Sea Control - Sea Control 174 - Operation Megaphone

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

1. G-T-S Katie Standoff Ends2. Operation Megaphone3. G-T-S Katie Finally Arrives

Hey folks, it's Jared. Thanks for tuning in. Today we're going to tell you the story of Operation Megaphone. I'm joined by the former Canadian Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Admiral Retired Drew Robertson, Captain Retired Ian Parker, and Captain Retired Norm Jolin to recount the 2000 raid on the GTS-KD to recover Canadian Army equipment. I also want to highlight SimSec's Project Trident. If you don't follow SimSec on Twitter, go do so now or visit the website at simsec.org. If you're interested in shaping the future of international maritime security, this is your opportunity. Our first call for essays is out. We've partnered with Marine Corps University's Brut Krulak Center for Innovation and Creativity to address strategic choke points

and littorals. More information on questions and content can be found on our website at simsec.org. Submissions are due by May 25th and can be emailed to content at simsec.org. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome aboard Sea Control. Today we are discussing Operation Megaphone, the Canadian Navy's 2000 cutting-out expedition against the GTS-KD to recover millions of dollars worth of Canadian Army equipment. My guests today are Norm Jolin, a retired Canadian Navy captain, Ian Parker, likewise a retired Canadian Navy captain, and Drew Robertson, a retired Canadian vice admiral and former commander of the Canadian Navy.

As always, our opinions are our own and do not reflect the views of any organization with which we may be associated. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate you coming on today. Yeah, great. so i'm going to start with the topic of the day is operation megaphone but i did want to ask where you are all hunkered down right now and how you've been dealing with quarantine individually and ian i'll start with you if you don't mind i'm hunkered down in a small town outside of ottawa and the advantage of being in a small town is that you don't have to run into too many people like you do in a big urban area.

So I get to get out and walk my dog on a daily basis. And weather's getting better, so a little bit of gardening has come into play. Surviving. How about you, Norm? I'm likewise living in a small community very close to where Ian does, outside of Ottawa. I'm still working for a defense consulting firm. And actually, we've been busier than we've ever been.

I'm on Microsoft Teams probably about three times a day doing stuff. There's no shortage of things to do and doing well. Luckily, in Ontario, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario has been declared an essential service. This is important. Absolutely. And Admiral, how about you? All's well. I'm on the far side of Ottawa.

All three of us retired here. But know what my job is, as the other two do, which is as a retiree to stay the heck out of the way. Stay at home. Don't cause anybody any trouble in the medical system. And we're all succeeding at that. That's excellent. Well, I'm glad you're all doing well with this. So before we get into the operation, I'd like to talk about your careers briefly, where you ended up, and then the position that you occupied back in 2000 as all this was going on. Admiral, if you don't mind getting us started. Sure. I was a junior officer throughout late 70s, 80s. XO, in fact, XO to Ian in a tanker, then moved on to be captain of one of the steam-driven frigates on the West Coast where I happen to have Norm as my XO, so you can see incestuousness in the way the Canadian Navy runs. Then moved in and out of headquarters on a variety of postings, and then into command of Athabaskan.

Following that, wound up as a fleet commander on the East Coast, so deployed after 9-11 with a task group to the Persian Gulf, and then back to NDHQ for a variety of things until retiring from the Navy in about 2009. And Norm, how about you? We're all of similar timelines. I joined the Navy in the mid-'70s, and I served in a number of junior officers and ships on both boats in Canada. I then went to submarines in the early-'80s, did that for a bunch of years, and then went back out of the surface fleet, back to the surface fleet in the 90s, being the executive officer of Annapolis under the dear Admiral,

which was a lot of fun. We had a great crew. And then later on, doing back and forth some postings to Ottawa on the naval staff where i worked for ian and the career shop and then later on i took command of montreal in the summer of 99 after montreal i did some time at our staff college teaching and then i went down to la command transformation in summer of 02 which was actually still sackland then and we changed it over that was interesting and then i funded as the naval advisor and attache to denmark and then my final two years were in brussels on the international military staff at nato

headquarters i retired in 11 2011 thanks and uh ian uh similar timelines uh junior officer all through the uh 70s my first tour net ndhq was um in my gosh when was 85 and uh to put that in context nobody in the navy wanted to come to ottawa took command of fraser which was a steam driven destroyer on the east coast had better for a couple of years came back to ottawa on the naval staff, and then went down to the War College in Newport, and then back to Ottawa, and then for a little bit of language training out to the West Coast to command the AOR provider, which Drew was my ex-op, and we had a great trip into San Francisco, didn't we, Drew? Indeed.

And then finally back to Ottawa, where I was in the purse shop, and then I ran all the detailers. I ran in the Canadian Forces, the equivalent of your detailers. And then I ended up as Director General, Maritime Doctorate in Operations, and finally as Chief of Staff to the Commander of the Navy. Three or four of them, I can't remember. And I retired in 05. Well, thank you so much, gentlemen. Ian, I think the story really begins with you, because were you at NDHQ in 2000? Is that correct? That is correct. I was the Director General of Maritime Doctorate in Operations that year. So you may have the most background. How did the Canadian Army's equipment come to be aboard the Katy, and what type and amount of equipment was on board?

When Canada deployed its UN or its EU-based force to, I think it was Bosnia, it uses commercial systems to provide the lift-fast Canada guns and foam ships capable of moving equipment in that large numbers and that types across the ocean. We were in a process at the time of trying to develop that capability, but that's another story. So an organization inside the Associate Deputy Minister Materiel's organization, the transportation section, they go out and they contract for major logistics. We did this for Bosnia. We did the same thing when we deployed our forces and our support mechanisms to Afghanistan and also into Mali. It's a standard thing. So we were withdrawing the troops from Europe at the time, and so the Army's equipment had to come back. It had to come back to be refurbished and reorganized so it could go out again,

and they contracted SDV to provide the logistics ship that eventually got to the Katy. Normally in these sort of detachments, we put a team on board, drivers and mechanics just to make sure the equipment is tied down properly there's no leaks and as well taken care of babysitters so to speak and i think i think there was three on katie and that's how it all came about there was about 560 vehicles on the vessel most of the wheeled armored fleet in canada was on that vessel so it was pretty valuable to us so regrettably the contract didn't work that well.

I think that's probably an understatement. What was the first indication that you had at NDHQ that there was a problem? As I recall, I think the first indication was the guys on board the ship sort of signaled that there was a problem. And they did that before they left Greece. Word got through to NDHQ, and so they started to monitor its movements at that point in time. We weren't too sure what the problem was at the time. It wasn't until later in July that the transport section sort of got itself organized to find out that the contract was in jeopardy.

There were some concerns that the troops on board indicated. There were some vehicles that were leaking. There were some tie-downs that weren't properly done. In fact, they didn't have enough tie-downs on the ship, and they didn't have sufficient absorbent material to absorb all the fuel and the oils that were leaking out of the vehicles. So it was the troops who told us what was going on. And, Admiral, I seem to recall during the first conversation that we had about this

that eventually Katie was discovered just sitting in the Grand Banks. Why would that be an unusual situation? Well, indeed, the process unfolded after what Ian described. The ship kept being delayed as part of the ship owner's tactical maneuvering to try and avoid losing out on some aspects of the contract, which don't matter to me. But the bottom line was, as soon as they got into the Atlantic, they slowed down. and not only did they slow down but it was described that they'd kind of done circles and then beyond doing that i was notified of the ship when i went to a brief only about three days

before my ship went to sea and at that point the ship was indeed on the grand banks either going in circles or dead in the water and we're talking about a place that's on the tail of the grand Bank, about 250, well, 230-ish nautical miles to the southeast of Newfoundland, 550 miles to the east of Nova Scotia. And that is water that for most of the year is storm-tossed. And so the idea of a ship being dead in the water there is something that none of us had ever seen. And so that's what had my attention even before Athabascan started its fishery patrol the next week and uh nor what were you doing with montreal as all this initially started to unfold where was your ship well we had uh we take a bunch of ourselves in our sister ship build the quebec

we've gone down to new york for a fleet week for the year 2000 and newport and boston's all part of we're picking up the toll ships and we were toll ships escort all the way up and they were doing a review in canada in fact montreal turned out to be the uh the flagship of the we were the reviewing stand for that with the governor general of canada on board and so i was aware of some some things mainly because i talked to bill de quebec i was a friend of mine and he said have you heard about this because he had attended the brief i hadn't anyways we memory serves me correctly bill de quebec was actually the ready duty ship and that's why he got told a brief on all that something's happening so i had a vague idea of it and that was uh and we sailed the week before

in fact i passed athabaskan because athabaskan was i don't think you were anchored as the final end of the reviews as the tall ships went out of halifax harbor i was out doing uh junior officer training and i'd gone into st john's newfoundland for a port visit for the weekend and we sailed on the monday morning from that and it was uh just coming out of st john's and down around the tip where i got a call as i recall about noon from marland ops saying right training's over join athabascan uh and that point time i i sort of heading headed down south the athabascan came up and directed me to join before sunset so that's that's how i i i was in the area doing a junior off the train. Thanks. Ian, can you take us back a little bit into Ottawa and some of the

decision-making process? How much translation were you having to do at that point for what I assume were Army counterparts? Well, the focus wasn't necessarily that we had to do any translation. It was what they wanted to do with initially the people on the ship. The Army's first concern was the people that were on the ship. And their second concern was the equipment. They knew they'd eventually get the equipment, I think. So there was many discussions about whether or not we could just send three additional people on there, probably Navy guys with a couple of Army guys, and bring the current guys out who were at that point likely frustrated. So that's how it went. And then as negotiations were evolving between Canada and SDV, they eventually broke

to contract. With the intermediate, there was three levels of contracting. We contracted with SDV. They subcontracted to Adramana, who has subcontracted to the company that owned Katie. The problem was the middle crowd, Adramana, was going into essentially default. So the government of Canada canceled all those contracts and tried to contract with the people who owned Katy, that didn't work. And then when it became apparent it didn't work, the government quickly switched tack and sent a marsh down to St. Vincent and Grenadines and said, essentially, can we board your ship and would you order it back into Canadian waters?

And they said, yes, we will do both. We will order it back into Canadian waters, and you can board it if you like. So it was pretty quick when those decisions were made, and it was quite direct. The government of Canada at the time, they had no – there was nothing stopping them from boarding those vessels or taking possession of that vessel. So, Norm, you've been ordered to join Drew at sea. were you already at the Katie at this point or were the two of you rendezvousing over the horizon from her? Time's been a bit compressed here in that I spent the first

week at sea just with Athabasca in the first couple of days getting to the tail of the Grand Banks and because I knew Katie was of interest I tried to swing past at sort of 25 miles from where I thought she'd be and then report back to Halifax that she'd been found if not visually identified, because of the fog that prevails for much of the year on the Grand Banks. Nevertheless, if you can see a radar contact at 22 miles and it's dead in the water, that's your answer. You've now got pretty much a certain identification. So I did that about two days in and didn't think much more of it until the next day

when the headquarters in Halifax, on direction from Ottawa, instructed that I was to start covert surveillance, which implied not only the surveillance bit, but also reporting back every sort of three to six hours. So that did in the fisheries patrol that I'd been deployed on after we'd managed to do all of one boarding just outside the 200 nautical mile limit of a flagged vessel. And so much for the work of the fisheries protection officers who'd been brought on board. So that's about day three of what should have been a nine-day trip. And having been ordered to do covert surveillance, it was also casually mentioned to me in a phone call that at some point we might have to consider diverting the ship away from

some French territory that we can get into. And I thought, okay, diverting, that means hailing and telling the remain clear of and maybe pushing and shoving or warning shots or something. And thought there's no way we'll ever get a statement of no objection, a legal basis for going on board, Katie. And went to bed happy thinking, right, covert surveillance, fine. The crew's now got nothing else to do. And we're going to have, you know, the balance of this fisheries patrol of six days for training. We're never going to get to see St. John's. Oh, well. And then we'll head home. I woke up the following morning thinking, reminding myself that actually the legal basis for conducting a boarding wasn't my problem. And that despite all my time in National Defense Headquarters, I couldn't read minds. And so maybe I better get hot

and figure out what it meant as a standard readiness ship that had sent a whole bunch of people on leave. It was down to basically minimum manning to have to conduct that kind of aborting. Oh, and no helicopters on board either. Had a great year previously as the flagship to one of the NATO task groups and had gone through about a 50% crew change during the summer, which meant there was still work to do to integrate the crews as one. And we were six months away from refit. So that pretty much describes for any mariner where you are in the cycle and how ready you think you're going to be, which meant I turned to the XO the morning where I got the brilliant flash that I better get hot and said, time to put together a training program,

not just for the boarding party, but also we've got to make sure we're good for warning shots, boat work, and so on and so on in the context of a boarding. And that's what started sort of three days, four days into the sailing. And then it was about two days of relative quiet where we progressed on a Saturday and Sunday the training plan while drifting. I didn't anchor out the basket, but we spent a lot of time drifting or on a single shaft, single cruise engine trying to conserve fuel because a ship built in 1972, her main engines would drain the tanks pretty quickly. So doing everything we could to conserve fuel and do training. The most interesting piece of this phony war part, the quiet time, was sitting on the bridge reading a message log on a

Saturday morning at seven o'clock in the morning when a radar contact starts coming past Katie at about five miles distance and could clearly see katie was at anchor on the grand bank and it was the qe2 and she hailed katie so another bizarre piece of this is actually having the qe2 come through your tactical situation hail katie and ask if she was in need of any assistance that's how unusual it was to any mariner to see what katie was doing the answer came back negative and everybody carried on along their way. The only other thing that happened prior to moving from covert surveillance to something more serious was one of our Aurora, our version of a P-3, had been dispatched to try an ID. And it wasn't so much to ID. It was to overfly and let Katie

know that she was being watched because she didn't know about Athabaskan. And that part, The overflight by the Aurora ties in both the diplomatic, the commercial negotiations that were going on with military presence starting to be felt by Katie. And they wanted that reported back to Katie's owners, clearly, that they were under constant surveillance in order to nudge everything forward. So that gets us to the point where the weekend's over. And that's the other part of this story, of course, is I had a quiet couple of days because it was a weekend. And nobody's at work in Ottawa on a Saturday and Sunday. And that's why I've been given the orders at the end of the last week, which was to tide things over until the decision makers came back to work on the Monday.

And that's when things got hot. And I can go into that next. Yeah, absolutely. Please. On the Monday morning, I was happy that boarding party training had gone well. Everything else that the ship needed to be able to do was ready. The only problem we had was no helicopter. And if we ever had to board a ship with 40-foot freeboard, the issue was simply that maybe we were going to have to use warning shots and other methods.

Making a boarding happen was unlikely given the fact that they already didn't want to go to Halifax or go into the St. Lawrence. So why would they welcome a boarding party on board for any purpose? At any rate, on the 31st, I was happy that the ship was getting ready effectively. At the same time, folks came to work in Ottawa, and that's when things happened with an order from National Defense Headquarters to move to overt surveillance, which was straightforward, easy to do. take control when Montreal arrived and employ her as well to start providing citraps on the potential for boarding as dictated by the weather. That would be the major factor in that region because we were still on the tail of the bank a long way from even Newfoundland, let alone Nova Scotia. And the other part was to prepare to use force if

necessary to prevent Katie from going into the French territorial waters around Saint-Pierre and Miquelon Island. And just for folks who aren't up on French and Indian wars, or what in Europe they call the Seven Years' War, way back in the late 1700s, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon changed hands a couple of times. These two islands are small islands off the south coast of Newfoundland that the French had used for a while for fishing, then the Brits had used it, then the French again. And they've been in French hands now for a couple of hundred years. And they sit just off the south coast of Newfoundland. And happily, your average Ukrainian master or American owner are unlikely to be up on the intricacies of French territorial waters. and the option they presented for Katie to go and sit happily at anchor in a place where the French might have had an opinion, but they would have had no way to affect an ejection of Katie from

their waters. So that was my next concern. Anyway, Montreal arrived, and on her arrival, Norm, I believe you came over to Athabascan, and we talked about potential employment for you. And, you know, just to lay it out, that would have been warning shots, potential for riding off. Don't get me wrong, Katie's 35,000 tons. We were not going to put a billion dollars worth of frigate trying to nudge Katie anywhere, but just to do whatever we could in that regard in some way. And then potentially as a distraction for boarding, prior to boarding, that is, keep the captain's attention on Montreal while Athabaskan's getting ready to do the insertion, as well as, and this is the hard part that Norm can talk about,

handing him the job of being able to figure out how to tow Katie if that was ever needed from the high seas until we got way up into the St. Lawrence where there would be commercial tugs available, and potentially use a boarding party as well. I don't know, Norm, maybe you want to say something about what you did to deal with the the potential for towing yeah absolutely norm i'd like to hear the uh the towing story because i think this is actually would have been the most daunting part of this operation uh had you been asked to execute it well the the issue was i did come over uh the night my combat officer and i were in a boat i went over to uh athabascum before the thing we had a long talk in there and so we were sort of in sync with what was going on

and and i asked and said yeah we broached all these things boarding parties and stuff like that we knew that i'd been a boarding officer for protector first gulf war and i'd done a lot of actual boardings of vessels going into holfax to prepare for it and when you're you know 60 feet up hanging off a jacobs ladder and they don't want you on board yeah yeah you know this is not going to be swell here okay so yeah the the whole issue of boarding parties but we prepared our boarding party and we were doing a lot of stuff on the disengaged side so he couldn't see it i was on the starboard side of katie all the time katie starboard side so they saw my port side they didn't see my starboard side that's where my boat was that's where we're doing all the stuff and and

training on that one we discussed towing the issue was and it really came to head later on after the boarding when um we and and i must admit we were concerned about fuel and katie what did she have and but i thought a lot well they were anchored she's probably you know for a long time about using a lot that really wouldn't and i think yeah we'll get to it a bit but the um it was his team that dipped the tanks and i realized they didn't have enough gas to get up the sailor even with that own thing and i had just recently been all the way up to montreal the year before as a home home port visit if you like so this is uh so the issue was when we went into remuskiing that was are you prepared to tow and i knew that the standard navy towing drill practice where you

your mates got all the gear laid out for you and you come swipping by real close you fire the line over goes over it's slick done everyone's happy that ain't gonna work i had a copy um we have these wonderful books the admiralty manual of seamanship as well as i had a sewing master mariner's one and the answer was get him to go to anchor i go to anchor then i was going to come come back down on my anchor underneath him i was going to have my team on board to basically break his cable put it on then i would come forward on that as the cable paid off i would weigh anchor then he would weigh anchor and we figured that we were going to have to do that i also went away and calculated the height of the bow like that in submarines we tend to do that they're so

you know ranging and i i seem to recall it was 69 feet i may be wrong but it was it was hot and this was not going to be was not going to happen easy and everything and it's going to all be slow time so that was my intent in order to take him under tow so yes at one point in time i had my boarding party swung out in a boat briefed everything at practice i had um and we were standard readiness ship too by the way so we had a thin crew i was ready to port them i was ready to tow aft. So I had my crew up there all laid up. We're towing, which anyone knows in a ship, it's a pretty big evolution to get that thing. And I, at the same point in time, ready to go to anchor forward. And I had to be able to execute any one of those at any time. And we were ready to do that.

So we'd already talked about all of this, Jared, three days prior to boarding. And we'd gone through all of the things that we might expect to have happen. And then how might we be thwarted. And my worry was that the captain might just say, yeah, by all means, we're happy to have you on board. We're not going anywhere. And just, you know, shut the engines and drift, looking at us to say, now what are you going to do? Hence the task that would be given to Norm. Not that had it happened way out southeast of Newfoundland, there would have been more than one day out of 10 in those waters where it could have been pulled off easily. Nonetheless, Montreal was ready. And so I've now got everything I need to do a boarding except for helicopters. And I guess

that's the next part of the story as we head slowly in. Because Katie over this entire period was spending some time drifting, some time at anchor, and occasionally at five or six knots. And there was an effect being had by our presence and by the Aurora overflight and the negotiations, which was that she was occasionally trying to make it look like she was headed in the right direction, such that we might take that as a positive sign rather than merely as a head fake, which, of course, is partly what it was. Although I think she was also trying to get to a place where help would have been more convenient as i later found had they actually run out of fuel or had a fuel problem so it's now

the tuesday morning and i can tell what's coming because the friday is the friday of a long weekend in the middle of the summer that's what's coming which means ottawa's going to make sure this problem is solved before the long weekend because nobody wants to cancel their long weekend and be dealing with this sort of stuff. Hence, I had pretty tight brackets here on when this was going to happen, if it happened, but also understood everybody ashore was now motivated to make sure that we were successful at sea. That's the good part. That's the nice thing about playing on the same team. And so two days prior was a relatively quiet day as final preps went on on board our ships at sea and the government of canada was was still playing two tracks one an injunction

and negotiations with the other being the the ships at sea at the same time now late on the late on the tuesday i got asked for a concept of ops for boarding which i kind of went what do you need a concept of ops for in the back of my mind we're gonna board but nonetheless put the message together. Because what got my attention was it said, the chief of defense staff wants to see a concept of ops tomorrow morning. Okay, that makes my task for the next couple of hours really simple. Sent that in. And by Wednesday morning, the day prior to the actual boarding, by sort of nine o'clock in the morning at sea, the concept of ops had been approved. I was told the first seeking helicopter was on its way from Newfoundland towards us in a couple of hours,

that not only was the concept of ops approved, but as the day advanced, the chief of defense staff wanted the boarding to occur. He ordered the boarding to occur once we had appropriate aircraft. Folks ashore were working their damnedest to make sure I had at least one serviceable aircraft uh and that's a good thing because when the first aircraft arrived on board it did what helos will invariably do to your plan and that is landed on went to do went to do uh hot fuel and something else in anticipation of whatever i might want to do and then it had a head snag a rotor head problem that rendered it a crane off when we returned to halifax but the magic of even having that helicopter was it gave me something to train the boarding party

on who'd never been in a sea king all like all the young sailors who'd never been in a sea king probably never been for a helicopter flight and although they couldn't turn the rotor they could at least use the hoist for training the boarding party on embarking in the sea king getting hooked up getting out getting lower this wasn't going to be as fast as fast rope which we We simply didn't do and don't do. It was still going to get people on board, Katie. So that was all good. That training progressed well. And folks ashore were so keen on making sure I had something other than another Sea King, which was in northern Nova Scotia, ready to come and join me the following day, that they took a search and rescue twin rotor Labrador helicopter out of Newfoundland and assigned it to me. So they stripped the search and rescue kit out and were prepared to come and do the insertion on the Thursday if the Sea King didn't show up. And if the Sea King showed up and worked, well, then they'd do top cover and provide whatever other services they could. So I was really pleased with the support from Ashore.

The only other thing that happened, oh, and I definitely wanted to use the Sea King. Let's be clear, because I wanted a Seaking pilot's brain engaged in this because they've done maritime ops before, and they know how stupid things can get in exercises at sea. And I wanted a Seaking pilot who could stick the insertion on the Katy no matter what Katy did. And the lab crew is more about saving lives, and they're really good at that, dealing with folks who don't want an insertion to happen. So I was happy to have all these resources coming towards.

The only other thing that happened, even as Katy was now underway at about 12 knots, still not quite even south of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, was a reduction in speed and arrival of a boat from Newfoundland, which was another surprise, as they embarked two members of the Canadian press from a newspaper in the nation's capital, one a photographer and one a reporter. And so you can see that the owners were being really clever about this. They wanted to have the press on board for whatever happened to be able to capture it, report it, make us look bad, make them look good in future court situations if necessary. Now, I didn't know they'd embarked. All I knew was that a boat had gone out and delivered somebody.

I didn't know it was the press. And that's where things stood as darkness fell. We couldn't do a boarding during darkness with our capabilities. So it was all hinging on, when would the sea king arrive the next morning? And that takes us to the day of boarding, the Thursday. Katie spent the rest of the night at 12 knots, headed along the south coast of Newfoundland with the French islands, flying on the starboard bow to on the starboard beam eventually when the boarding finally took

place, but showing no sign that they knew the islands were there. And we by now knew that Katie's plan wasn't to keep going. It was to go to the western end of Newfoundland and anchor off the harbor of Port-au-Basque. And that was where she was going to delay again longer and indeed receive fresh supplies from ashore, land journalists, I guess, whatever else they had planned. So it was pretty clear that the pressure that had been put on them in terms of negotiation and military presence wasn't going to be sufficient to knock them off their plan of delay. And happily, because everything hinged on the arrival of a sea king, so the overnight was otherwise quiet, and we're at the morning of Thursday, the 3rd of August. The good news is

the fog was gone, but it was anticipated there'd be fog on Thursday afternoon, foggy patches getting worse. The wind was good. The seas and swells were right down. This was great weather for the south coast of Newfoundland, and so we were able to carry on with the boarding. As Katie continued 12 knots along the south coast of the island. What we knew at that point was not only that we had to do a boarding, but I kind of knew why, which was that Katie had been ordered to proceed to a port on the southwest tip of Newfoundland and anchor off outside territorial waters. And that was merely another step in their play to exhaust time and make government fold in negotiations i guess but certainly get the most time they could that was

the motivation because it was clear they were going to drag this out longer and longer not that i had a choice i'd been ordered to do it so off we go everything hinged on the arrival of a sea king helicopter left cape breton island arrived at about the same time the labrador helicopter did because that's when i'd ordered it for at 11 45 and finally after many days of toing and throwing everything started to hit military precision aircraft lands on deck hot fuel crew change embark uh first wave of the boarding party seven people launch the aircraft called ops normal and four minutes later was over the starboard bridge area of katie conducting the insertion and within oh probably 15 minutes the insertion had been completed control of the

bridge had been assured and Seeking was back to pick up the second stick of boarding party to insert. All smoothly done without any issue, except for the fact that Katie, as soon as Seeking arrived, first of all, put out a secure take call saying he was being boarded by pirates, which I added to my resume because that's just one of those marvelous things you can then brag about. But beyond that, started maneuvering the ship as violently as you can maneuver a 35,000 ton ship, going about 45 degrees to port and then starboard of track. And the good news is that the wind was right on the nose for the entire boarding, meaning his course alterations weren't enough to put the helicopter out of limits in any sense. And from there, it was merely sort of 10

minutes with the boarding party officer embarked, handing the master of Katy a letter from our chief of defense staff in both Ukrainian and English, explaining why he'd been boarded and so on and whose authority Katy was now under, that the point was made to the captain and the captain became somewhat cooperative, although, you know, not happy with all of this. And the good news was at this point, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were disappearing on the starboard quarter. We were still doing 12 knots towards the St. Lawrence River. And the last thing that mattered for me was to then get a small escort crew on board, by which I mean, we wanted to get the pressure off of my boarding party officer. I wanted him to deal with security and let my executive officer,

Paul Dempsey, I wanted my executive officer to be dealing with the master. because he could look them in the eyes and go, no, in a way that the boarding party officer might feel a little tentative about. So, by rib, sent over the XO and some technical inspectors, some senior petty officers who could do a variety of inspections to make sure we knew what we were dealing with. And I didn't have all of those reports by the end of the day, but still was satisfied. No doubt we were on our way, potentially two and a half days away from reaching Montreal, if all things went well, and that's the end of the boarding, but it's not the end of the story. No, absolutely not. I do want to circle back to a couple of things and bring the other

two into the conversation a little bit here. Ian, can you tell us a little bit about the decision-making taking place in that week? As the long weekend approached, the Admiral mentioned the decision-making picked up speed Monday and Tuesday. Were you involved in the discussions about development of the concept of operations and use of the Sea Kings for the boarding? The basic premise of the government was they were going to get the equipment back one way or the other. As Drew had indicated, they were working on a dual track. But they were quite prepared to work over the long weekend. They were quite prepared to board.

In fact, it became obvious that boarding was going to be the only solution. So once that happened, the government turned to the Minister of National Defense and said, executed he turned to cds said executed and the orders and came out as drew indicated thank you and uh norm what was going on on montreal as all this was on oh one thing one sorry go ahead one thing yeah we did we did know that they had organized journalists but we didn't tell drew that let me ask what was the rationale for the decision not to tell him i'm not going to go into that

that's fair all right but what i didn't know in fact jared point for folks is uh nobody thought to send me the clippings from the national newspapers during the period when you know i'd been at sea, so that I didn't know as much about the negotiations as Ian has relayed so far. But I did know that there was this sort of pincer of legal maneuver versus military maneuver. It also sounds like this was more in the national press than I think what I had anticipated previously. Is that fair to say that this was being tracked by national media? Yes. And in fact, if you were to look at the stories that occurred three, four days before the boarding, the national media's tone was one of, how come we're, and we'll use the we in a national sense, but mostly armed forces, how come military's kid isn't going on ships we can trust? How come Military Kid isn't going on maybe Navy ships?

How come the government of Canada has managed to contract with folks they shouldn't have? Okay, now it's starting to build pressure on the government that the government doesn't appreciate, I would think. But Ian can speak to that. Yeah, and to put the whole thing in context, we're dealing with a government and a party that over the last decade of the 90s, gutted the defense budget by about 25%. So you will see some of the articles that you were sent that is why is the Canadian forces sort of so badly equipped, et cetera, et cetera. That's because we were being cut and cut and cut.

In fact, during this entire period of time, we were, it was being discussed about what airfields and air bases had to close in Canada. So one of them that was on the way of being closed was one of the seeking bases. So in that entire context, when the media pressure started to come out, the government reacted. So quite aside from the legitimate, perhaps that's not the best word, quite aside from the quite logical concern over contractual delivery delays and the need to get this army kit refurbished for future use, you've got the government now feeling reputational pressure as well and that motivated folks the only other thing that i we didn't need to do during the boarding happily was warning shots and and there i think the people ashore were clever to have ordered me to proceed direct with an insertion

and not play around with anything else and if you think of it i'm sure norm you know guys doing warning shots, whether with .50 cal or with main armament, could have done that safely, but you'd sure want it to be safe because you really wouldn't want to sink 10% of the Canadian Army in one single day's activities. 50%. And in fairness, there were 50 sea containers of ammunition on board, which meant there was no real prospect of using that kind of force against the ship anyway. Hence, I think the folks ashore were right, the commanders were right to just say, directly with the helo insertion.

One of the reasons why the decision was made not to use warning shots was all what Drew said, but we knew that or we anticipated that they wouldn't be meaningful. So we wanted to have control of the equipment, which meant we wanted to have control of the ship. And the only way to do that was to put people on board. Thanks. So, Norm, back to the question for you is what is Montreal doing as this is going on? Well, in a short thing, we're just being ready for everything that's potentially could happen. We're certainly talking back and forth. The issue there was so, you know, my team's as the boarding goes on. And it's interesting because Athabascan's perspective, because they're right astern.

and and this guy's going 45 45 either way you know 45 degrees off the ship heading to port then reversing is running going back and forth i was on that starboard bow and so sometimes i was going like 26 knots to keep up the run and then and then literally i don't think i had to go stern on my onboard but but the the point is that he was if you're on the other end of the thing he was whipping around a lot i was conscious all the way along a saint pierre mickle because in a previous life i've been a commanding officer of a bunch of minor warships that we used to do patrols with the rcmp to stop smuggling between port of basque and saint pierre michelon because it was booze smuggling and so i was all well aware of what was in there and i went you know i don't

want them there there so that was our thoughts at the same point time we were ready for it was just like anything's possible so we had to be those sort of things with respect to warning shots Yeah, I agree with everything like that. You know, my experience with .50 cals at sea is they spray bullets everywhere, okay? And not really good. And, of course, this ship's huge, and .50 cals, nah, not so much. The other problem is using my main armament. Is one of proportionality?

Is that too much? And the other thing about the main armament on the ship, it's all a modern frigate. It's designed to kill things. It's not designed to do that sort of stuff. So the gun system goes to center of target. it's not a precision device to tell them that warning shots but the bigger issue comes is not the warning shots it's what if the guy calls your bluff then you go to disabling park i can't do disabling park that thing is my gun system was going to go to center of target and kill it

that's not a good thing so i was i think we were all in agreement the warning shots and escalations thereafter were not a good thing and go straight with the boarding and that's what we were prepared for and everything and basically being prepared for we're what ifing stuff all together one thing i will add and again it's great to be being canadian and i suspect and the americans would have the same the thing there's a lot of yelling to and throwing on the bridge as you can see so two things that that strike me first thing was professionalism all the way through of all uh vessel traffic management system or the local coast guard everything clicked right into naval control shipping boom boom boom it was a machine and that was super professional from

that the other issue was i turned the xo on the camera in the back said do we have anyone on board that speaks ukrainian and about five minutes later we had five people on the bridge and because if you grow up in the prairies you speak ukrainians you speak english outside the house but at home you speak your name and they're going no sir that's not what they're saying they're the other thing back so i'm calling back to athabasca and he said yeah yeah i got the same thing too So we were using our folks on board to listen to the chatter in the background in Ukrainian. They had no idea that we could understand that. Thanks. So once your crew was on board, Admiral, did they take over the vessel and were now driving or was the vessel's crew relatively compliant with you?

Yeah, Jared. Happily, at this point, the captain sees the merit of doing what he's told and standing on at sort of the 12 knots speed that he'd been at previously. And he understood that he was responsible. He was the captain. Safety of navigation, call in to vessel traffic management systems and so on and so on. that he expected, that I expected him to follow the track that was laid out by the executive officer and proceed at the given speed and not deviate, receive my boats when dispatched with provisions for the boarding party and so on and so on. So that all went well. Nonetheless, I've now got a boarding party on board an early 1980s Soviet-era roll-on, roll-off ship with a stern ramp, 750 feet long. So it's a little smaller than the military seal of command row rows, but it's still huge, able to do 22 knots on gas turbines with a huge number of lane meters, many containers,

All because I believe that this is correct, that this ship was designed in the early 1980s to be used for exactly what the Canadians were using it for. But by the army of the USSR, if they'd ever wanted to go someplace interesting, oh, in the Baltic or in the Black Sea or elsewhere, which is all fine. And the boarding party didn't have any problem with that, nor did the folks, the technical advisors I'd sent, except for the fact that she was, of course, Soviet built, meaning manuals are in Russian or Ukrainian. All of the electronics, all of the labeling in the engineering spaces, all of the log books, everything is in another language and not necessarily instantly familiar to us because you're dealing with very different kind of construction from that period. And that's why it took until a day after the boarding before I started to get a feel for whether the ship had enough fuel or not, which was the primary concern, or if there were any other issues. So the boarding south of Newfoundland, the next day was on our way up through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, about to turn to the southwest into the St. Lawrence River, which at its open to the Gulf is dozens of miles wide. Nonetheless, on our way, so still lots of sea room in which to learn more about the ship. I was unconcerned at this point. But by the Saturday morning, so two days post-boarding,

I was getting a different kind of a picture. First of all, the master had become less cooperative along the way. He'd expressed concerns about various legal risks. He, on the Saturday morning, indicated that he did not want a resupply by Hilo or wouldn't even accept the RIB alongside in the relatively open waters that we were still in on threat of relinquishing command. So a threat to my XO of walking off the bridge. And he also mentioned he wanted the armed sailors off the bridge because it was too confined and it was dangerous and making navigation more difficult. And then I got the key piece of intelligence, which was from the engineering technical petty

officer who'd done his own dips of the tanks and worked with the crew to understand what the various dips meant in terms of fuel available and he'd also by that time had a day and a half to figure out what the consumption rate seemed to be and also probably to have had a coffee or two with the ship stokers and then stoker to stoker talk uh learned a bunch of things that got relayed back to me. And simply, the dips revealed that they were unlikely to arrive in Montreal with what any of us would be able to consider a sufficient reserve on arrival. So it seemed that we were in danger of running out of fuel in the St. Lawrence River, which struck me as a terrible idea, both reputationally for me and reputationally for the government of Canada. That would be

where there'd be lots of media able, oh, and it would just be bad for navigation in general. It would be a stupid idea. So clearly, while still in very open water, still about 10 miles across at this point, it was time to challenge the captain on a number of points and see where that led. So I told the XO what I wanted to happen, which was to tell the captain my rib would be coming. It would be received. Armed sentries would not be leaving the bridge. And that I wanted a detailed accounting of the fuel remaining from the captain. And when the XO said that to the captain, that's when the captain looked like he'd run out of gas. He deflated somewhat because he was, to my XO's point of view, the captain was surprised that we had a view, any understanding

of what the fuel situation might be like. Now, I don't know what the captain's intent was in all of this. All I know is that when I got him on the radio, told my XO to get him on the radio, so we did, and asked him what was remaining, I was told that he had enough fuel to reach Montreal plus five cubic meters,

which, of course, sort of 30 barrels of fuel on a ship with 35,000 tons. It made no sense to me. He didn't offer me any appreciation appreciation of whether that was sufficient, insufficient, good, bad, he just told me. And that corresponded pretty well with what my petty officer had already figured out. And so I'd had enough at that point and ordered the ship to go to anchor off the port of Rimouski, where I knew we could get support and we could figure out what the next

steps were going to be, because I didn't have an answer quite. I had the XO order the ship to go to anchor. And everything was unfolding because the captain realized he'd taken this as far as he could, whatever he was up to, and took the instructions and did what was required to professionally come to anchor. The whole time, Montreal was standing by still to take the ship in tow if required. If at any point the captain had just walked off the bridge and ordered folks not to cooperate and shut the engines down. We were ready for that at this point. And I did not realize at that point that one could not fuel, one could not bunker a ship in those waters. I don't mean by environmental regulation. I meant nobody had the capability to do it. The nearest fuel was

in ports along the way and not in Rimouski, which meant my original thinking, which was get them bunkered, get underway, wasn't going to work. And I was happy that it wouldn't work. Not only that I have the fact that the captain was argumentative, and I couldn't really trust him if he was willing to stand on with inadequate fuel. The XO had reported to me that the mate who had the middle watch the previous night had clearly been drinking. The helmsman on the run into the anchorage had been drinking before his watch, and the anchorage was at sort of one in the afternoon, so you could figure out who was drinking in the morning. The captain smelled of alcohol occasionally, so none of this made me happy with the idea of proceeding that way.

Plus, on the run into the anchorage, the non-crew member embarked. So this is the owner's cargo master, who does not work for the captain, but advises or annoys or intimidates the captain, depending on the state of play, he got himself inserted into the instructions for going to Anchorage and got to a point where my XO had had enough. And the XO just turned to one of the sentries and said, arrest him or detain him. And the next thing everybody on the bridge heard was the stock of the machine gun going with that nice metallic click sound into place. And everything got, I'm told by the XO, everything got real quiet. And the very annoying representative from the owners was taken away to and isolated and stayed isolated for the next day or so, at least. And the mood in the ship improved markedly.

The captain was no longer under the direct eye of the owner's agent, and so could revert to doing what he would like to do as an independent master of a ship. At least I think that's what was at play. All to say, being at anchor, calm things down, took a day to sort out how we could possibly get tugs, make the arrangements, contract for them, have them come up the river from Montreal and Quebec City, and be ready a couple of days later to take. Effectively, I wanted Katie in irons. I wanted no more problem out of her. I wanted no potential for embarrassment in any kind. And I wanted control. I didn't want potential for anything to interrupt the traffic on the St. Lawrence. That all unfolded really well.

And in fact, my final point on this, I guess, would be the cooperation that I got out of other government departments. And I can amplify that if you'd like. Yeah, please, though, I did want to ask Ian real quick about were you involved at all in the decision to bring the tugs out? And did you have to explain why that was a necessity? Now, what happened in NEHQ, the chief defense staff tasked the joint commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic to execute on this particular mission and left it up to Marlant to deal with Drew and everybody else. Okay. That's how it should have been done, and that's how it was done. And the CDS, who I know very, very well, as do the other two, was just brilliant through this whole thing.

He said, away you go. And you need also to know that the commander of the Navy at the time wasn't even in Ottawa. He was on leave. And I finally got a hold of him in the middle of northern Ontario in a motel. He is drinking wine. I think he might have spiked this segment. Yeah. It's afternoon your time.

It's fine. Yeah, and his comment was, that's very interesting. I have great faith in the commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic. I'll be back as scheduled. So it was Mar-a-Lago that dealt with all that. And I got great support. Just to carry on from Ian's point, I got great support in everything that I asked for, including another boarding party to deal with Katie, because I saw the problem was going to be arriving in Montreal and still not trusting them until all of the cargo got off, both in the unloading of the ammo outside Montreal and then the rest of the cargo in Montreal. And I needed my boarding party back. They'd been at this long enough. So I got a boarding party from Central Casting flown in from Halifax that continued to make an impression on the master of Katy and was able to stay for the last two days underway. and then two days in Montreal until kind of walked off the ship and said goodbye and disappeared. So that was all done brilliantly. The handling of the contracting for tugs also, it was an unusual situation. Nobody had ever done this and yet everything fell into place. And there I'm happy not just for the support from there, but from the other government departments, which I think is

where you were happy to go next, which is not only did I start a couple of weeks underway with Department of Fishery and Oceans officers on board who were supportive, and they always work well with the Navy because they're used to us. We got RCMP officers are able to enforce the Criminal Code of Canada and other laws. Not that we would have had any problem. It's just it's easier for them in some ways to deal with it and meant we would be able then to walk away at the end of it all, if a criminal act had occurred with the RCMP officers dealing with it brilliantly, the pilotage authority... Yeah, Ian? Once you entered Canadian waters, all your authority disappeared because it became a

civil matter, and that's why the RCMP were critical to you. Clearly useful, but I didn't have them when I detained the cargo master, and I didn't need their... In fact, they had no problem with me detaining people, but not arresting i i know that but it didn't go to court yeah understood and there's a difference between effect and punishment which is uh or consequences i could get the effect i want but not necessarily deal with a criminal infraction i mean another another example while you were out on the banks moving and we were reading and as soon as you entered canadian waters we had to get a search warrant approved by a federal judge. And that was something that was a new thing, and yet that was

done quite expeditiously, actually, despite the fact that it was novel. Folks looked at it and went, oh, well, we've never foreseen this in law. I mean, we've got the military conducting an operation against a foreign ship with foreign crew, foreign nationals. I guess we should do this. And that's kind of one of the masterpieces of this entire evolution for seagoing officers is the test of reasonableness gets you a long way in life if something seems reasonable press on get your mission done but the other people i pitch in all of this were the pilot asked to come on board a merchant ship with an armed presence by the canadian military forcing if you will the master and crew to take a ship somewhere so i had the pilots all brought to athabasca and at anchor

and gave them a briefing on what the situation was. And I'd asked the pilot of the story, please send me the most hardened guys you've got, experienced guys you've got. And that's exactly what I've got. I gave them the briefing and the senior most pilot looked at me in a wonderful French-Canadian accent said,

don't you worry, Captain, we've got this one. And there wasn't a problem at all for the entire... No worry about the naval armed sentries on the bridge. It all unfolded brilliantly. So I'm very happy with the fact that all of the government, whether the operational arms like the RCMP, Coast Guard and others, or the policy arms in Ottawa, everybody was working hard to make this happen, which is why it was able to. Well, then let me ask a couple of questions here to wrap things up. Did the Canadian government change any of its policies based on this incident? No. Well, it all depends what you mean by policies. I guess one is the shipping of military equipment, any changes in that realm, and then two, all the things that the emeralds sort of identified that were novel, did those wind up getting codified in any way? Some did. The shipping of heavy equipment for the Canadian Army for various deployments went via civilian contracting, continued to do, just because that's the only way we can do it.

That being said, J-4 MOVE, who are the transportation people, were somewhat more judicious in the people they selected. For example, when we went to Afghanistan, all the heavy equipment went either by Antonov, rented, or ship, and then Antonov. No, we didn't change those particular rules. Some of the other rules I can't talk to you about, but they did change. But the most important thing, did the government of Canada pump more money in the defense budget? No, that did not begin to happen until, regrettably, 2001. So there was a concern about security, because although there were no smartphones on board ship, there were celltels and there was email. We were outside celltel range, but the email was going via satellite and phone conversations could be had via satellite.

And I was sitting quietly in the ops room two nights before the boarding when the door burst open and in came the petty officer responsible for the communications control room to say, Captain, the minister's on the phone for you. And I went, shit. Went and took the phone conversation. But because I'd worked, it happens that I'd worked for him previously. I'd been a staff officer on the minister's staff. And Minister Eggleton, Art Eggleton, wonderful guy, retail politician out of Toronto, was in the habit of calling people before an operation went down and just having a conversation with them. It didn't even have to be about the op in great detail. He wanted just to get a feel for what was going on because he knew that it'd be useful to him. And that's all he wanted to do was have a pleasant conversation with somebody who'd worked for him before and was now taking orders from him to do something important at sea. Had a great call. And when I hung up and went back into the ops room, I realized then that everybody in the ops room figured that that was it. We're going, no doubt, now, and so on.

And so I called back to the communications control room and said to the PL, pull all the wires. That's it for comms. Tell Montreal to shut it all down for personal communications, email and phone lines back ashore until the office finished. And I don't think the minister meant to have that effect, but that's what happened. Did you then have to scramble to get a hold of Marfor Lance and give them a heads up that the minister had called you directly? Actually, I didn't worry about that because he was known to be that kind of guy. And the conversation had been one of not completely personal nature, but more giving him a sense of what the weather was like and the visibility from a seaman's eye direct to a minister who would then be using not the same words, but those ideas when he met with the press when the time was right. And then sort of a final question here.

If there's a movie made about this, which actor would you like to play? I'll start with you, Norm. And I'm going to tactfully decline. Not my way. Either of the other two gentlemen? I think the actor that should play Drew is Russell Crowe. Well, you've seen him in Master and Commander, obviously. Oh, there you are.

Yeah, exactly. It's the same kind of thing. Well, it speaks to what can be achieved by, well, the effectiveness and flexibility of deployed ships. Same thing, several hundred years ago or during this op. Jared, my view is I want somebody, any Canadian actor, but somebody like Juergen Prochnow. I may not be saying that exactly right, but you would know who I'm talking about. He's the German actor who was the captain in Das Boot. And what matters in this case is he portrayed naval officer the way the three of us are, which is sort of for us, it's anyone who doesn't think that things can get worse isn't thinking hard enough.

And you need to be running through multiple scenarios, gaming what might come next in these things, as Norm and I were doing at sea, and Ian and company ashore, trying to think further, more chess moves down the board than the other folks can deal with. And in that sense, thinking, so not anxious or nervous, but worrying the problem continually. And I think that paid off really well in this case. And besides which, Das Boot was an outstanding movie that I think we've all watched numerous times. Yeah, absolutely. And I do believe you nailed the pronunciation on Jurgen Prochnow as well. Gentlemen, for Norm or Ian, any final thoughts from either of you before I wrap it up here? I guess what struck me about the whole thing is here you had two standard readiness ships, so they weren't all fully booted and spurred, and something happened, and the ability to quickly retask and move and carry it off professionally and successfully, of course, not just the ship's crews, but everyone working together. And as I said to you earlier, I was hugely impressed the way the whole other government departments kind of organization just clicked in. And it was impressive, and it was good. And I thought the thing, so these, you know, for all the naysayers and everything like that, you know, the system does work. You are a professional, and there's a reason why we do and train and do all these sort of things.

Well, thank you very much. I'd like to thank my guests, Vice Admiral Retired Drew Robertson, Captain Retired Norm Jolin, and Captain Retired Ian Parker of the Canadian Navy for recounting their experiences in Operation Megaphone. For our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Thank you. Help me, help me, put it in the alley, put it out in Chippewa now.