Ship Log HMCS Toronto

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...

Over the past two weeks Toronto has rounded the Cape of Good Hope, practiced asymmetric warfare, and conducted a port visit in Victoria, Seychelles. During that time, Mike and I went back to a day-worker schedule and focused on our OOD package. After rounding the Cape, the CO authorized the wearing of earrings for 48 hours. He also opened sickbay for those who wanted to get their ear pierced for the occasion. I figured that this would be the only 48 hours of my life where I’d be wearing an earring, so I went to sickbay. For a $20 donation to charity I got my ear pierced with a rather large acupuncture needle after about 10 seconds worth of freezing from an ice cube on my earlobe.

On our way up to the Seychelles between Africa and Madagascar the XO tasked me with captaining a “migrant boat” for an asymmetric scenario. Myself along with three others dressed up as pirates and were given a radio, a C7, and a flare gun. Because the task group didn’t know what to expect, there was a good chance it would pass us by – hence, the flare gun.

Our job was to wait for a warship to see us, pretend like we were passed out from lack of food and water, and basically watch for any holes in their security. We sat out in a zodiac for about an hour, waiting for the task group to come upon us. We watched them come up, steam past, and then keep going. When the ships were on the horizon I decided it was high time we fired the flare. There was no initial response, and it was at this point I realized we should’ve brought more than just one flare.

Eventually the Dutch ship, Evertsen, came back and began circling us. It took them a little while to launch a boat, but when they did they reacted exactly as they should’ve. They gave us food, water, and fuel. They asked us about our C7, which was laying haphazardly in the boat. We told them it was for self-defence against pirates. We were traveling from Madagascar to Somalia. When asked our nationality I took a minute to think and then responded with “Madagascarian”. They then inquired which city we came from, to which I replied “Cleveland”.

They searched the boat, and then sent us on our way. If they hadn’t searched the boat I was to give them an envelope addressed to their CO that said “BOOM” inside. Fortunately for them they were very cautious.

A few days before that, the fleet conducted a drag race that ran 3.33 Nm. The tiny Danish ship, Olfert Fischer, leapt out in front of the pack and led for the first mile or so, with Toronto in second, Normandy in third, and the Evertsen dead last. The tanker, Spessart, was positioned at the finish line. Toronto broke into the lead about a third of the way into the race and led the way until the Normandy’s 4 GTs kicked in. After that we were toast.

We arrived in the tropical paradise that is the Seychelles on the morning of the 14th. Toronto held a beautiful cocktail party that night, where Lt(N) Noseworthy entertained everyone from the stewards to the President of the island country with his rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”. The following day I was on duty, and thankfully, things were relatively quiet. On the third day in port, we were forced to move out to anchor by the port authority to give room for a container ship. Once that was finished, most of the crew went ashore to conduct the Terry Fox run. There were 118 participants from throughout the fleet and, all told, we raised around $5972 CDN multi-coloured bucks. Immediately after the run, the group came back and was greeted with 6 large tubs of the infamous moosemilk. What better way to cap off a good 10k run than with a nice cold glass of moosemilk?

I spent the rest of my time in the Seychelles on a beach in front of a hotel. I was able to rent a sailboat and go out for a short spin while some of the other guys rented jet skis. A lot of the crew went scuba diving and apparently some of them actually got to swim with a whale shark, among the thousands of other types of fish in the area. A few guys chartered a boat to go deep-sea fishing and brought back a 7 foot sailfish!

We weighed anchor on the 18th and headed out for the coast of Somalia. Personally, I could’ve gone for a few more days on the beach, but I don’t get paid this much just to lie in the sun.

Toronto went out under water restrictions, because we couldn’t run the RODs (Reverse Osmosis Desalination plant that makes fresh water) whilst in harbour at anchor. It’s alright, showering is overrated anyways. For the next 3 weeks Mike and I will continue to chug away at our packages while we stand 1 in 2 as “on-call” SEOSS operators.

Again, I hope there isn’t too much to write home about from this extremely dangerous area of the world.

HMCS Toronto from HNLMS Evertsen

As Rough As It May Seem,It's Still Steady As You Go...

Picture from Day One of exercise AMAZOLO includes SAS ISANDWLANA, NRP ALVARESCABRAL AND USS NORMANDY again with HMCS TORONTO.

Embarked onboard all the NATO vessels (except FGS SPESSART and HDMS OLFERT FISCHER) are representatives from both the South African and international media. I am currently embarked on the HNLMS EVERTSEN, along with numerous other media members.

The ships met with the South African taskforce (SAS AMATOLA, SAS ISANDLWANA and SAS ´MANTHATISI) at a position west of Cape Point around 13h00. For the remainder of the afternoon they were involved in a photo exercise where the ships had to do various fleetwork manoeuvres, which resulted in them sailing quite close to each other.

Upon completion of the photo exercise the ships detached in a classical starburst formation (imagine all 9 ships sailing very close to each in the same direction and then ´bursting´ from there into different directions).

After that there was an evolution where SAS MANTHATISI sailed past the ships that were all sailing behind each other. During this sail past the submarine dived and showed her various masts to assist the bridge crews in identifying the various configurations. The rest of the evening will be spent in active submarine exercises where the surface ships are to try and detect the submarine. We trust that the crew of SAS MANTHATISI will pose a challenge to the other ships whilst they try to detect her.

The crew and captain of HNLMS EVERTSEN are very accommodating and friendly. The ship itself is quite impressive at 144 m in length and a displacement of 6500 tons. She is an air defence and command frigate of the ZEVEN PROVINCIEN CLASS. She has a crew of only 165 and boasts some of the most advanced air defence sensors and weapons in the world. The ship itself is very spacious, mainly due to the fact that she is designed for, but not used as, a command vessel. This means that there are many compartments designed for the use of command staff members that can be used for something else. She was commissioned in 2005, which means that she is quite modern.

Some interesting features onboard include a dedicated bakery that bakes fresh bread and rolls daily, an internet café with 3 computers permanently connected to the internet, a games room with Playstation and Xbox consoles and a satellite phone where sailors can phone home for 10 minutes at a time.

The Royal Dutch Navy is a large Navy with more than 16 500 members and more than 30 vessels. The Officer Commanding HNLMS EVERTSEN, Cdr. Rob Kramer, indicated that the Royal Dutch Navy is busy transforming from a blue water navy with a large frigate fleet to a brown water navy focusing on expeditionary operations. To this extent her frigate fleet of nearly 20 vessels has been reduced to less that 8.

Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day with more activities between the ships, a helicopter transfer to SAS AMATOLA, boarding exercises and more. The media will fly off SAS AMATOLA Tuesday evening, while the Exercises will continue until Friday.

A further update will follow.

One of Two offical photos of Exercise

HMCS Toronto (Rear Right Flank)

Day 2 of Exercise AMAZOLO (04 Sep 07) was the day on which the South African Navy (SAN) measured itself against the best in the world – and won!

The SAN submarine, SAS ‘MANTHATISI managed to penetrate an anti-submarine screen of 7 ships (which included the VALOUR CLASS frigates SAS AMATOLA and SAS ISANDLWANA) undetected and “sank” the high value target that the screen was trying to protect. After this she turned on the protecting screen and managed to “sink” the balance of the remaining surface ships.

The South African media, and indeed the public at large, are celebrating the fact that the SA Navy has proven to be equal – and in some instances superior – to some of the best Navy vessels afloat. The new vessels acquired by the South African government are proving their worth and the SA Navy are using them to reaffirm its ability to effectively protect South Africa’s maritime interests off the Cape of Storms.

The significance of this for the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), and the SAN in particular is profound. The force-multiplying effect of a submarine was clearly demonstrated during this exercise. This proves that the area off Cape Point is an ideal submarine hunting area – and our submarines crews are good hunters indeed!

In addition to the successes achieved by the submarine, there were also other serials where both the frigates and the WARRIOR CLASS Strike Craft, SAS GALESHEWE performed very well indeed. Both frigates participated in a number of complex anti-surface evolutions. There were also a simulated attack by the SAS GALESHEWE, boarding exercises between various ships (SAS AMATOLA was “boarded” by marines from NRP ALVARES CABRAL) and helicopter exercises.

The Minister of Defence, Mr M. Lekota, flew to SAS AMATOLA and hosted a media conference for the various media members embedded on the NATO ships. During the media conference he reaffirmed that the SA Navy is a force to reckoned with. Speaking about the feats of SAS ‘MANTHATISI, Mr Lekota said: “To be able to frustrate detection by NATO nations is no mean achievement, it speaks of the excellence of the equipment we acquired for this purpose”.

The regard that the crews of the NATO vessels have for the SAN has also increased tremendously during the past few days. The successes achieved by the SAN clearly demonstrates the high level of training and the proficiency of our crews the properly handle the advanced ships and weapon systems that we can boast with in the SAN.

The rest of today (05 Sep 07) will comprise of more exercise serials such as gunnery exercises where the ships will shoot at a simulated air and surface target, as well as other fleet work evolutions.

Search for the Bonhomme Richard

Search for the Bonhomme Richard
(the second attempt-June 1979)

Undaunted or either crazy, I returned again to search for Jones' ship in June of 1979. This time, profiting from the previous year's gullibility, I worked with Eric Berryman who had a score of connections and put together a terrific team of people.

Colonel Walter Schob and Wayne Gronquist handled the day-to-day logistics. Peter Throckmorton was on hand as our in-house marine archaeology expert. Bill Shea from Brandeis University operated the magnetometer. All the above became good friends and trustees of NUMA.

Manny and Margaret Thompson of Bridlington gave enormously of their time and support. Elaine Friedman stood in as chef. Ed LaCoursiere from Klein & Associates ably watched over the side scan sonar while Willie Williams ran the mini-ranger navigation unit.

The big prize, though, was Jimmy Flett our Scot skipper. A man couldn't ask for a finer friend. Along with Jimmy came the Arvor II, a bonny boat built in Buckie, Scotland.

Karen Getsla-Auman was our resident psychic. The journalists who accompanied the expedition were Timothy Foote, Jan Golab and Jean Jordan, all warm, fascinating people.

The research on the Richard came from Mr. Norman Rubin and Mr. Peter Reavely, leading experts on the battle and the ship. Rubin projected the rate of sinking and estimated the condition of the ship after two hundred years on the sea bottom. Reavely supplied valuable historic data gathered in England and spent a few days with us during the expedition.

Armed with proper research and a solid crew, we conducted a far more efficient operation than the previous year. This was also the first year we carried the NUMA Eureka flag. We also flew the Explorers Club flag.

The big problem we faced on the hunt was that the Richard did not sink immediately after the battle that ended at approximately 11:00 P.M., Thursday evening, on the 23rd of September, 1779. She went down 36 hours later around 11:00 A.M., on Saturday, September 25th.

Jones, with all his writings on the battle never suggested a direction nor a vague location of the sinking. Descriptions by him and two crew members merely described how she slipped under the waves with no hint of an approximate distance from shore.

It was supposed Jones' small fleet along with his prizes, the British Countess of Scarborough and the battered Serapis, whose mainmast and mizzen were shot away, drifted for a day and half while the crews made repairs and the Americans desperately tried to save the Richard. This, of course, was a logical assumption.

Sometime in the nineteen fifties a fisherman pulled up the remains of a French musket thought to have been used by a French marine on board the Richard. This occurred six miles from shore. He also stated a wreck was in the general area. Reavely was convinced this had to be our lost ship.

Our best data, which gave us an excellent insight on the drift of the Richard was a matching drift of the Arvor II. Knowing the weather and exact changes in the tide during September of 1779, courtesy of Admiralty records, the Arvor II began drifting from the estimated battle area on comparable tides for thirty-six hours. Incredibly, weather and wind condition very nearly matched those Jones encountered. The experiment showed that the ships should have wound up at least thirteen miles northeast of Flamborough Head at the end of thirty-six hours.

We then laid our search grid accordingly, which is depicted along with the drift pattern in the accompanying diagram.

Almost 116 square miles were covered. Nearly sixteen ships were discovered, but most all were post nineteen hundred wrecks. Karen, our psychic, put us on a target which did not prove to be the Richard, but did turn out to be a sunken Russian spy trawler that had, unknown to our intelligence services, gone down in a storm. Our anchor brought up part of her rigging which was stamped with Cyrillic markings. We turned over the position to the Royal Navy, who clamped a classified lid on it. We, of course, never heard another word.

When the search was nearly over, Peter Reavely found evidence in the Hull city archives that turned my thinking to a new search area.

Report from Bridlington, September 24, 1779

'At 9 A.M. the French (Jones) ships were seen from Flamborough Head at the ESE with the Serapis and another ship supposed the Countess of Scarborough. The Serapis has lost her mainmast, bowspirit end and mizzen topmast and otherwise shattered. At 10:00 A.M. the fleet was laying ESE from the Head distance 2 leagues.'

The 10:00 A.M. sighting is the only firm position given after the battle. The tidal flow bears it out. A British league was about three miles.

York Chronicle, September 24th, 1779

'All Friday they were seen off Scarborough at a great distance repairing their damages, which were thought to be very considerable, and at SE by S with our two ships in tow.'

The reference to our "ships in tow" is important.

Bridlington Saturday Morning, September 25th, 1779

'...the ships were seen hovering off Flamborough Head all yesterday. Towards evening seemed to bear away to sea. They were thought to steer about ESE but as their distance was much increased could not be exactly ascertained. It is generally thought the American ships are withdrawing to the Texel...9'oclock, an express just got in from Flamborough. The fleet collectively has disappeared. As the wind has been but to the SSE the ships tis probable, they steered about ENE.'

Jones did indeed head for the Texel despite the SSE winds. This report says the fleet bore away to sea and their distance was much increased just before sunset.

Letter Published in London by an Observer

'He (Jones) was seen most of Friday with his fleet and the two ships taken, but in the evening stood off to sea, but as the Serapis and his own vessel were so much crippled, the other ships would be obliged to take them in tow.'

Again, 'stood off to sea Friday evening, and ships under tow.'

There is much more information, some it conflicting, that can be gained from my original files. At this writing Peter Reavely and I do not agree. He believes the wreck lies only six miles from Filey Bay. I am convinced she's farther out.

My theory is that Jones did not drift around until the Richard sank. I believe that around 10:00 on Friday morning after the battle, he took the ships in tow and tried to get the hell out of there before he was attacked by a larger and undamaged British fleet. This seems the logical thing to do.

If he was six miles ESE of the Head by 10 o'clock, he could easily have sailed another six or more miles by 7 o'clock in the evening, making a total of twelve miles from the Head.

(Note: We must assume land sightings were guessed in statute miles while sailing distances were measured in knots.)

Now, if Jones sailed at only one knot for the next fifteen hours, he could have been as at least twenty-five miles from shore at the time of the sinking. We know from the log of the Serapis in an entry immediately after the Richard's sinking that the fleet was on an ESE heading, speed about one and a half knots.

Cussler's Conclusion

The debris and ballast mound of the Bonhomme Richard lie somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five miles out to sea from Flamborough Head. I've marked the search area in a diagram. Unfortunately, if I'm right, we're looking at a search grid of nearly 500 square miles since I can't say with any degree of accuracy whether Jones' ships were north or south of the head when the Richard sank. He should have been to the south of the head, but the winds might have kept him to the north. He was forced to beat and tack against unfriendly winds before arriving at the Texel in Holland. At least Norman Rubin agrees. He has always felt the Richard rests far off shore.

This reasoning could also be one of the reasons she hasn't been dragged up by a fisherman's net. The main fishing beds are closer in shore. I do have a piece of oak beam a fishing boat caught up in with her nets at thirty-two miles out, slightly north of the Head. But I've been unsuccessful at having the wood rings dated by experts with any accuracy.

Unless there is an expedition that can run twenty-four hours a day off and on for at least six weeks with decent weather, the only hope of the famous old ship being discovered is by a fisherman. And then, there is the danger of a Danish fish meal trawler dragging its monstrous scoop over the ballast mound, spreading and mashing it into the bottom sand.

I have advertised a reward of $20,000 to any fisherman who can lay NUMA on the wreck, but with little success. Most fishermen, if they dredge up any debris from wrecks, are not interested and simply look upon any find as a nuisance

We gave it a good shot in '79. Everyone worked hard, and it showed at the end. I made a short, two day stab at finding the Richard again during our North Sea Expedition of '84, using plots by two respected psychics. But we came up dry.

I would die a happy man if the Bonhomme Richard and the ship described in the next section were found by NUMA while I still breathe. But, the odds are long against me. My only small satisfaction is that we cleared the fog a bit for the next team to launch another search attempt.

Bonhomme Richard was not found, then in July 1986 another attempt began, with twenty sea cadets helping to locate the wreck. As the ship had drifted for 36 hours before sinking, locating its wreck would be difficult even with electronic search equipment.

One problem was that another wreck was thought to lie on top of Bonhomme Richard, this being a 4000 ton merchantman which had sunk in 1918. Again, it was not found.
This year an Anglo-American team, using 35 years of research material plus the latest computer technology have conducted yet another search some 15 nautical miles off Flamborough Head.

Though they expressed confidence in locating the Bonhomme Richard. To date nothing has been found and they will need hundreds of thousands of pounds if they are to return next year to continue the search. If they do eventually succeed then another problem will arise. The ship was loaned to the Americans by the French, but it was never paid for after it was lost. So who owns it now?

Quest for the Bonhomme Richard

The US Navy is to launch a major expedition off the coast of East Yorkshire next year to locate the wreck of one of its very first warships.


The Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, sank somewhere off Flamborough head after winning a sea battle against the British warship, the Seraphis, in 1779.

For decades historians have argued over the exact location of the wreck. But now, the US Navy has joined forces with scientists and other experts, to pinpoint the precise position of the wreck on the seabed.
"We know it's somewhere off the Flamborough Head area but the exact spot is yet to be determined."

Dr. Bob Nieland, US Navy archaeologist

Dr. Bob Nieland is the US Navy's leading archaeologist, he explained why they are so keen to find the old warship. "John Paul Jones, the captain of Bonhomme Richard, used to be referred to as the father of the US Navy.

"He was certainly one of the most prominent figures in the US Navy's history and his body lies in the crypt at the Naval Academy. So this is probably the most important wreck to the US Navy."

Navy officials and scientists will arrive in Bridlington in June 2006 and will spend six weeks scanning the seabed for signs of the Bonhomme Richard.

"We know it's somewhere off the Flamborough Head area but the exact spot is yet to be determined." Said Dr. Bob Nieland.

"The technology for surveying shipwrecks and finding them is advancing very rapidly. We hear of new shipwrecks being found almost weekly.
Breaking waves
The US Navy are confident in pinpointing the wreck

"Basically, we will use state of the art technology, marine magnetometer, new types of sonar beams and survey the most promising area with the highest probability.

"The first phase would be to survey an area and analyse the information and compare it to any wrecks that we find. An 18th century shipwreck, magnetically and with the sonar imagery, should look a lot different from a WW2 sunken vessel." added the doctor.

If the wreck is found, items could be recovered from it and taken to the US Naval academy in Maryland.

Retired US Navy captain Jack Ringelberg(photo right), who will lead the expedition, said he is confident that they will find the wreck ending years of speculation over where it actually lies.

"We've probably put the best team together in this area and as far as their ability is concerned, I'm very confident and optimistic that they will find something."

The Ocean Technology Foundation

International sea exercise targets security

To make the seas safer, 11 countries participated in a technology-driven exercise coordinated from Key West to test joint response to terrorism, drug smuggling and piracy.

KEY WEST -- C. Clark Miami Herald
In 2002, a French oil tanker was blown up by terrorists in the waters off Yemen, killing a crew member and sending 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Sanaa, October 6: A boat packed with explosives rammed and badly holed a French supertanker off Yemen on Sunday, a week before the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US warship Cole, the French embassy said.

Twelve of the 25 crew had been "recovered" and hospitalised with injuries, but the others remained unaccounted for. Sixteen of the crew were Bulgarian.

"The oil tanker was rammed by a small boat stuffed with explosives," as it came by an off-shore terminal in the Arabian Sea, vice consul Marcel Goncalves said.

"It seems to be an attack in the same style as the US Cole," he said of the destroyer blown up by suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Aden harbour almost exactly two years ago on October, 12, 2000.

The only reason a similar incident hasn't happened in U.S. coastal waters is ''luck,'' U.S. Navy Reserve Capt. Andy Bjork says.

Bjork was in Key West recently to lead an 11-country maritime exercise whose mission is to make the world's seas and ports safer through international cooperation.

''We need to be proactive to prevent a 9/11 on our seas,'' Bjork said.

A big step toward that: Compiling a global picture of the location of all commercial vessels at any instant, which is already being done with the world's aircraft.

''Whatever could happen on an airline could happen in commercial shipping,'' Bjork said. ``A biological weapon tucked away on a container ship or the disruption of the shipping lanes or a strategic port could be devastating.''

But getting that big picture is much more difficult for ships. Radar can track aircraft for hundreds of miles, but radar can only follow ships for 20 to 30 miles because of waves and the Earth's curvature.

Bjork said a lot of progress was made during the 12-day annual exercise called TransOceanic XXII, which rotates among the participating countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela and the United States.

Last week, officials from the participating countries ended a weeklong analysis of the exercise in Norfolk, Va., by voting Mexico as its 11th full-time member. Mexico was an observer this year.

FIRST STEP

''This is the first of many steps we are taking to put in place a maritime awareness program,'' Mexico Navy Capt. Jorge Ballado said in an e-mail. ``We are excited to join.''

During the Key West-coordinated exercise, more than 200 military personnel tested their joint response to scenarios of terrorist attacks, drug smuggling and piracy.

''It's not like we had SEAL teams in a couple of small boats run up a beach with M16s,'' Bjork said. The exercise's weapons: computers, communication systems and cooperation.

''This is the most exciting part,'' Bjork said as he pointed to a laptop with a screen that displayed a map of the east coast of the Americas and a slew of symbols representing real-time positions of commercial and military vessels.

''We've never had such a complete picture of the maritime domain before,'' Bjork said. ``It may seem simple, but it's a huge, huge effort.''

Bjork said it took the terrorist attacks on 9/11 for the United States to understand the need for tougher airport and airspace security.

It took another couple of years for countries to see the same need for tougher port and ocean security nationally and internationally.

''Building proactive solutions for future threats is always tough to communicate,'' Bjork said.

The exercise was coordinated at the Joint Interagency Task Force at Key West's Truman Annex. ''Everything we are doing is absolutely unclassified. Sharing information is critical,'' Bjork said. ``Before, data wasn't shared. Either people didn't think it was important or for proprietary reasons.''

Jose Sepulveda, a captain in the Chilean navy, said: ``The cooperation is on the increase. And the only barrier so far is time enough to get together and share experiences, establish points of contacts and maintain a permanent flow of information.''

The emphasis is on tracking the tens of thousands of commercial ships: container freighters, liquid gas tankers, fishing vessels and cruise ships. Bjork said it would be nearly impossible, with current technology, to track all recreational vessels.

U.S. Navy Reserve Cmdr. Joaquin Martinez, a Miami native and director of operations for the TransOceanic exercise, said much of the data on commercial ships' locations is garnered from public information.

''Lloyd's List has an incredible database, where everything insured is tracked,'' Martinez said. ``Evergreen Shipping Line has a very active system.''

COMMON SYSTEM

Bjork said no country's navy can keep track of the world's ships alone. But each country can provide its piece of the puzzle, now being put together using a common computer system.

''We have a number of limited resources that we can apply to the bad guys,'' Martinez said. ``But now we might be able to narrow down the picture and say we know 20 percent where the bad guys could be. We don't have to waste our resources on the 80 percent of vessels we know are fine.''

The communication among countries was improved this year with the use of TrIM, a computer-based instant-message system that translates in English, Portuguese or Spanish.

''It doesn't handle slang very well,'' Martinez said. ``But otherwise it's a very effective communication tool. In the past we had a very structured, formal messaging system that required a lot of manual managing of paper stuff. This allows more real-time communications, like what you would expect in a business environment, walking down the street with a Blackberry.''

Goodwill from RMN during OSTEX

The Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) has expanded the scope of its Operational Sea Training Exercise East (Ostex) to also include providing humanitarian service to residents on isolated islands in Sabah.
During the five-day exercise which ended today, the RMN set up a one-day medical camp at Pulau Libaran which received overwhelming response from the residents.

RMN Chief for Region 2 Admiral Datuk Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin said the health camp offered health checks and dental treatment for local residents.

“We had anticipated only 150 people, but the response was overwhelming as by the end of the day, about 500 people, including from neighbouring islands, came for the service,” he told reporters after closing the exercise here today.

The camp was manned by two doctors and 15 medical assistants from the Medical and Dental Corps of the Malaysian Armed Forces (ATM).
Ahmad Kamarulzaman said such activities, besides helping to build the people’s confidence in the ATM, also helped to ease the burden of the local residents in having to go for health checks.

In view of the overwhelming response, he said RMN would include the medical camp in its future exercise.

Ostex East was conducted in the South China Sea and the Sulu Sea. A total of 300 RMN personnel were involved in the exercise which also involved the use of four vessels, two combat boats and a Super Lynx helicopter.

USS Radford Test Platform For Zumwalt Class

Later career and collision