PROJECT HABBAKUK

In September 1942, Mr Geoffrey Pike, scientific advisor to Lord Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, Great Britain, suggested that ships could be made from ice. The Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, saw this as a way to protect shipping routes to North America with a fleet of gigantic unsinkable aircraft carriers.

In Canada, the National Research Council undertook cold weather tests under stringent wartime secrecy. The principal activity carried out here at Patricia Lake was the construction of a 1 to 50 scale model to obtain experience of building large ice structures, and information on how these could be insulated and cooled to prevent melting.

The model was anchored near the south west shore of Patricia Lake. Observations of its performance and measurements of the amount of cooling required to keep it from melting were made through the summer of 1943. By the fall, the National Research Council had shown that it was technically possible to build ice ships, but the enormous cost for material and labour made it impractical. Refrigeration equipment was removed from the model. The ice soon melted and the heavily insulated wooden frame sank to the lake bottom.