Poised and ready though I was for the departure of Terra Nova this afternoon, atmospheric conditions did not cooperate for photography. A pall of fog drifted into Halifax in the early afternoon, and by 4 pm, just as the sun was setting we were subjected to large patches of "black thick" fog.
The sorry excuse above is much enhanced by computer magic, and shows much more of the ship than my eyes were able to see.
HMCS Terra Nova was launched in 1955 by Victoria Machinery Depot in British Columbia, and commissioned in June 1959, a member of the Restigouche class of destroyer escorts, and assigned pennant number 259. She was upgraded in 1967 (IRE) and 1985 (DELEX) and was hastily refitted in 1990 to participate in Operation Friction, part of the Desert Storm Operation of the (first) Iraq war.
On July 11, 1997 she was decommissioned and laid up. Aside from one brief interval, she has spent most of the time since at Jetty Lima. That interval was during the filming of the movie K-19:The Widowmaker, where she somewhat improbably portrayed a US destroyer.
With one of the most distinctive possible warship profiles, which was not altered, (a US type pennant number "942" was painted on her hull ) Terra Nova was still most decidedly not a US destroyer!
So this afternoon at 4 pm she sailed off into the fog, in tow of Atlantic Elm, bound for the nackers yards in Pictou.
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