Dear Editor:
Your excellent article (City Council Buoys Sinking Stern, Jan. 29) reported on the decision of city council to reconsider the preservation of at least a small piece of HMS Flamborough Head. What lots of folks, including the Artificial Reef Society, seem to have lost sight of is that, for the period 1952 to 1975, she served as the Royal Canadian Navy's supply ship on the West Coast, HMCS Cape Breton. Several of my old naval colleagues served in her and were saddened at the decision to scrap her last vestiges, i.e., her stern and engines. Cape Breton was, in fact, employed by the Navy until the late '90s as a floating machine shop, and I recall seeing her awaiting her fate at the foot of Lonsdale around the time I moved here in 1999.
We really missed the boat (so to speak) when the National Maritime Museum failed to materialize, and moving the poorly housed North Vancouver Museum to the old shipyard would still be an appropriate and warmly welcome alternative.
Gordon LongmuirLt. (Ret'd), RCN
North Vancouver
