laden.
While the crew's common spaces such as mess rooms and lounges are arranged on the main deck,
the accommodation is arranged in the box-shaped deckhouse. In the Canadian Coast Guard service, ''Terry Fox'' has a complement of 10 officers and 14 crew, and 10 additional berths.
The towing gear consists of an 80-ton winch holding of wire and a separate 200-ton double-drum anchor-handling winch.
Unlike her sister ship, ''Terry Fox'' has not been retrofitted with a helideck. However, her cargo-handling capability has been increased with a 40-tonne cargo crane and a cargo hold in place of the original bulk cargo tanks.
Power and propulsion
''Terry Fox'' has a diesel-mechanical propulsion system consisting of four main engines driving two shafts through twin input-single output gearboxes. The prime movers are
eight-cylinder Stork-Werkspoor 8TM410 medium-speed
diesel engine
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...
s producing at 600rpm in continuous service. Each pair of main engines is coupled to a Lohmann & Stolterfoht Navilus GVE 1500 A single-stage reduction gearbox via flexible couplings designed to automatically disengage if the propellers are blocked by ice. However, each propeller shaft is also fitted with a heavy flywheel in diameter and in thickness to increase rotational inertia and absorb shocks from propeller-ice interaction. Unlike the other Canadian offshore icebreakers built in the 1980s, ''Terry Fox'' does not have a
propeller nozzles to shroud her propellers.
Her LIPS Canada
nickel aluminium bronze controllable pitch propeller
In marine propulsion, a variable-pitch propeller is a type of propeller with blades that can be rotated around their long axis to change the blade pitch. Reversible propellers—those where the pitch can be set to negative values—can also ...
s are designed to transmit of power per shaft to the water and produce a combined static bollard pull of about . For onboard electricity production, the ship has two
Caterpillar
Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths).
As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sym ...
3512 series
ship service diesel generators and a single Caterpillar 3406 DITA emergency diesel generator. In addition, both reduction gearboxes are fitted with clutched
power take-off
A power take-off or power takeoff (PTO) is one of several methods for taking power from a power source, such as a running engine, and transmitting it to an application such as an attached implement or separate machine.
Most commonly, it is a sp ...
s for 1,250kVa shaft alternators that supply power to the stern thruster and air bubbling system compressors.
In line with her original
Canadian Arctic Shipping Pollution Prevention Regulations (CASPPR) Arctic Class 4 rating, ''Terry Fox'' is designed to break at least first-year level ice with a continuous speed of . During icebreaking operations, the ice friction is reduced by lubricating the hull-ice interface with a low-pressure air bubbling system developed by Wärtsilä.
In open water, the system can also act as a
bow thruster
Manoeuvering thruster (bow thruster or stern thruster) is a transversal propulsion device built into, or mounted to, either the bow or stern, of a ship or boat to make it more manoeuvrable. Bow thrusters make docking easier, since they allow th ...
and used for maneuvering together with the ship's single centerline rudder and a transverse stern thruster. When operating in ice-free waters, the ship was designed transit at an economical speed of about with just two main engines,
but her maximum speed is quoted as .
Career
''Terry Fox'' (1983–1991)
Between 1983 and 1990, BeauDril's mobile drilling units drilled a total of nineteen exploratory wells in the Canadian part of the Beaufort Sea with the support of ''Terry Fox'' and other icebreaking vessels: nine with the Mobile Arctic Caisson ''
Molikpaq
The Sakhalin-2 (russian: Сахалин-2) project is an oil and gas development in Sakhalin Island, Russia. It includes development of the Piltun-Astokhskoye oil field and the Lunskoye natural gas field offshore Sakhalin Island in the Okhot ...
'' and ten with the Conical Drilling Unit ''
Kulluk
''Kulluk'' was an ice-strengthened Drillship, drill barge that was used for oil exploration in the Arctic waters. She was constructed by Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding in Japan in 1983 and operated in the Canadian Arctic until 1993 when she was ...
''. Twelve wells alone were drilled in the Amauligak prospect, the most significant oil and gas field discovered in the region, but the high expectations for the Beaufort Sea were not met: the area was characterized by a large number of small, widely scattered resources. ''Molikpaq'' was mothballed after completing the last well in 1990.
On 1 November 1991, ''Terry Fox'' was leased to the
Canadian Coast Guard
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG; french: links=no, Garde côtière canadienne, GCC) is the coast guard of Canada. Formed in 1962, the coast guard is tasked with marine search and rescue (SAR), communication, navigation, and transportation issues in ...
for two years to replace the decommissioned during the extensive modernization of . During the leasing period, the icebreaker was found to meet Canadian Coast Guard's needs satisfactorily, and the vessel was purchased from Gulf Canada Resources on 1 November 1993. Around the same time, the majority of BeauDril's fleet was purchased by
Canadian Marine Drilling (Canmar), the drilling subsidiary of
Dome Petroleum
Dome Petroleum Limited was a Calgary-based oil and gas company. Founded in 1950 as a subsidiary of the Toronto company Dome Mines Limited, Dome was built by Jack Gallagher, who remained with the company until 1983. In 1988 Dome was purchased by ...
(later
Amoco Canada) that had been Gulf Canada's main competitor in the Beaufort Sea for more than a decade.
CCGS ''Terry Fox'' (1991–present)
![CCGS Terry Fox in Botwood](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/CCGS_Terry_Fox_in_Botwood.jpg)
Under the Canadian Coast Guard, CCGS ''Terry Fox'' is classified as a heavy icebreaker.
She is homeported in
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's is the capital and largest city of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland.
The city spans and is the easternmost city in North America ...
and operates in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence
The Gulf of St. Lawrence () is the outlet of the North American Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. The gulf is a semi-enclosed sea, covering an area of about and containing about of water, at an average depth of .
...
during the winter ice season and in Canada's eastern Arctic during the summer shipping season, assisting in escorting the annual Arctic summer sealift to coastal communities.
In 2014, ''Terry Fox'' and ''Louis S. St-Laurent'' travelled to the Canadian Arctic to map the undersea continental shelf. In August, they became the first Canadian government ships to reach the
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Mag ...
in 20 years.
''Terry Fox'' ran aground in April 2018 near
Bide Arm
Bide Arm is a community located on the Great Northern Peninsula in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It amalgamated with the former Town of Roddickton on January 1, 2009 to create the Town of Roddickton-Bide Arm.
Bide Arm had a ...
but managed to return to port under her own power.
While ''Terry Fox'' was scheduled for decommissioning in 2020, the repeated delays of the proposed polar icebreaker has postponed this. , the Canadian Coast Guard has no other newbuilding plans approved as a potential replacement for the 1983-built heavy icebreaker.
See also
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Terry Fox
Icebreakers of the Canadian Coast Guard
Ships built in British Columbia
1983 ships
Terry Fox