The Royal Canadian Navy ship HMCS Protecteur arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam after it was towed by the U.S. Navy ship USS Sioux after a fire disabled it while at sea in Honolulu, Hawaii, March 6,2014.HUGH GENTRY/Reuters
The Canadian navy is going to retire four veteran ships that have been in service for decades.
Sources tell The Canadian Press that HMCS Algonquin, Athabaskan, Iroquois and Protecteur will be decommissioned, with an announcement expected later today.
The move comes as no surprise for any of the ships.
Protecteur's days were thought to be numbered after a fire in the 45-year-old tanker's engine room left the ship adrift in the Pacific last February and it had to be towed back to Victoria from Hawaii.
Protecteur and sister ship HMCS Preserver were ordered replaced by the federal government a decade ago but their replacements aren't due to enter service until 2019 at the earliest.
The other three vessels, all Tribal class destroyers, were commissioned in the early 70s and have been Canada's largest fighting ships for decades.
The Tribals have been a mainstay of Canada's contribution to NATO and have been sent to various international troublespots. The fourth Tribal, HMCS Huron, was retired in 2000 and sunk as a target in 2007.
Athabaskan left Halifax on Saturday to join an ongoing multi-national patrol of the Caribbean to fight organized crime and drug trafficking. It wasn't clear how long she would be at sea.
The exact timeline for retiring and disposing of the ships is unclear.
The federal government has announced a new class of 15 ships to replace the Tribals and Canada's Halifax-class frigates but it's unclear when work will start on the vessels or when they'll begin entering service.