Environmental Dredging starts at pier 6

Environmental dredging got underway this morning at pier 6. The work is related to the Halifax Shipyard's major expansion which will allow it to build ships under the new National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy.
The site was ground zero of the Halifax Explosion in 1917 and until 2008 the location of a major sewage outfall, not to mention more than a century of industrial activity. As might be expected the bottom is strewn with debris, and sludge containing heavy metals and other contaminants.
The dredge Cranemaster will dump the spoil into sealed scows HD6 and HD7 that will be unloaded at the landing on the right in the photo above.The spoil will then be cleansed using a sophisticated process operated by Clean Earth Technologies. See http://www.cleanearthtechnologies.ca/
Once the area is dredged to the required depth a series of concrete cribs will extend the face of pier 6 well out into the stream. The area will be filled and surfaced as a roll out area for the new ships.
Tugs Swellmaster and Atlantic Tamarack will attend the dredge and wrangle the scows.

Low tide - time for clams. These veteran dredge clam buckets are being stored at the shore line until they are needed or scrapped. (2012-03-23 photo)

Pier 6 - no sentimentality expected

I did not expect Irving Shipbuilding to show much sentimentality when they started work on the pier 6 side launch facility. The incredible mobilization of cranes is certainly notable, and work is gearing up rapidly.
Little known perhaps are a few artefacts that will be worth watching.
First is this old orange peel grab:

1. Old grab stands ten to twelve feet high.

Left over from the coal operation which Dosco carried out at pier 6, the grab has been there as long as I can remember. When Irving Shipbuilding took over Halifax Shipyard, the grab was given a coat of paint, and largely ignored ever since. It is a large piece of old technology and would be a shame to lose.

Next is Shovelmaster's shovel:

 2. Obsolete shovel will certainly be going to the scrap yard.

Harbour Developments Ltd lost the dredge Shovelmaster off southern Nova Scotia in 2008, but I believe this shovel was formerly part of its gear. There are no dredges of this type working in eastern Canada any more - they are all clamshell dredges now,  so this artefact is perhaps unique.

Last and most intriguing to me, they started this week to cut down the derrick scow Channelmaster. 

 3. Work has started cutting up the deck house.

Harbour Development have been the owners of this unit since about 1988 when they acquired it from Sceptre-Riedel-Dawson, successors to Scetpre Dredging, a company that tried to pick up the pieces after the collapse of J.P.Porter and Co in 1977. It was Porter that  had no less than Canadian Vickers of Montreal built the craft as Hamilton 56 in 1956. Fitted with a 6 cubic yard clamshell crane ( very likely steam powered) it was built for some important work in Hamilton, ON, but scandal surrounded awarding of the contract  and continued on and off to dog Porter until the end.
In 1977 when Porter's fleet was laid up I photographed Hamilton 56 at their base.

 4. In 1977 the scow was still in serviceable condition.

It was towed out when Sceptre took it over and eventually worked in the Magdalen Islands and Dalhousie, NB, but returned to Halifax in August 31, 1993, towed in by Irving Hemlock.(now Swellmaster)
At that point Harbour Development removed the ancient crane and it was renamed Channelmaster.

 4., 5., 6. By 1993 the old crane was ready for scrap.  Alongside in the lower photo is Mighty Master ex  DPW  No.16 dredge, de-registered in 1998, sunk in Hurricane Juan in 2003 but still in existence at pier 6, as a landing platform. Channelmaster continues to carry the graceful davits for a lifeboat.

Since then it has carried a couple of different crawler and truck cranes, and has had some quite large spuds (the new spudding winches came from the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent). It has worked around Halifax Harbour, but also in Saint John from 2005-2006.
Perhaps remarkably the original "builder's plate" can still be seen on the after house. Had it been bronze it would have disappeared long ago, but as a crude piece of welder's art it has survived - but for how much longer?

 

7. In 1977 the builder's plate was still quite legible.

 8. The builder's plate is midships, on the yellow background, just below the white.

I will continue to watch as this work unfolds.

Shipyard - launch area work starts

 1. Pier 6 makeover begins

With much noise in the local press about an imminent signing of Phase II contracts in the ship procurement contract with Halifax Shipyard, physical work has started on the new launch area at the north end of the yard.
As we understand it, Phase II of the contracts is called the Definition Contract, worth multi-millions, most of which will be done elsewhere. Such yards as Maersk's former prime shipbuilding yard of Odense in Denmark, and General Dynamic's huge destroyer building yard in Bath, Maine, will carry out a lot of design and engineering work, but it will not involve the actual building of ships. That will be done in Phase III in Halifax.
In order to build the new ships, which will  be too big and heavy to launch on the current launchway, a former steelyard in the north end of the yard at pier 6 will be converted to a side launch area. Ships will be rolled northward out of the fabrication hall and then eastward to Pier 6 where they will moved onto a new floating drydock and gently lowered into the harbour and floated off.
Pier 6 is of course best known as the Ground Zero area of the Halifax explosion in 1917, where the drifting IMO came ashore after the massive explosion which devastated the Richmond area of north end Halifax.
After the explosion the area was a wasteland, but was rebuilt by Halifax Shipyard and parent company Dosco, which used it as a coal stockpile. Then in 1960 it was fitted with a series of unique steel bridge structures, supported on steel encased concrete cells.The structures, topped with concrete, acted as a pier, supporting shipyard cranes, and on a lower level some machine ship functions.
This series of photos taken in September, 1960 shows construction of the bridge sections. *

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Pier 6 was used a fitting out berth and for in water repairs, and was heavily utilised during the oil rig building program of the 1960s and 70s.

8. Oil rig Sedco H under construction at pier 6 in 1969. The steel yard on the shore had its own traveling gantry crane.

 9. Shipyard crane Timberland unloads oil rig leg sections from the barge Haltren No.1 at pier 6 in 1975. The sections were built by Dosco's Trenton Works and barged to Halifax.

For the past several years pier 6 has fallen into a state of disrepair and has seen little use, except at the very north end where Harbour Development Ltd keeps some of its dredging plant..
This week demolition crews moved in and have begun to dismantle the steel bridge sections.

New work will include dredging, a new pier face 10 meters farther to seaward, a pier extension of 250 meters and new buildings, as well as the hard stand where the new ships will be transferred to the drydock for launching.
Due to a change in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which came into effect July 6, 2012, there was no requirement to complete an assessment on the project.

* In the background of the 1960 construction photos are ships of the former Canadian National Steamships.CNSS laid up its ships rather than bow to union strike demands. A deal to sell the ships to Cuba fell through when Fidel Castro took over and most of the ships languished in Halifax for years until sold for scrap. Also appearing in photo #6 is the coal burning icebreaker CGS Saurel tied up at the north end of pier 6.