With thanks to 12352 Chris “chwylms” Willmes 

In 1982, my ship, the west coast destroyer HMCS GATINEAU, was in the midst of a year-long refit. I managed to finagle an attached posting to HMCS CHALEUR as the ship’s navigating officer. CHALEUR was one of several BAY Class ex-minesweepers that were employed in the role of training of junior MARS officers. I had lobbied for this job because I was expecting to be sent on the Destroyer Navigating Officer course in the fall, for which this job would be good practice. While I was thus employed, I was tasked to be the liaison officer for a visiting flotilla of US Navy minesweepers. 

Typically, a liaison officer would embark in a Blue Boat (auxiliary vessels that ferried people back and forth across Esquimalt Harbour) and proceed out into the harbour approaches to board the visiting ship. So that's what I did. Being a keen young naval officer, eager to impress, I did not go unprepared. I had drawn an accurate, large-scale plan of the harbour, highlighting the hazards, the locations of the other ships berthed at HMC DOCKYARD, and the intended berths for the American ships. I had drawn tidal graphs, one for each day of the visit. I even brought a copy of the daily weather message.

The Blue Boat rendezvoused with the flotilla leader, which was hove-to off Albert Head, a few miles south of the harbour entrance. I clambered aboard the American warship, and was escorted up to the bridge, where I was presented to the CO and the XO. I showed them the harbour plan, pointed out our berth, briefed them on what sort of traffic to expect once inside the harbour, etc., etc.  The CO said to me, "you're the navigating officer of your ship, right?" "Yes, sir, I am." "So you know this harbour pretty well, then?" "Yes I do, sir." What I did not know before that day was that the USN, unlike the Canadian Navy, does not train specialist navigating officers, and does not do pilotage. When operating in confined waters, or entering or leaving harbour, they either rely on the CO's local knowledge (i.e., prior experience) or embark a pilot. So I was taken aback when the next thing the CO said was, "Good! You can take me in." Then, raising his voice, he announced to the Officer Of the Deck (OOD) and the other bridge watchkeepers, "Sub-Lieutenant Willmes has the con!" I was surprised, stunned, even, at this unexpected turn of events, but I hesitated for only a fraction of a second before leaping into action. As part of my preparation for this liaison tasking, I had looked up this class of ship in that ubiquitous reference work, Jane's Fighting Ships. These AGGRESSIVE Class minesweepers had approximately the same dimensions and displacement as the Canadian Navy's BAY Class, and like those ships, were powered by diesel engines driving twin screws. So it was reasonable to assume that the handling characteristics, rudder response, turning radii, etc., etc., would be similar to those of my own ship. And, I had also brought along my navigating officer's notebook, which contained passage plans I had prepared in the past, including plans for entering Esquimalt Harbour and berthing at each one of the several jetties in the dockyard.

Piece of cake, I told myself. I took a quick bearing of the entrance to Esquimalt Harbour, then gave the OOD a course to steer and ordered him to ring on fifteen knots. Next I stepped over to the chart table to look at the chart. There were no tracks on the chart, and the few fixes that the bridge fixing team had plotted were big cocked hats more than half a mile on a side. "Stand by to copy!" I said to the young sailor whose job it appeared to be to log things like visual bearings and other navigational minutiae. From the centreline pelorus I snapped off a quick, five-point fix. (Three points would have sufficed, but I was showing off.) With practised speed, I plotted my fix; with that on the chart, I knew where the ship was and where it was going. At fifteen knots, we would enter the mouth of the harbour in about ten minutes. I pulled out my navigating officer's notebook, turned to the appropriate harbour entry plan, and started briefing the CO on how I was going to take his ship into harbour. From this point on, I didn't stop talking. Maintaining a running commentary is a tactic commonly employed by the navigating officer to put his CO's mind at ease, and more importantly, by keeping his CO’s mind occupied, to dissuade him from asking difficult questions. All the while, I kept a close eye on my leadmark, and gave the OOD minor course corrections to counter the effects of wind and tide.

As we passed between Fisgard lighthouse and Duntze Head - the entrance to Esquimalt Harbour - I ordered the OOD to reduce our speed to nine knots. Standing at the centreline pelorus, watching the bearing of my leadmark, and also that of the leadmark of our next course, I announced, "three cables [six hundred yards] to alteration of course starboard, to zero-eight-five." When the bearing came on, I ordered "officer of the deck, turn starboard now, to new course zero-eight-five." The OOD acknowledged, and dutifully obeyed my order. I was enjoying this immensely!

Our intended berth, Bravo Jetty, a finger jetty angling out into the harbour from the entrance of the Esquimalt graving dock, was now coming into view. The six-ship flotilla was to berth, two by two, on the far side of the jetty, with the lead ship, i.e., us, about a ship's length back from the gate at the mouth of the graving dock. I pointed out the jetty to the CO and the OOD, explained that we would pass by the end of the jetty, then make a sharp turn to starboard onto the approach track to our berth. The turn was coming up quickly; I asked the CO, "Sir, will you want take the con before or after the turn?" The CO, slouching nonchalantly in his captain's chair, replied "nah; you got this. Take us alongside."

I should pause briefly to elaborate on a peculiar feature of a BAY Class minesweeper’s propulsion machinery. The ships were propelled by a pair of diesel engines (marine variants of the same type of engines used in locomotives) which had a fairly narrow range of permissible engine operating speeds. The maximum RPM drove the ship at sixteen knots; the minimum RPM, nine knots. The rather brisk minimum speed made manoeuvring the shop alongside a bit challenging. It was made even more so by the pneumatic clutches that connected the engines to the propellor shafts. Just like in a car equipped with a manual transmission, the engine has to be decoupled from the transmission while changing gears from ahead to astern. There was an approximately nine-second delay between deflation of the clutches and re-inflation. Timing was everything when driving alongside; as the ship approached the jetty, you had to stop the engines, reverse them, and then wait for what seemed like an eternity for the propellers to start turning in the opposite direction, and slow the ship to a halt. Stop the engines too late, and the ship would prang the jetty; stop them too soon, and the ship would end up dead in the water, too far off the jetty to pass the mooring lines. (You can probably see where I'm going with this, but bear with me.)

So I make the final turn, and line up the ship on the approach track. The thing about finger jetties is that you want to take care not to overshoot your intended berth, lest your ship become an impromptu building at the landward end of the jetty. I'm preoccupied with the approach, but I do notice out of the corner of my eye that the CO is no longer slouching in his chair, but rather, is sitting bolt upright. There was a slight breeze blowing us away from jetty, so I angled the ship in a bit more to compensate. The CO was now gripping the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white. A few more seconds pass, and suddenly he leaps to his feet, and shouts "I have the con! All stop! All back full!" Once the way was off the ship, the CO turns to me and says, "Just what the hell did you think you were doing?" "Taking the ship alongside, sir", I replied, thinking that that should have been obvious. "Do you always go alongside at such a great rate of knots?" he asked. "Yes, sir", I answered confidently. "Well, not with my ship, you don't!" the captain shouted. (I think he was channelling his inner Captain Kirk.*) What I had failed to notice in my research was that these American minesweepers had controllable pitch propellers, which allowed them to crawl along a very slow speeds. Which we then proceeded to do; rather ignominiously, I thought.

Later that afternoon, once the flotilla was secured alongside, and the bureaucratic obligations of a ship arriving in a foreign port were dealt with, I bundled the American officers over to the Wardroom at Naden. It was Friday, and I wanted to introduce my American guests to the Canadian naval tradition of Weepers. I had arranged for the officers of our little squadron of minesweepers to attend and host our visiting allies. I herded the American COs over to their Canadian counterparts, already clustered by the bar. I made a quick round of introductions. Jerking his thumb in my direction, my American CO asked my Canadian CO, "is this your navigating officer?" "Ye-e-es" replied my CO cautiously, a look of concern chasing the smile from his face. "Well, he's a lunatic! He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the bridge of a ship!" His face darkening, my CO cast a sidelong glance at me, doubtlessly wondering what I had done to sour international relations. Without waiting to be asked, the American began describing, rather brusquely, our entry in Esquimalt Harbour, and my (kamikaze, in his view) attempt to bring his ship alongside the jetty. As the tale of my reckless ship-handling concluded, I could see that the worried look on my CO's face had evaporated; in fact he, and the other Canadian COs, were trying hard to not laugh. My CO then proceeded, quite diplomatically, to explain the idiosyncrasies of our minesweepers' propulsion arrangements, which made such rapid jetty approaches de rigueur. And with that, and a few more jars of ale, convivial international relations were restored.

Post Script. A few years later, I found myself posted to the east coast destroyer, HMCS ATHABASKAN. We were despatched to the US naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, to represent the Canadian Navy at a change of command ceremony of the USN's Second Fleet. The ship arrived in Norfolk early on the day of the event. We attended the ceremony, and then repaired to the Officers' Club for a reception. Arriving fashionably late, we entered the main ballroom, finding the party already in full swing. We were headed in the general direction of the bar when a stentorian voice called out across the room, "Hey, Lieutenant Willmes! Is that you? Get over here, on the double!" Perplexed, I made my way over to where the speaker was standing. Imagine my surprise to find that self-same minesweeper driver, now a Commander. (And recently appointed to command a shiny new destroyer, I was to learn.) He throws a comradely arm around my shoulders, and announces to his wardroom officers, "this Canadian officer, this crazy Canuck, damned near torpedoed my career a few years ago when I was driving a 'sweeper on the west coast." He then launched into the tale of that near-calamitous incident in Esquimalt Harbour. In the intervening years, the story had undergone no small amount of embellishment. It was now an epic, almost as audacious as that part of the WWII British raid on the German-held port of Saint Nazaire, where the British rammed an old destroyer, crammed with explosives, into the gate of the graving dock. (That ship, coincidentally, was a former USN destroyer transferred to the Royal Navy in the British-American ships-for-bases deal.) To hear him tell it, we had charged across the harbour and towards the jetty at more than twenty knots, a speed that that minesweeper couldn't attain steaming downhill with a following wind. And the CO most certainly had not ordered both of the ship's anchors let go to arrest the ship's headlong rush into the graving dock's gate. But it made for a good story. The Americans all applauded, and I was the recipient of a lot of back-slapping, as well as considerable quantities of beer. My recollection of the rest of that evening is pretty hazy...

*For the Star Trek fans, see the sixth episode of the second season of the original series, “The Doomsday Machine.”