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Tension-filled day for LCS crew

ABOARD FREEDOM — The crew knew this would be a tough day, perhaps one of the biggest challenges yet for the Navy’s first Littoral Combat Ship. They were headed for Canada’s Welland Canal, the narrow, man-made passageway between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. It was the next leg of the ship’s journey from its builder’s yard in Wisconsin to the open ocean.

The Welland features eight locks that lower ships from Erie to Ontario. Heading from the south end and starting with Lock 8, the ship moved on Tuesday morning in frigid temperatures and passing snow showers with a slow deliberateness. Each lock was a major shiphandling challenge, with only about 6 feet to 8 feet between the ship’s sides and the towering stone walls of the locks.

“We’ve got lots of time. We’re in no hurry. We’re going to do this right,” Cmdr. Don Gabrielson, commanding officer of the Freedom, told his crew in the morning.

The Canadians knew the challenges of the operation.

“This ship has lots of angles, features that jut out at the walls,” said master mariner Capt. Anil Soni of the Canadian government.

Soni had come aboard to inspect the ship for the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

“It’s going to be tough, but they’re doing very well,” he added.

Soni pointed to a passing Laker cargo ship, its flat sides streaked fore to aft with enormous scratches. The Lakers hug the side of the locks, deliberately scraping the ships along one side to avoid banging uncontrollably into the other.

“The cargo ships are built for these locks,” he said.

But lock-hugging was not an option for the angled sides of the Freedom.

The warship’s crew rigged rubberized fenders over the ship’s sides fore, aft and amidships. Perhaps as a harbinger of things to come, fenders were hung from the bridge wings that projected high over the ship’s sides.

“We’ll need those,” Gabrielson said after passing through the first, relatively low, lock. “Those locks up ahead will be higher than the ship,” he cautioned.

That was indeed the case as the ship descended down Lock 7, the second lock of the day. Deck hands fore and aft raised and lowered the fenders to keep them in the most protective spot, and soon the bridge windows were filled with nothing but the sight of the sides of the lock and its massive steel gate. Gabrielson flitted from one side of the ship to the other, calling out the distance between the ship and the walls and calmly encouraging his crew.

Several times the Freedom bumped into the walls, but the fenders held and there was no damage — at least to the ship, if not the fenders.

“You’ve got it; you’re doing fine,” Gabrielson told the crew.

The bridge watch stifled the urge to breathe a sigh of relief as they made it through Lock 7, knowing that the toughest challenge was coming up. Locks 6, 5 and 4 were grouped together, back to back, and it would take nearly two hours just to get through that bunch.

Lock 6 went by almost routinely. Then in Lock 5, things got a bit rougher.

“Come to port,” Capt. Dan Hobbs, a private consultant, told the escorting tug Ohio, which was guiding the LCS in the lock. But the Ohio was coming right.

“You’re going to starboard — come to port,” Hobbs said.

But the Ohio continued to pull the Freedom the wrong way.

Out on the port side, the Freedom’s bridge wing came into contact with an oaken lock gate. The fender hanging off the bridge wing got caught and, as the tug kept pulling the wrong way, the fender rope tore off a small railing. The wing itself pranged into the stone wall, punching a small hole in the structure and leaving some scratches and dents. But the damage to the ship’s pride might have been greater.

“It’ll take a bit of work; we’ll have to fix it up,” Gabrielson said afterward of the damage. “But we can’t look back. We’ve got more to do,”

And Freedom pushed on. It would take nearly 10 hours to make it through the Welland, and the crew was only halfway there.