No suspects, few leads as sabotaged Canadian Coast Guard vessel remains unrepaired
Alexander Quon
2 hrs ago
They found it shortly before 8:00 a.m. AT on a chilly November day in Nova Scotia.
CCGS Corporal McLaren, a 42.8-metre-long patrol vessel, was listing to its starboard side. At least a third of the vessel — clad in the red and white colours of Canada's Coast Guard — lay partially submerged in the icy water of Sambro Harbour.
The workers at the Canadian Maritime Engineering dockyard in Sambro Head, N.S., were quick to inform members of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) that their vessel, meant to be undergoing a month-long refit, had slipped out of its cradle.
But as investigators, fisheries officials and senior analysts gathered at the scene, it did not take long to determine that the damage to the vessel was the result of sabotage.
"The cable break looks awfully clean," said one DFO analyst in an email to his colleagues a little more than three hours after the vessel was discovered.
Another analyst agreed, replying that the vessel looked like it was "cut free of [its] cradle during the night."
