PuckChaser said:
For all those saying: "Why is this newsworthy?" Because the CAF is held to a higher standard than joe-blow civilian, and like it or not the RCN is now basically doing the bulk of our international operations. You can't say, "Look at all these drug busts we're doing, look at us!" and not expect the media to want to report misconduct either.
Actually, I believe it is newsworthy because the admiral chose to use it to launch his "bold" initiative on drinking with it.
An internal communiqué hinting at this RCN wide review of alcohol policies that somehow finds its way into the press !!! Come on.
While recalling ships from Ops/deployments/foreign harbour visits is a rare thing, it is not unprecedented. However, you usually do it by sending the ship a classified recall message and dealing discretely, at least until the investigating of the circumstances is done and the facts ascertained, with whatever issue caused the recall when the ship is back. A good captain coming home under those circumstances will sometimes come back into harbour at night. Since MSM don't usually monitor the to-ing and fro-ing of naval vessels, that works.
As for the present case, i'll say this (personal opinion here): Sailors have gotten in trouble in foreign harbour before, and will find ways to do so in the future - and, yes, drinking will be involved at times.
This said, our crew are a subset of Canadian society, so crimes will happen from time to time, but we all know that all proportions kept the CF has a much lower rate of crimes than the civilian population. Dealing with the "shoplifting" event: Crimes in foreign ports have happened before and we have procedures for dealing with this, especially with the Americans, that satisfy both parties. It is a simple disciplinary matter, not a reason to to recall a ship.
Similarly, we have had harassment problems before and we have procedures in place. Again not a reason in itself to recall a ship.
Finally , the drinking incident (which I gather was onboard): Difficult to say without particulars, so I won't comment except to say that again, by itself it might not justify a recall.
So why recall then?
I suggest that the main reason is that those three events occurred out of the same small crew of an MCDV. It is then important for command to determine if this is just a statistical "blip" - a coincidence, or if there is an underlying problem, then likely to be found in the ship's command team. The admiral may have already lost trust in that team.
BTW, I have sailed with the French and Belgian navies, where the messes have wine and beer "on tap" for free. Their seaman drink that instead of water or milk or juices with their meal and casually when off watch. With the Brits, I found their way of handling drinking on ships to be close to ours. Finally, anyone who has sailed with the US Navy knows that sailors find a way to get alcohol onboard and drink themselves stupid even with the consequences of such act, and that they go a lot crazier with their drinking/disciplinary problems ashore. It's not availability of alcohol onboard that is the problem, but the systems in place to prevent or control abuses (and I don't mean rationing). I'm with SKT here: I don't drink at sea but don't mind a few stiff ones in the mess when back in harbour. Funny enough, my experience is that the very large majority of sailors are very reasonable in their drinking at sea.
