“Together, we are building a beautiful ship”: construction of CSS on track

The construction of the sturdy new supply vessel Den Helder for the Royal Netherlands Navy reached a new milestone on Wednesday 2 June with the keel laying at the Damen yard in Galati. The traditional act of placing a lucky coin – this one from 1822 – on the keel plate of the ship was carried out jointly by the Director of the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) Vice Admiral Arie Jan de Waard, and the Commander Royal Netherlands Navy Vice Admiral Rob Kramer. In the meantime, construction of the sections (cubes made from gigantic sheets of steel) is fully underway in Galati. Construction of the first section already started in December, and the section production process will continue until the second half of 2022.

The project reaches a new milestone in July, says CSS Project Director Arjan Risseeuw. This is when the first section will be preserved; a process that takes place in an enormous painting hall at the yard. The section will receive several layers of paint, giving the green light to start the process to preserve all the sections. “That will continue throughout the remainder of the hull construction process,” says Arjan. The construction of the 180-metre long and 26-metre wide Combat Support Ship is well on schedule, says the Project Director.

“Although the pressure is high on our engineers from Damen Naval and MEGA (Marine Engineering Galati, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Damen Naval) who provide the construction drawings for the sections, we have the entire process under control. If we continue on this track, the ship will be delivered on time.” After the section construction is complete, the ship will be assembled from six impressive modules, which are being built in parallel at various locations at Damen Shipyards Galati.

The final assembly of the new supply ship is a thoroughly thought-out process in which nothing is left to chance. For example, module 1 (the rear of the ship) will be built on blocks in a dry part of a dock. Modules 2 and 3 will, after being moved sideways off the slipway, then be sailed as one unit to the dock and attached to module 1. Module 4 (the front of the CSS) will then be added, followed by the installation of module 5: the front part of the ship’s superstructure, which includes the bridge.

Finally, around October next year, after installing the propulsion train (propeller shaft/shaft support brackets and rudders), the ship will be floated and completed in the deeper ‘wet’ part of the dock. This will involve the installation of the imposing superstructure with the mast (module 6). After that, the Den Helder will leave the dock to be outfitted further at the finishing quay of the Romanian yard, where all systems will be put into operation. Arjan is proud of what has been achieved so far. “All the teams involved have worked well together,” he states.

“The project is going according to plan and together we are building a beautiful ship. It is very positive that so many Dutch companies from the supply sector are making an important contribution to a project like this. This benefits the triangle of the Ministry of Defence, the commercial sector and knowledge institutes.” January 2024 will see the passing of another milestone, when the Den Helder heads down the Danube to the Black Sea for an extensive trial run. After those sea trials, the ship will return to Galati one more time to resolve any remaining points that may have arisen during the sea trials.

Once that process has been completed, the CSS will eventually steam from Galati to its future homeport of Den Helder in the Netherlands, with an expected arrival date of 19 June 2024. That same month, the ship will be handed over to the customer, DMO, who, together with the Naval Maintenance and Sustainment Agency (DMI) will install the combat management system and the weapons on board before carrying out further sea trials. “Installing the weapons on the CSS is done with the assistance of Damen Naval, which helps with integrating those systems with the platform,” says Arjan.

When DMO officially hands over the Combat Support Ship to the Royal Netherlands Navy in June 2025, its fleet will be enriched by a new vessel and her 75 crewmembers, which, in addition to space for fuel and ammunition to supply other ships, also has room for a few helicopters and twenty containers. Besides the basic crew of 75, the ship will be able to take an extra 85 people on board.