A Royal Canadian Navy ship that suffered devastating damage in a fire at sea in February has arrived back home in British Columbia.
HMCS Protecteur docked at its home port, a naval base in Esquimalt, B.C., Saturday morning, months after an engine-room fire stranded the ship and its nearly 300-person crew in the Pacific Ocean, 600 kilometres from Hawaii.
After being pulled to U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor for damage assessment -- with a broken tow line slowing it down along the way – it set off again for Vancouver Island.
The crippled ship limped into port Saturday, towed by an American tugboat.
Esquimalt resident Tom Watson, who used to work on Protecteur, had mixed feelings about the ship’s return home.
"It's nice to see the old girl return home to port," he said. "It's really quite a sad moment for me to see her being tugged alongside knowing pretty well this could possibly be one of her last days at sea."
Following the February fire, the ship and its crew members were stranded in the water for two days. Seventeen family members and several civilian contractors were also aboard at the time of the fire. Twenty people suffered minor injuries while trying to extinguish the blaze.
With the cause of the fire still under investigation, it’s unclear whether the ship will sail again.
Without HMCS Protecteur, which is set to be decommissioned in 2017, the navy is left with just one supply ship to support its maritime fleet.
With a report from CTV News' Scott Hurst
