ABOARD USS FREEDOM - The U.S. Navy's first-of-a-kind Littoral Combat Ship faces a number of challenges as the service works to develop and perfect how this new type of warship fits in and operates with the fleet. But before all that can begin, the ship needed to make one major move: get to the fleet. And that was easier said than done.
"This is not easy stuff," said Cmdr. Don Gabrielson, Blue Crew commanding officer of the Freedom.
The voyage for his ship to reach the Atlantic Ocean began Oct. 24 at its builder's shipyard in Marinette, Wis., on Lake Michigan. In late October, the Freedom paid a courtesy call on Duluth, Minn., at the western end of Lake Superior. From there, the new vessel faced a journey of more than 2,300 miles to reach the sea.
The Freedom crossed Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario and entered the St. Lawrence Seaway on Nov. 20.
A gantlet of 15 canal locks needed to be passed: eight in the Welland Canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario, and seven more in the Seaway between Lake Ontario and Montreal.
The stone-lined locks of the canals presented a sort of problem rarely encountered by U.S. warships.
"None of us have ever seen this before," said Cmdr. Kris Doyle, executive officer of the Freedom and the next Blue Crew CO.
The locks are 80 feet wide, leaving a nominal 16 feet on either side of the 58-foot-wide LCS. But holding a ship entirely steady in the locks is impossible, and the effects of wind and water continually push the ship to one side or the other. The crew continually needed to be on their toes - hoisting and lowering side fenders, hauling in or letting out lines to shore.
The small, 40-sailor crew of the LCS was augmented for this voyage by an extra 16 sailors from the Gold crew, part of the two-crew manning system the Navy will initially use for the Freedom. The extra hands were certainly necessary, as about 30 sailors were on deck fore and aft just to handle the lines and fenders.
Even the skipper got into the act, hauling in and resetting fenders set from the bridge wings.
It was tedious, nerve-wracking work. Going through each lock could take nearly an hour or more, and in several sections, the locks came close together. At one point in the Welland, three locks were set up back-to-back, and in Lock 5, the port bridge wing pranged on a wooden gate projection. The damage was small and superficial, but it caused an ugly tear in one corner of the wing.
The ship passed through the last lock on the Seaway late on Nov. 20 to a palpable sigh of relief, with back-slaps and grins all around. The most difficult portion of the voyage was over, but the mission of showing the ship to the Navy and hordes of visitors was just beginning.
Navy Secretary Donald Winter boarded the ship in Montreal for a day-trip run to Quebec City, and the Freedom will be showing off itself in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then Boston, New York and Annapolis, Md., before reaching Norfolk, Va., in mid-December. Thousands of visitors are expected to tour the new vessel.
"We're going to have open house in Norfolk for the fleet," Doyle said. "We need the Navy to see this ship."
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
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