Ghana Navy - History
The Ghana Navy took its roots from the Gold Coast Naval Volunteers Force, which was established by the colonial British administration in 1936 just before the 2nd World War. Their role was to provide seaward defence to carry out sea patrols and to keep the coastal waters free of mines. Ghana's navy provides coastal defense, fisheries protection, and security on Lake Volta. During World War II, the Gold Coast Volunteer Naval Force, which had been established in 1936, provided sea patrols and conducted mine-detection and neutralization operations along the coast.
Following Ghana’s attainment of independent nationhood on 6 March 1957 from the UK, a new volunteer force was raised in June, 1959 with headquarters at Takoradi in the Western Region of Ghana. The men were drawn from the existing Gold Coast Regiment of Infantry. They were under the command of British Royal Navy officers on secondment.
The Ghana Navy and the Ghana Air Forces were established in 1959 by an act of Parliament On 29 July 1959, the Ghana Navy was established by an Act of Parliament. The force had two divisions based at Takoradi and Accra respectively.
The Ghanaian government assigned a former Royal Navy officer the duties of chief of staff with the rank of commodore. The first Chief of the Naval Staff was Captain D. A. Foreman, a retired British Naval Officer. He was granted a Presidential Commission as a Ghana naval officer in the rank of Commodore. In September 1961 Nkrumah terminated the employment of British officers in the armed forces. In 1961 a Ghanaian army brigadier replaced the British commodore. The first Ghanaian to become Chief of the Naval Staff was Rear Admiral David Anumle Hansen, who was transferred from the Ghana army to head the navy.
The Armed Forces Act of 1962 provided the necessary parliamentary authority for its establishment. It provided for a Navy consisting of a Regular Force, a Reserve Force, and the possibility of a Volunteer Force.
The Ghanaian navy also benefited from British training. Each year from 1960 to 1966, four or five Ghanaian naval cadets attended the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. By early 1967, eighty-seven Ghanaian naval officers and 740 enlisted personnel were serving in British home bases or were receiving training with the Royal Navy. There also were twenty-seven officers and forty senior enlisted personnel from the Royal Navy in Ghanaian command and training positions.
In 1970 the navy's personnel totaled nearly 1,000 officers andmen. Africanization of the navy was nearly complete, and all vessels were commanded by Ghanaian officers. A few British officers served in advisory and training roles, but their numbers were gradually decreasing as Ghanaian naval personnel became proficient in the technical specialties required to operate the fleet's equipment.
The modest inventory of vessels included corvettes, a coastal minesweeper, seaward defense craft, coastal patrol boats, and a maintenance and repair craft. The coastal minesweeper, based at Tema, served in a dual role as flagship of the fleet and as a training ship. The corvettes were capable of surface, anti-aircraft, and antisubmarine action and could carry out coastal bombardment to a range of five miles inland. With the excep-tion of the patrol boats, which were obtained in the early 1960s from the Soviet Union, all vessels were of British origin. After 1966 the NLC canceled an order for a British frigate authorized earlier by Nkrumah.
Navy headquarters is located at Accra's Burma Camp, and naval operations were conducted from small bases at Takoradi and Tema. A third naval base was being constructed at Sekondi.
The navy's primary task was the training of its personnel both ashore and afloat. Its operational mission was concerned with patrolling the Republic's coastal regions in an effort to control smuggling activities and to prevent other violations of the maritime laws. Patrols were conducted to prevent unauthorized fishing in territorial waters by foreign fishing fleets. In 1966 the navy was instrumental in the arrest and detention of the Soviet crews operating two fishing trawlers within Ghanaian territorial waters.
The navy regularly participated with the air force in joint air-sea search and rescue operations. These operations also provided valuable training experience as officers and men learned to handle their ships in complicated operational situations. In the late 1960s the navy began participating in the government's program of surveying and charting the waters of Lake Volta for possible future development of the inland waterway's transportation. potential.
In 1994 the navy was organized into an eastern command, with headquarters at Tema, and a western command, with headquarters at Sekondi. The naval inventory included two Kromantse-class corvettes and two Achimote-class and two Dazata-class fast attack craft.
The Ghanaian navy has experienced low readiness rates because of spare parts shortages. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, budgetary constraints and a lack of serviceable equipment forced the navy to reduce its manpower from about 1,200 to approximately 850 personnel. Nevertheless, in 1990 Ghana's navy deployed some of its ships to support the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) mission in Liberia.
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