Canada’s smallest commissioned naval unit, the 92-ton, Marconi-rigged ketch Oriole is celebrating her 75th anniversary this year by participating in an ocean race from Victoria, British Colombia, to Maui. Completed in Boston in 1921, the 102-foot craft joined the then-Royal Canadian Navy in 1952. She now operates from Esquimault, British Colombia, and spent some 125 days at sea during 1995 training students from the Canadian Naval Officers’ Training Center and the Canadian Forces Fleet School in navigation and seamanship skills. The Oriole also is used extensively in charitable and public relations duties and raised some $35,000 (Canadian) last year. Equipped with sophisticated navigational equipment, she can make 14 knots under sail and normally is crewed by 1 officer, 5 enlisted personnel, and 18 or more trainees. Canada also employs sister 36-foot sloops Tuna and Goldcrest for sail training.
HMS Richmond, seen early this year, was the last of four Royal Navy Duke-class (Type 23) general-purpose frigates to be completed by Swan Hunter Shipbuilders. The remaining seven Type 23s commissioned to date have been built by GEC-Yarrow at Glasgow, Scotland. Yarrow also is completing two others and, in February, received a contract to build the final three ships of the class—the Kent, the St. Albans, and the Portland. Although plagued by problems with their combat control systems, the 4,200-ton Dukes have great potential as antisubmarine platforms because of their quiet-running, 52,300 shaft horsepower CODI.AG (combined diesel-electric and gas turbine) propulsion plants, towed-array sonars, and excellent seakeeping.
Without armament—which is to be added after delivery—but already equipped with Thomson-CSF Triton-G surface- search, Jupiter air-search, and two Castor-II weapon-control radars, the Hsi Ning, the second of six La Fayette-class “stealth” frigates building in France for Taiwan is seen here in January at Lorient wearing temporary hull number Z002. Her sister Kang Ting departed French waters in March, bound for a final fitting out in Taiwan that will include the installation of eight Hsiung Feng-II antiship missiles, a Sea Chaparral point-defense surface-to-air missile system, one 76-mm OTOBreda and two 40-mm Bofors guns, a U.S.-supplied Phalanx close-in weapon system, and two triple antisubmarine torpedo tube sets. The hangar will accommodate a Sikorsky S-70C(M)1 antisubmarine helicopter, and the 3,800-ton, diesel-powered ships—unlike their French Navy counterparts—will have hull-mounted and towed-array sonars.