HMCS WHITEHORSE (705)
HMCS WHITEHORSE
The History of HMCS WHITEHORSE
HMCS Whitehorse (MM 705) was the sixth Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessel and the first Royal Canadian Navy ship named for Whitehorse, Yukon.
Laid down at Halifax Shipyards on 26 July 1996 and launched on 24 February 1997, she worked up on the East Coast, including a visit to St. John's, then left Halifax on 25 August 1997 and arrived at Esquimalt on 24 October. She was commissioned there on 17 April 1998. Homeported at CFB Esquimalt and crewed largely by naval reservists, she was built for coastal patrol, mine countermeasures, training, fisheries and sovereignty work, and route survey. After commissioning she sailed the British Columbia coast with HMCS Yellowknife as far as Skagway, Alaska.
She trained junior officers, conducted fisheries and sovereignty patrols, and trialled remote mine-hunting systems. In 2004 her company marched in Whitehorse's Canada Day parade; in 2005, while training off Oregon and Alaska, the crew supported the Yukon River Quest as a safety boat. She remained a Pacific-coast workhorse through the 2000s and 2010s.
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.
Her most public operational record was Operation CARIBBE in the eastern Pacific. Between 2014 and 2020 she deployed five times with sisters including Nanaimo, Brandon, Edmonton and Yellowknife. Seizures included more than 5,200 kg of cocaine in one 2015 operation with U.S. ships, further hundreds of kilograms later that year, 2,856 kg in 2018, and 2,657 kg of cocaine plus marijuana in 2019. A 2020 patrol with Nanaimo was cut short by COVID-19. She also took part in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2018.
Whitehorse was paid off at Esquimalt on 29 September 2025 with HMCS Brandon and Saskatoon.
HMCS WHITEHORSE Statistical Data
- Pendant: 705
- 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: 26-Jul-96
- Date Launched: 24-Feb-97
- Date Commissioned: 17-Apr-98
- Paid off: 29-Sep-25
More Images
HMCS Whitehorse on Patrol in Arthur Passage, British Columbia, September 3, 2020. (Wikimedia commons user: Extemporalist)
HMCS Whitehorse arrives in Portland, Oregon, to participate in Portland Fleet Week festivities during the city's 104th annual Rose Festival, June 9, 2011. (USN photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Terry L. Feeney)