CCGS Earl Grey

CCGS Earl Grey is a Medium-endurance Multi-tasked Vessel in the Canadian Coast Guard. She serves a variety of roles, including light ice-breaking and buoy tending, as well as being strengthened for navigation in ice to perform tasking along the shores off Prince Edward Island. Eary Grey was built in 1986 in nearby Pictou, Nova Scotia.

Like her sister ship, the CCGS Samuel Risley, she carries a large and powerful crane on her long low afterdeck for manipulating buoys.

Career
Since her commissioning in 1986, CCGS Earl Grey has served a number of roles in CCG's Maritime Region, most notably in fall 1998 while assisting in the recovery of wreckage from the crash of Swissair Flight 111.

On March 21, 2001 CCGS Earl Grey, CCGC Sambro, CFAV Firebird, HMCS Moncton (MM 708), HMCS Goose Bay (MM 707), CCGS Sir William Alexander and the commercial ocean going salvage tug Ryan Leet all tried to render assistance to the container ship Kitano which had caught fire off Chebucto Head.

In the 2009 budget for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Canadian Coast Guard, requested funds to refit the Earl Grey and some of CCG's other large vessels.

Predecessor


In 1909 the Government of Canada ordered an icebreaking passenger steamship for service in the Northumberland Strait to connect the ports of Charlottetown and Georgetown on Prince Edward Island with the mainland port of Pictou. She was commissioned in 1910 by then Governor General, Albert Grey as the CGS Earl Grey (Canadian Government Ship Earl Grey). She was sold in 1914 to Imperial Russia, an ally during World War I. The ship, christened Canada and later Fyodor Litke, operated in the Arctic until 1958.