Canada’s Seaspan Shipyards cuts steel for heavy polar icebreaker

Photo: Seaspan Shipyards

Canada’s Seaspan Shipyards in North Vancouver, B.C., yesterday cut steel on the new heavy polar icebreaker it is building for the Canadian Coast Guard, marking the start of construction on one of the most advanced conventional polar icebreakers ever to be built.

Measuring 158 meters long and 28 meters wide, Seaspan’s polar icebreaker will be incredibly complex, designed to operate self-sufficiently in the high-Arctic year-round.

It will play a critical role in enabling the Canadian Coast Guard to transit and operate on more than 162,000 kilometers of Arctic coastline.

The capabilities of this Polar Class 2 icebreaker will help sustain a 12-month presence in Canada’s North in support of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, high-Arctic science (including climate change research), Indigenous Peoples and other northern communities, and the ability to respond to major maritime emergencies including search and rescue. It will be able to accommodate up to 100 personnel, and, as one of the only Polar Class 2 vessels in the world, will be able to operate farther north, in more difficult ice conditions and for longer periods than any icebreaker in Canada to date.

The ship will be the seventh vessel designed and built by Seaspan under the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS). It will also be the fifth Polar Class vessel to be built for the CCG, and one of up to 21 icebreaking vessels overall that Seaspan is constructing.

In January 2024, Seaspan completed construction of a polar Prototype Block to ensure preparedness to build this highly-advanced vessel, which requires steel that is twice as thick in some areas, while also being less malleable, as the steel Seaspan has used for the other ships built under the National Shipbuilding Strategy.

“Today’s milestone caps off an incredibly busy 10-month period for Seaspan, involving two first-of-class ship launches and the start of construction on this new world-class polar icebreaker, ” said Seaspan Shipyards CEO, John McCarthy. “The National Shipbuilding Strategy is showing that a made-in-Canada approach is not only possible, it is imperative to Canada’s security and sovereignty. We must continue to design and build ships here at home, to ensure that the experience, skills, and knowledge built through the NSS will be sustained. Seaspan looks forward to delivering this new polar icebreaker to the Canadian Coast Guard, and to building more Polar Class vessels for Canada and its allies.’

QUICK FACTS

The Polar Icebreaker will be 158 metres long and 28 metres wide, with a design displacement of 26,036 tonnnes

Key design fetures

• IACS Polar Class 2 (PC2) Heavy Icebreaker
• More than 40 MW of installed power
• Ice-classed azimuthing propulsion system
• Complex, multi-role mission capability
• Scientific laboratories
• Moon pool (to allow for safe deployment of equipment from within the ship)
• Helicopter flight deck andhangar
• Vehicle garage and future remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) capability

Seaspan has already gained significant experience designing and building Polar Class vessels including three offshore fisheries science vessels which are now in service with the Canadian Coast Guard; an offshore oceanographic science vessel that will be delivered to the CCG in the coming months; and up to sixteen multi- purpose icebreakers (also Polar Class) that are currently in construction