HMCS MONCTON (2nd) (708)
HMCS MONCTON (2nd)
The History of HMCS MONCTON (2nd)
HMCS Moncton (MM 708) is the ninth Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessel and the second Royal Canadian Navy ship named for Moncton, New Brunswick. She inherited the battle honour Atlantic 1942-43 from the Flower-class corvette of the same name.
Laid down at Halifax Shipyards on 31 May 1997 and launched on 5 December 1997, she was commissioned on 12 July 1998 at Pointe-du-Chene, New Brunswick, near her namesake city, in company with sisters Goose Bay and Shawinigan. Homeported at CFB Halifax and crewed largely by naval reservists, she was built for coastal patrol, mine countermeasures, training, fisheries and sovereignty work, pollution response, and search and rescue.
She entered service immediately. In September 1998 she joined recovery operations after Swissair Flight 111 crashed off Peggy's Cove. She took part in Exercise Unified Spirit (2000) and, with HMCS Goose Bay in 2001, became one of the first two Kingston-class ships to cross the North Atlantic for NATO mine-warfare exercise Blue Game off Norway and Denmark. Busy years followed: 144 days and nearly 17,000 nautical miles at sea in 2003 on fisheries patrols, Exercise Scotian Traverse in 2004, Acadian 400th-anniversary events, and a U.S. Navy mine-warfare exercise in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. In October 2003 she and HMCS Kingston helped recover two U.S. Marine Corps F-18 pilots after a mid-air collision.
Later she ranged widely. She deployed on Operation Nanook in the Arctic (2011 and 2016, including Hudson Bay), on Operation CARIBBE in the Caribbean (2015, 2016 and 2017) with one boarding seized 834 kg of cocaine), and to West Africa on Neptune Trident (2017) and Operation Projection (2022-23), including work against piracy and illegal fishing and a 2023 redeployment to patrol off Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She also joined NATO's Trident Juncture (2018) and made Great Lakes goodwill tours. After a 2019 refit she wore a commemorative Second World War dazzle scheme marking the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic.
The Bofors 40mm guns were removed from Canada's Kingston-class coastal defence vessel (MCDV) fleet in 2014, leaving the vessels relying on two 12.7mm (0.50 caliber) Browning M2 heavy machine guns for self-defense.
As many of the Kingston class paid off in 2025, Moncton remained one of the four still in service, based at Halifax, and is scheduled to be paid off in 2028.
HMCS MONCTON (2nd) Statistical Data
- Pendant: 708
- Type: Maritime Coastal Defence Vessel
- Class: Kingston
- Displacement: 970 tonnes
- Length: 55.31 m / 181.5 ft
- Width: 11.3 m / 37 ft
- Draught: 3.4 m / 11 ft
- Speed: 15 kts
- Compliment: 31-36 Officers and Crew
- Arms: 1 - 40mm Bofors (removed in 2014), 2 - 12.7 mm (.50 cal) machine gun
- Builder: Halifax Shipyards Ltd., Halifax, NS
- Keel Laid: 31-May-97
- Date Launched: 05-Dec-97
- Date Commissioned: 12-Jul-98
- Paid off:
More Images
HMCS Moncton departs on 22 January 2021, on a 2-month deployment to the Caribbean Sea on Op CARIBBE. Photo Credit: Mona Ghiz, MARLANT Public Affairs
HMCS Moncton returns to Halifax from Op Projection and Op Globe on March 31, 2023. (RCN Photo)