The Sea Is at Our Gates The History of The Canadian Navy PDF

THE HISTORY OF THE
CANADIAN NAVY
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$39.95
THE SEA IS mi
AT OUR GATES
The History of the Canadian Navy
Commander Tony German
With a Forevv ord by
Vice Admiral Harry DeWolf
The Sea Is At Our Gates recounts, for the
first time, the story of Canada's navy, gale-
driven and becalmed, from its colonial roots
through the twentieth-century wars to the
close of the Cold War era in 1990. With '3
perspectives from the messdecks, quarter-
decks, and high command, this is a rousing
A
story of Canadian ships and those who have
sailed and fought in them on the oceans of gtlOT
the world. More broadly, the book examines
the pivotal role of the sea and the navy in Ad*
Ser^
Canada's history.
In vivid style. Commander Tony German
chronicles many key elements that have not
been widely known: ov&
• Sir John A. Macdonald's move toward a
Canadian navy, cut off by his death in 1891;
• the ragtag force of 100 little ships pulled
together in 1917 and 1918 for the convoys
that held U-boat sinkings in Canadian ot
waters to a fraction of those off the U.S.
coast;
otA®'® ,’rtfea.c\i9' ei:*®
• our unpreparedness in 1939 with near-
suicidal stretching of slim resources,
inadequacy in Ottawa, but high courage
out at sea;
• Royal Canadian Navy escorts and riA. n■ ’ cst'3^^ AP
expertise plugging leaks as the U.S. Navy -.-.a

dallied fatally over convoying in 1942; te, 1! .Yi.e
• the highly sophisticated but short-lived tcs Ac®
■oiec.'
industrial base developed by the navy in
post-war Canada; O'A
• w'ar-ready support for the U.S. during the
Cuban missile crisis, without the knowl-
edge of a timid Prime Minister Diefenbaker;
• consummate Canadian professionalism
within NATO as government policy carved
naval resources to the bone.
The history of Canada's navy is one of
courage and sacrifice at sea. As well, it is the
story of a proud force scuttled time after time
by its political masters.
In a volatile world, ever more dependent
on seaborne trade and vulnerable to terror-
ism, to powerful weapons in the hands of
unstable regimes, anc: to violation of the
environment, there is an urgent need for
strategic vision. The Sea Is At Our Gates
draws the solid historical perspective on
which such vision can be based and makes
an exciting contribution to Canada's
understanding of her navy and herself.
7.
7.
7.
THE SEA IS
AT OUR GATES
THE HISTORY OF THE
CANADIAN NAVY
COMMANDER TONY GERMAN
COWTY
LENHGX & ^ LiBRARV
Copyright © 1990 Tony German
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher -
or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Canadian
Reprography Collective - is an infringement of the copyright law.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
German, Tony, 1924-

The sea is at our gates
Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-7710-3269-2
1. Canada. Royal Canadian Navy - History.

2. Canada - History, Naval. I. Title.
FC231.G4 1990 359700971 C90-093284-8

F1028.5.G4 1990
Endpaper illustrations: Alan Daniel
Front endpaper:
The Naval Service Act received royal assent from Governor General Earl Grey on 4
May, 1910. On 21 October, HMCS Niobe steamed into Halifax with a skeleton crew.
Seventeen days later HMCS Rainbow arrived in Esquimalt and the young Dominion of
Canada had a navy of its own.
Back endpaper:
In the mid 1960’s the navy was at its peacetime peak of 20,000. HMCS Bonaventure,
with her Trackers and helicopters, the Restigouche and Mackenzie classes and the St.
Laurents, reconfigured to carry the Sea King helicopter, led the way with innovative
equipment and special expertise in anti-submarine warfare.
McClelland & Stewart Inc.

The Canadian Publishers
481 University Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
MSG 2E9
Printed and bound in Canada

CONTENTS
Dedication 6
Foreword 7
Prologue 9
1. The Tides of History 13
2. The Bare Beginnings 22
3. The Great War 33
4. Intermission 55
5. Building a Navy in War 71
6. The Battle of the Atlantic: The Tide Turns 98
7. Politics and War 142
8. Big Ships and Little Ships 156
9. The End of the U-Boat War 168
10. Beginnings and Endings 184
11. The Sickly Season 204
12. Korea 216
13. The New Navy 233
14. The Northern Gate 249
15. The Brink of War 260
16. Flying High 274
17. Integration and Unification 280
18. Clipped Wings 293
19. Change on Change 297
20. Troubled Times 310
21. The Eighties and Onward 316
Appendix A: Ministers and Service Heads, 1910-1989 327
Appendix B: RCN Ships Lost During World War Two 329
Appendix C: U-Boats Sunk by RCN Ships
in World War Two 331
Bibliography 333
Chapter Notes 339
Acknowledgements 347
Index 349
DEDICATION
''The wholesome sea is at her gates - her gates both east and west. ” These
words are carved in stone over the main door of our Parhament
Buildings, sound reminder for a country with the longest coasthne
of any in the world, born and nurtured from the sea and depending
for its way of Hfe today on seaborne trade. But most Canadians Hve
a thousand miles from salt water and know Httle of its works, and
so our history shows those words have all too often been ignored.
Yet those of us who had followed the lure of sea adventure have
loved our ships, forged bonds with shipmates, and felt the sea
shape our hves. To all who have sailed in Canada’s navy, I dedicate
this book.
6
FOREWORD
THE EIGHTY YEARS OF OUR NAVY’S LIFESPAN HAVE BEEN EXTRAORDI-

narily eventful ones in world history and decisive ones in the development of
our country. I was a schoolboy in HaHfax when HMCS Niobe arrived to mark
the beginning of a Canadian navy. Of the Great War I remember troop trains
and transports and departing convoys and the Naval College in the dockyard,
and I vividly recall the Halifax explosion.
At the end of the Great War, Canada was eryoying the feeling of national
independence, but had formed no firm naval poHcy and continued to be depen-
dent on the Royal Navy for advice, support, and defence. The arrival of HMCS
Aurora and two destroyers in 1920 signalled a second start, but it was short-lived.
I recall a period in the twenties when, with one small destroyer on each coast and
fewer than 400 officers and men, we couldn’t afford to send the ships to sea. The
navy was a political football, ridiculed by the press, down but not out.
The thirties saw a relatively dramatic turn-around. Two fine destroyers
were built in the U.K. to Canadian specifications and a five-year plan resulted
in the purchase from the RN of four more, which enabled us to enter World
War Two with six modern, well-manned ships.
The war had a profound effect on all aspects of our lives. On the naval side
it called for ever-increasing numbers of escort vessels. Our Headquarters staff
and our dockyard and training facihties matched the size of our fleet, a long
way short of what was needed to plan, build, and support a whole new navy.
In the face of tremendous problems Canada achieved a remarkable ship-
building effort, which called for an equally remarkable effort to provide and
train the crews. Much of the training had perforce to be obtained on the job, at
sea, in war. Officers and men aUke learned by hard experience.
We entered the war with six small ships, built in Britain, manned by crews
trained in the RN and observing many of the customs and traditions of that
7
THE SEA IS AT OUR GATES
great service. We emerged with a fleet of ships built in Canada, manned by

Canadians, trained in Canada, a sense of accompHshment, and a few customs
of our own. There were problems of adjustment between old and new con-
cepts of service and discipline, which were not overcome quickly or easily, but
a more truly Canadian service evolved.
Our ambitions for the size and shape of a post-war fleet were soon to be
determined by the formation of the Atlantic alHance. The Korean War gave us
added confidence and brought home to Canadians the need for strong forces.
Early NATO policy led us to concentrate our naval effort on anti-submarine
forces. Our war experience in that special field enabled us to design and build
ships that led the way. Our contribution to the combined ASW strength of the
alliance earned us a share in the overall protection of the Allied fleets.
Before retiring in 1960, the year of our fiftieth anniversary, I visited Hahfax
and reviewed the fleet. At that time we had the ships to meet our NATO
commitment, and we had in place a building program to replace the older
vessels. Spirits were high! Unfortunately, government pohcies allowed wide
gaps in replacement and before long the age of some ships exceeded the
average age of the crews. In spite of the fact that Canada borders on three
oceans, and much of our trade is seaborne, we lack a firm national maritime
policy and continue to lean on our friends and allies.
The Sea Is At Our Gates is a valuable addition to Canada’s maritime and
military literature. Sailor, and son of a sailor, Tony German went to sea in war
and commanded ships in a time of great technical advance. He is well quaHfied
to tell this story, one I believe of special importance to those who have grown
up without the experience of war. They should mark well that only in times of
war or overwhelming threat have Canadians paid heed to their navy. At each
such time the professional seamen they charged with the task of defending
them had to build from nearly nothing, while our aUies held the line.
The primary purpose of armed forces is preservation of peace. Armed
strength and the fear of mutual annihilation have preserved a kind of peace for
forty-five years. Now, as enlightened steps toward disarmament progress,
peace will still be dependent on a balance of strength, hopefully armed with
far less destructive weapons.
The security of our nation and our long-term interests are our responsibhity.
A nation has influence only to the extent it can assure its own interests, meet its
international responsibhities, and back its commitments with force if need be.
May the lessons of our history, so well expressed in this book, not go
unread.
Vice Admiral Harry DeWolf

CBE, DSO, DSC, CD, RCN (retired)
8
PROLOGUE
IN MARCH, 1964, I WAS COMMANDING HMCS MACKENZIE AND IN

company with Fraser and St. Laurent and ships of the British, Austrahan,
Indian, Pakistani, and New Zealand navies took part in a major exercise in the
Bay of Bengal. This considerable assembly of Commonwealth might was
without question a powerful deterrent to Indonesia’s President Sukarno, just
across the Malacca Strait, who was bearing hard on Malaysia. The effect was a
lasting one, for naval force is highly mobile and this was Commonwealth
solidarity with clout. Malaysia was emerging at that time as a vibrant inde-
pendent federation and in Kuala Lumpur the Deputy Prime Minister, Tun
Razak, told us Canadian captains in a private meeting just what our country’s
presence, in the shape of three modern ships of war, meant to his.
Curiously, the assembly anchorage for the exercise was inside the reef of an
island I had last seen in 1944 with the RN’s Eastern Fleet when we bombarded
the Japanese airfield. More remarkably, the 1964 Commander-in-Chief of
the Malaysian navy, the senior officer of the Australian frigates, and I had all
served in the same destroyer in that operation. Mackenzie was new (fresh out
of the builder’s yard in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when our navy stood
firm with our American allies as Prime Minister Diefenbaker vacillated) and
she and my superb ship’s company performed admirably. But the most nota-
ble ship in that six-nation fleet was HMCS St. Laurent. Uniquely Canadian-
designed and built in the fifties, she had just been converted on the west coast
with hangar, flight deck, and beartrap to carry a big anti-submarine heHcop-
ter, plus variable depth sonar. She was in fact en route to Halifax the long way
round and hadn’t yet embarked her Sea King, but this radical and entirely
Canadian development was hugely admired by that seagoing band of Com-
monwealth brothers.
9
Back in Singapore, I had a visit from another old shipmate - an RN

heutenant commander in the war, vice admiral at the time in question, and
soon to become Britain’s First Sea Lord. After his informal, detailed, eagle-
eyed inspection of Mackenzie we raised a glass in my cabin. The genuine
professional admiration he expressed for my ship and her company - he had
spoken to many of them on the way around - and for the innovations in St.
Laurent alongside was matched by my recognition that he had passed along to
me so much that was of everlasting value. We stemmed, all of us, from the
same centuries-old tradition of the sea and we followed the common aims,
serving the vital interests of our respective countries around the world and
preserving peace. At that very same time Canadian ships were keeping the
Atlantic watch and working with NATO, Bonaventure was off-loading equip-
ment in Cyprus for Canada’s UN peacekeeping contingent, and her Captain
was conferring personally with Archbishop Makarios.
In these encounters spanning the world lay many elements of the story that
I have sought to unfold in this book: how Canada’s navy was formed in the
image of the Royal Navy in 1910; how Canada’s failure to develop a naval
pohcy of her own, compounded by excessive dependence on the RN, meant
there was pathetically little on which a navy could be built when it was
suddenly needed late in the Great War, and then so urgently called forth in
World War Two; how Canada’s greatest contribution to that terrible world
struggle eventually succeeded, more than any other single factor, because of
the quahty of the people out at sea; how fifty years and three wars from its
beginning our navy emerged in the sixties as its own vital, innovative, distinc-
tive self, and a tangible expression of Canada’s determination to take its
destined international place in a threatening world; and how then, over
twenty-five years, we lost the capabiHty to defend our own shores - much less
our growing trade. During that Far East operation in 1964 we got the first
signals of that long demise. And now Canada, through years of looking
inward, may still speak in the councils of the world, but her voice is scarcely
heard.
My first notions of the navy came when I was very young because my
father had been one of those first seven cadets to join in 1910. Though he was
invalided out through loss of an arm he retained, along with his old shipmates
who were often about the house and struggHng to keep their httle navy afloat,
that twinkle of eye and tang of speech that always marked the sailor. Of
course, I wanted to be one, too, and almost in a breath I found myself in 1942
on the bridge of the corvette Weyhurn in the Strait of Belle Isle looking, quite
hterally downward, at the conning tower of a German U-boat racing off from
the glare of the ship she had just torpedoed. I was seventeen, a mere cadet
about to enter the Naval College and - courtesy of my father, who was back in
for the war and Naval Officer in Charge in Gaspe - along for the ride. Weyburn
10
PROLOGUE
went down a few months later with her Captain and many I had known. At
the time I was far too unquahfied to be afraid.
Wartime service “on loan” to the Royal Navy gave me a curious mixture of
admiration for the way they did things, recognition that their ways were
grown from centuries of hard-won tradition while rooted in a social structure
far different from our own, and resentment at being patronized. It was not
universal - certainly that outstanding officer who was my guest in Singapore
never patronized anyone - and I am sure it was often unintentional. But it was
there and it had, I feel certain, something to do with our post-war determina-
tion to be ourselves.
NATO gave us a clear sense of purpose. Our aim was to hold the Hne,
making it too costly for the Soviets to step across it until the day came when
the innate human force for freedom behind the Iron Curtain would inevitably
break through. At the RN Staff College in 1956, we reasoned that it would
take ten years and, with its historic resiHence and deep cultural roots, Poland
was the place where the first cracks in the East bloc monoHth would appear.
We were twenty years out.
Now in 1964, as we made our way back to Esquimalt via Hong Kong and
Japan effectively advertising trade with high-tech Canada, we got rumbHngs
from Ottawa of the integration of our armed forces. That move toward
rational planning and economy was followed swiftly, and in my view disas-
trously, by unification. I left my happy and rewarding career on that account
and watched sadly from the sidelines as the “sea element” over the years
dwindled and shrivelled unrenewed.
Then in 1984, while working on a radio program to be broadcast during
the navy’s seventy-fifth anniversary, I was Hfted by Sea King out to Skeena,
thirty miles off Halifax. There she was on that dirty November day, at
twenty-seven older than the average age of her own ship’s company, butting
into sixty knots of wind with waves to fifteen feet. The big helicopter, twenty
years old herself, tucked down neatly on the heaving deck, to be clamped
instantly in the maw of the beartrap. Spray lashed me crossing the tiny flight
deck and I was back among friends: easy, courteous, professional officers and
men doing their jobs with skill and elan in a demanding and highly technical
game. It’s quite outside the sailors’ lexicon but, if they were to “work to rule,”
their obsolete old vessels would never get away from the wall, much less put
up any kind of show against a modern enemy. If they had to fight for us today
their blood would be on our heads, for we as a country have failed these best
of men. And in so doing we have failed ourselves.
Extraordinarily, it is only now, forty-five years after the last depth charge,
that the official operational history of the RCN in World War Two is being
written by Defence Department historians. Recording events in war for sub-
sequent analysis, as the Canadian army did, was given little attention by the
11
navy. In the post-war retrenchment the partial draft assembled by Gilbert

Tucker, the navy’s very capable historian, was read with jaundiced eyes at
senior levels and he went back to teaching with the task not done. Tucker
finished his two excellent volumes, on the navy to 1939, then its shore
activities during the war; but the only official account of operations was
Joseph SchuU’s The Far DistantShips. It is a very well-written, stirring, popular
account of the exploits of Canadian ships and sailors, but it is neither properly
analytical nor historically complete.
Into the eighties some first-rate scholars and a few sea-dog memoirists
added immeasurably to Canadian naval historiography in war and peace and
provided the likes of me with a real trove. The picture of World War Two that
emerges has all the colours of gallantry, skill, sacrifice, extraordinary forti-
tude. It is underlaid, though, with the dark hues of inadequacy and ill-
judgement at high levels. Above all - and the inadequacy stems directly from
this - it shows a country, pretending independence, but so bereft of poHcy in
peace that its navy had next to nothing on which to build in war. It only met
the crucial challenge on the Atlantic through the dogged leadership of a few,
good fortune, and plain sailors’ guts.
As a result of the failure to write the real history after World War Two,
British and American accounts give only passing, and sometimes scornful,
mention of Canada’s key part in the all-crucial Battle of the Atlantic. Worse,
Canadians have had a rose-coloured picture of success at sea - perpetuating
the myth that volunteers can always leap in and save the day - without
grasping the fact that failed long-term poHcy courts disaster. If Canada were
to heed her history, she could hardly keep her back turned to the sea, as she
most often has in this century.
But for better or for worse, the navy is adventure and ships are wondrous
things; the sea opens a world to be grasped beyond our gates and those who
follow it have a certain Hghtness in their hearts, steadiness of spirit, and
sparkle in their eye. Yes, there are rogues among sailors, too. But at sea not one
would ever let a shipmate down. They simply are the best people going and in
my certain knowledge Canadian sailors are the best of the lot. They have
earned their country’s trust.
Tony German
Commander, RCN (retired)
February, 1990
12
CHAPTER ONE
THE TIDES
OF HISTORY
WITH THE DAWN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, TEEMING EUROPE BURST

outward from its shores. In less than forty years, between 1487 and 1523,
resolute mariners in their stout Httle caravels - new ships that could effectively
beat to windward - rounded the great capes, sailed into the Indian Ocean and
the China Sea, crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, and circumnavigated the
world. Trade followed exploration and the flags of monarchs followed trade.
Enghsh claims in North America were estabhshed by John Cabot in 1497.
His discoveries told Europe what Columbus’s had not: a whole continent
stood in the way of Asia - a continent for the taking. Cabot’s reports of the
fabulous Newfoundland fishery drew Portuguese, Basque, French, and Span-
ish vessels, as well as English, by the hundreds; there were bloody clashes on
the fishing grounds. Portugal and Spain, with lush new worlds in southern
seas, had no territorial interests in the fog-bound north. But France did;
Jacques Cartier staked her claim at Gaspe in 1536 and opened the St.
Lawrence in pursuit of furs.
There were, as yet, no “royal” navies. Merchant ships were armed for their
own defence and the crown hired them when in need. All monarchs issued
“letters of marque” authorizing ships to attack their enemies. This was priva-
teering, not piracy: a legitimate, if risky, business. Prizes brought profit for the
captain and the owner, something for the crew, and a good sUce for the crown.
The first real naval engagement between fleets of sailing ships was the great
running battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Here grew the notion of ships as
fighting units, not just soldiers’ transports, and of fleets concentrating force and
firepower. Organized fighting tactics and signaUing systems soon followed.
COLONIES AND CONFLICT

In 1603 Henry IV of France appointed a viceroy to Acadia and French
13
colonization began. A decade later this French toehold worried Virginians

enough that they sent a fleet to level every settlement in the Bay of Fundy.
James I claimed Nova Scotia, as he called Acadia, in 1621. There was Httle in
the way of colonization but the Hues of conflict were clearly drawn.
Seven years later Champlain, backed by Cardinal Richelieu, led a strong
expedition to Quebec with stores, arms, and a solid group of colonists. But in
the next two years David Kirke, sailing under letters of marque from Charles
I, sacked Port Royal, ravaged settlements along the St. Lawrence, captured
Champlain’s supply ships, and besieged Quebec. Champlain, starved and
desperate, had no choice but surrender. English seapower could have decided
possession of all North America there and then, but Charles in his struggle
with Parhament desperately needed money. He got it from France; France got
back Canada, Acadia, and all her fishing stations.
In the seventeenth century, seapower emerged as a new element in the
international balance. The riches of empire would be reaped by the nation
with superior fleets of both merchantmen and fighting ships. The Dutch built
a formidable navy. It overtook Spain’s and won commerce and colonies,
including New Amsterdam and the Hudson River route to the fur trade. A
growing EngHsh navy ousted the Dutch from New Amsterdam in 1665 but
the French, using Dutch technology, built an outstanding fleet and by the
1670s could challenge the EngHsh and the Dutch together. New France was
safe behind its shield.
In 1691 Frontenac easily repelled a seaborne attack by English colonists
from Massachusetts. The year before, Pierre le Moyne d’lberviUe had taken
New Severn in Hudson Bay from the EngHsh and snatched prizes, including
two frigates, as far south as New York. Then, in a ruthless campaign he
captured St. John’s, razed thirty-six outports, and almost ran the EngHsh out
of Newfoundland. There was no French colonial navy and French seapower
never held sway long enough to build trade with the West Indies. D’lberviUe,
born of an energetic seigneurial family in ViUe Marie, had joined the French
navy in its heyday. He was a brilHant, resourceful sea-officer and the ideal man
to command North American sea operations. From 1699 he led the expedi-
tion that estabhshed France in Louisiana, and he was its first governor general.
He took Nevis and twenty-four ships from the EngHsh in 1706, but died in
Cuba that year at the age of forty-five. He was a hero in France as weU as his
native Canada.
Through Queen Anne’s War, slaughter and the torch, raid and counter-raid
through Acadia and Newfoundland cost ships and Hves and solved nothing.
Louis XIV had lost faith in his navy. French corsairs roved the seas but
Britain’s trade moved safely in convoy. With no effective fleet to oppose it an
expedition sailed from England for Quebec in 1711. Once more, success
would have settled Canada’s fate. But the fleet was iU-led and foundered on
14
THE TIDES OF HISTORY
the lower St. Lawrence shoals. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave Britain
Hudson Bay and Acadia while France kept He Ste. Jean (Prince Edward
Island), Cape Breton Island, and limited fishing rights.
The French then set about fortifying Louisbourg on the Cape Breton shore
as a shield for Quebec and a base to win back Acadia and their fishery. It
became a nest for corsairs and in 1745 the enraged New Englanders mounted
their own assault, supported by three Royal Navy ships. The naval blockade
sealed the port and captured supply ships as the colonists blazed away. The
governor, like Champlain at Quebec, had no choice and the great fortress fell.
French attempts to retake Louisbourg in 1746 and British plans to capture
Quebec came to nothing. Then, to the fury of New Englanders, Louisbourg
was handed back to France at the peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. In fact, the
fortress on its own was next to worthless; only a superior fleet could guaran-
tee Quebec. But its mere presence forced Britain to settle mainland Nova.
Scotia. On magnificent Chebucto harbour they founded Halifax, the coun-
terpoise to Louisbourg. Within easy reach of the great circle routes to Europe,
Hahfax had strategic significance beyond its founders’ dreams. In the twenti-
eth century it became a crucial lynchpin of the North Atlantic.
THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

William Pitt saw clearly that without great armies, only Britain’s trade would
bring her full weight to the European balance, so he stiffened the languishing
fleet. Pitt’s strategy was to strike at the heart of French strength in North
America. Though they could have sailed straight for Quebec, British forces
took the safer option of taking Louisbourg first, then attacking from three
directions: from seaward up the St. Lawrence; north up the Hudson Valley;
and eastward from Lake Ontario. In June of 1758 Admiral Boscawen concen-
trated 180 ships off Louisbourg. The fortress surrendered in late summer, to
be levelled two years after, stone by stone.
In spring, 1759, the greatest amphibious assault ever mounted - over 200
transports escorted by a quarter of the Royal Navy - sailed up the St.
Lawrence through channels precisely surveyed and marked by Warrant Offi-
cer James Cook. It was always a difficult passage but fine seamanship and
masterful ordering by Vice Admiral Charles Saunders brought the great fleet
to Quebec without a single loss. There were, in fact, three times as many
seamen as soldiers. In a smoothly co-ordinated operation Saunders gave
young Major General James Wolfe all the mobiHty and gun support he needed
for landing along the thirty miles from Montmorency to Pointe-aux-
Trembles. Finally the landing at Anse au Foulon and the battle on the Plains of
Abraham won for the British the occupation of Quebec.
But it was very late in the season. The fleet was chased downriver by the ice
and in spring a strong French force that had wintered comfortably in Mont-
15
real ranged against Brigadier General James Murray’s half-starved, scurvy-

ridden soldiers in Quebec. They barely hung on for the first ships up the river
- the squadron from HaUfax with the inbound French supply ships they had
captured on the way. Quebec was relieved, Montreal taken, and Canada was
no longer a French possession. The matter had been chnched, in fact, not on
the Plains of Abraham, but six.months prior right across the Atlantic. Bosca-
wen had smashed the French Toulon fleet off Portugal, then Admiral Hawke
shattered the Brest fleet among the shoals of Quiberon Bay. France was
without a navy, her colonial empire in shreds. With British dominion of the
seas all her trade. North American included, could flourish unopposed.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

At the first shots of the American Revolution, Britain assumed her navy could
control the thirteen colonies by blockading their trade. In fact, the colonies,
unlike Canada, were largely self-sufficient. Too, the American merchant fleet
represented about a third of British shipping and 18,000 sailors; and the New
England forests were one of Britain’s prime sources of timber, masts, and
spars. Confident she could always move her armies about at will, Britain made
her final mistake by underestimating the power of France and Spain to chal-
lenge her pre-eminence at sea.
In the Great Lakes the British hold was cHnched with a few more ships. On
Lake Champlain, though, a fast-moving American force snatched all the
British craft and opened the way to take Montreal and besiege Quebec. When
the British squadron brought General Burgoyne up the St. Lawrence in the
spring of 1776, the Yankees pulled back to Lake Champlain. By the time
British tars could build a green-timbered fleet to control the lake and protect
Burgoyne’s flank on his drive south, he had lost the season. Then he lost next
year’s battle at Saratoga.
Britain’s fleet had run down badly after the Seven Years’ War, but France in
the meantime had rebuilt much of her naval strength. She declared war on
Britain in 1778 and next year, with the Spanish fleet, actually controlled the
English Channel. The French squadron that sailed to American waters might
well have taken Halifax and Newfoundland, too, but French ambitions lay in
the West Indies. Thus, in 1780, the British were able to land at Charleston and
support Cornwallis marching to Yorktown on the shore of Chesapeake Bay.
Admiral de Grasse now sailed up from Martinique with reinforcements for
Lafayette and the Americans fighting Cornwallis. Just outside the Bay he
mauled a British fleet, then blockaded Yorktown. Finally Cornwalhs surren-
dered and the war on land was over. It was the only time in modern history
that Britain lost control of the sea to lose a major war.
By the Treaty of Paris the United States got access to the Great Lakes, the
Hudson’s Bay Company got back the forts the french had taken, and France
16
kept St. Pierre and Miquelon. The war had not been over fishing rights, but to
the fury of Nova Scotians the Yankees could now fish their waters and cure
the catches along their shores.
A GENERATION AT WAR
Through the wars that convulsed Europe from 1793 until Napoleon’s end in
1814 at Waterloo, Britain’s navy by and large controlled the sea. The Revolu-
tion gutted the French navy of its officers: they were deemed aristocrats.
Weakened, they resorted to guerre de course again: raids on commerce by
corsairs and isolated flying squadrons. But British trade moved, safe in a vast
transatlantic web of convoys, and the colonies prospered. The timber trade
boomed in Canada, supplying the navy and the Mother Country. Maritimers
traded salt fish, flour, and timber in the Sugar Isles and nourished the slave
economy that financed Britain’s wars. Shipowner-merchants reaped their
profits, did some privateering, and built more ships; the Cunards of thriving
Hahfax laid the foundation for one of the greatest of all Atlantic shipping
hnes.
THE WAR OF 1812

But now American western war-hawks wanted to grab Florida and the
British colonies to the north while England was busy with Napoleon. “Free
trade and sailors’ rights” was a rallying cry without foundation. “Mr. Madi-
son’s War” of 1812 was roundly condemned by northeastern shipowners and
manufacturers, who were thriving nicely on the European war. Now they
were bottled up by the Royal Navy’s 500 ships against the Americans’ sixteen
and Napoleon could send no help. New England secession came very close.
Seven Yankee frigates, well designed and built, powerful, and very well
manned, scored some fine single-ship victories that stoked patriotic fervour
but achieved httle else. Nova Scotian and New England skippers - often
blood relations - took out letters of marque and snatched prizes from each
other by the hundreds. Some made fortunes. Coastal traffic was in a turmoil,
but the strategic effect was next to nil.
In the summer of 1812 the Provincial Marine controlled the Great Lakes
well enough to ship supplies and reinforcements freely from Kingston to
Niagara and Detroit. By fall the Americans had surrendered Detroit and
Major General Isaac Brock had won death and victory at Queenston
Heights. Now it was a shipbuilding race for naval control. The Americans
had the advantage of shorter supply lines, and by April, 1813, had built
enough ships on Lake Ontario for a major raid on York. They burned a
nearly finished brig there and carried off mountains of naval stores and
armament. A lot of it was intended for Lake Erie, and that crippled the drive
there to keep pace with the Americans.
17
Lieutenant Robert Barclay, RN, clung to control of Lake Erie until Lieuten-
ant Oliver Perry, the American Commodore, got two new ships to “sea.”
Barclay had a third of Perry’s manpower and only fifty of his 450 men were
naval seamen; the rest were Canadians: voyageurs, miHtia soldiers, lake sail-
ors, farm boys, and some of Tecumseh’s Indians. Sixty per cent of Perry’s
sailors were navy men from the coast and with heavier guns and a couple
more small ships his broadside was double the weight of Barclay’s. But
General Proctor at Amherstburg was doomed without suppHes and Barclay
attacked Perry’s squadron at Put-In Bay. The ferocious battle, muzzle to
muzzle, went on for hours. When Barclay stopped the hopeless carnage and
surrendered his squadron, half his men and a third of Perry’s lay dead or
wounded - a far more murderous bloodletting than Trafalgar. The leadership
and bravery of two fine sea officers inspired deeds beyond duty in their men.
But Perry held Lake Erie and Proctor, short of suppHes and savaged by the
Yankees, retreated to Lake Ontario.
There, Commodore Mortimer Yeo, RN, and Commodore Isaac Chauncey,
USN, gingerly plied the waters, each a Httle more boldly when he had an edge
with a new and bigger ship. The final colossus was HMS St. Lawrence, a 101-
gun line-of-battle ship, bigger than Nelson’s Victory, that swept Lake Ontario
clear without firing a shot at the end of 1814. Meanwhile there was a standoff
on Lake Champlain.
The forced abdication of Napoleon in 1814 freed Britain to turn her miH-
tary might on the United States. Naval superiority got WeUington’s veterans
across the Atlantic unopposed and armies landed in Chesapeake Bay, burned
Washington, and attacked Baltimore. General Prevost, with 14,000 seasoned
troops set to drive down Lake Champlain, waited until enough green-
timbered warships were thrown together by Captain Peter Downie, as Bur-
goyne had waited in 1775. In a blazing naval battle in Plattsburgh harbour,
casualties were frightful. Downie was killed early in the point-blank carnage;
command broke down and the Americans prevailed.
Prevost declined to press on, even against such slight opposition, without a
navy to protect his rear. The freshwater navies’ Battle of Plattsburgh decided
the campaign and so in fact determined the shape of Canada. No one now
wanted to prolong the costly war. Peace fixed the boundaries where they were
before it started. The Rush-Bagot agreement in 1817 Hmited British North
America and the U.S. to one warship each on Lake Champlain and Lake
Ontario, and two each on the upper Great Lakes combined.
The Royal Navy was reduced after 1815 but stiU sailed supreme. The U.S.
built a huge merchant fleet but had no naval strength until the Civil War.
Britain fortified HaHfax, Quebec, Kingston, and supporting points, but her
main spending on Canadian defence was the Yankee-proof route from Mont-
real to Kingston via the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal. Disputes between
18
the U.S. and Britain sent regular shivers down Canadian backs, and border
issues raised temperatures to flash-point.
In 1837 Wilham Lyon Mackenzie declared a provisional government on
Navy Island in the Niagara River. He was suppHed by a steamer called Caroline
from the American side. A party of naval miUtia rowed across on a winter
night, drove the crew ashore, set the ship afire, and cut her adrift. Over the
falls she went, hard ablaze. Both countries were enraged. Rush-Bagot faded in
the mounting tension. But conciHation triumphed and peace prevailed.
The Maine border dispute in 1845 and armed confrontation on San Juan
Island in 1859 brought things to the boil. From the start of the American
Civil War Britain was pro-South; she needed their cotton and their market,
and the northeast states were industrial competitors. When a Union warship
snatched Confederate emissaries from the British ship Trent, Britain was
enraged. War loomed and 11,000 British troops rushed to Canada, many in
Cunard’s steamships. Confederate commerce raiders roved the seas for prizes
but had no real effect on the war. A strong new Union navy blockaded
southern ports, crippled their economy, and had a major bearing on the
outcome. Meantime, HaHfax boomed as a port for blockade running, and this
identified Canada the more with Britain’s pro-South stance. Canadians had
leaned toward the North and aboHtion until a belHgerent American press got
to work. Fear of invasion rose and stayed very much ahve well past the Civil
War. It was a major stimulus to Confederation and governed British defence
pohcy in the Western Hemisphere.
The only actual aggression, however, came from the Fenian Brotherhood.
One feeble foray galvanized naval volunteers, and armed steamships appeared
in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, Rush-Bagot notwithstanding. The
feehng was growing that Canada might look after her own naval needs.
THE SEAGOING CENTURY

Shipbuilding boomed in the 1800s. Size, speed, price, and innovative design
sold Canadian sailing ships to British owners. The 1,600-ton Marco Polo
launched at Saint John in 1851 was known as the fastest ship in the world. The
Shipping Register of Liverpool in 1858 showed 85 per cent of ships above 500
tons as Canadian-built. Shipping was the great business of the Atlantic prov-
inces. For almost a century their ships traded round the world. Ships by the
hundreds, laden with timber, sailed from Quebec and brought immigrants
back - huddled, miserable, and dying in droves, but with the heart and mind
and muscle to build a nation. But the wooden sailing ship’s years were
numbered and by the 1870s the government of the new Dominion and the
financiers had turned inland to a burgeoning industrial heart.
The northwest coast of North America was one of the last areas of the
globe to open up. Spain had claimed the whole of the Pacific in 1494, but it
19
was almost 300 years before Hernandez, then Quadra, sailed the coasthne
north to Sitka. Britain contested Spain’s claims as mere sightings and Captain
James Cook, of St. Lawrence fame, landed at Nootka Sound in 1778, refitted
his ship, traded with the Nootka, and claimed the land for King George III.
Fur trade conflict brought Britain and Spain close to war, but in 1792 George
Vancouver established Nootka Sound as a free port. He also surveyed the
coast from California to Alaska and was at Bella Coola scant days before
Alexander Mackenzie arrived there overland from Canada in 1793 - thirteen
years before Lewis and Clarke from the United States descended the Colum-
bia to the Pacific.
By that time Canadian fur traders had moved firmly in and built a rich
trade with China. There were confrontations between Russians, Spaniards,
Americans, and British, but Northwest coast trade grew without the great
conflicts that plagued the East. By mid-century Russia had Alaska and the
panhandle, Spain was out, the Canada-U.S. border was settled at the 49th
parallel, and the Hudson’s Bay Company ruled, rich and serene, in Victoria.
Britain’s need for naval bases grew with Empire and the demands of machine-
driven ships for fuel and technical support. When the drydock opened in
1887, two years ahead of the one in Halifax, Esquimalt was firmly fixed on
Britain’s strategic map. The Canadian Pacific Railway, just completed, forged
a great new Hnk in the imperial chain.
Provincial Marines had grown by necessity for local defence and all the
chores the RN wouldn’t do. For years after the War of 1812 colonial govern-
ments chartered private vessels for essentials, from controUing smuggHng to
servicing lighthouses. Protecting the fisheries was a special problem. After
endless disputes, unsatisfactory agreements, and fights on the fishing
grounds, the Treaty of Washington was struck in 1871. Britain had authorized
her colonies to raise their own local naval defence in 1865; at Confederation,
fisheries became a federal matter. When bellicose Americans repudiated the
treaty’s fishing clauses in 1885, Mari timers watched angrily as Royal Navy
warships swung at anchor. Britain effectively had dropped out. The little
Canadian Fisheries Protection Service coped alone, quite capably. It became a
permanent force and the base, eventually, for a Canadian navy.
The 1870s and 1880s saw new national powers emerging and a reordering
of naval pre-eminence. Britain dropped to the “Two Power Standard,” i.e., a
navy equal to the combined strength of numbers two and three. In 1877 she
came close to war with Russia. Canada, she said, would have to protect her
own ports, fishermen, and coastal trade from commerce raiders. She had
90,000 seamen, after all, and in 1880 Admiralty donated an ancient steam
corvette, HMS Charybdis, to train naval reserves. She was a broken-down pig
in a poke and costs to make her useful proved sky-high. She slunk back to
England under tow, a bad dream for any who might have naval notions. It
20
would take another crisis to push Canada toward a navy of her own. Response
to crisis, rather than strategic vision, became the hallmark of Canadian naval
policy for over a hundred years.
At the first Colonial Conference in 1887 Britain said she would take care of
Imperial Defence but she couldn’t carry all the traditional burden; the col-
onies and dominions should contribute cash. Sir John A. Macdonald dug in.
No act of Canada’s would start a war calling for a navy and the CPR was a big
enough contribution to imperial defence. But he really understood the
importance of seapower to Canada and the need for naval forces of her own.
His chief nautical adviser, Andrew Gordon, Lieutenant RN (retired), proposed
buying Rattlesnake-class fast torpedo gunboats from Britain.
Rattlesnakes would be first class for the prime role in the fisheries. With
their guns and torpedoes a flotilla could handle marauding cruisers, and they
could dart up the canals to the Great Lakes if required. Macdonald hked the
idea. It would meet peace, contingency, and war needs at reasonable cost and
with Canadian control. But Admiralty knew better and their counterproposal
of ships unsuited to Canadian conditions was haughty and unhelpful. An
election was at hand. Two months after the Conservative victory of 1891, Sir
John A. died, and with him went hope for the beginnings of a navy. For close
to twenty more years Canada had no naval policy at all.
Canada’s seagoing nineteenth century left a strangely prophetic mark.
Horatio Nelson’s victory and death at Trafalgar in 1805 stirred a great tide of
emotion and a subscription was started in Montreal to raise a monument. It
took twenty-one years to scrape the money together and at that the column
fell eight feet short. Then, when they placed on it the figure of this most
brilliant naval hero, his back was to the sea. And so was Canada’s in the 1870s
and 1890s; again in 1911; between the two terrible wars; after World War
Two; then in the 1960s and 1970s when the Cold War was wishfully thought
to ease; and the most recent dismal failure of naval policy came in 1989. Born
in a country shaped by seapower and nourished by seaborne trade, with three
oceans and the longest coastline in the world, Canadians have proved as fine
sailors as can be found around the globe. Most often, though, except in times
of driving need, their countrymen’s backs have been turned, unthinking, to
their navy and the sea.
21
CHAPTER TWO
THE BARE
BEGINNINGS
COLONY OR NATION?
A VAST RANGE OF NEW FACTORS FACED THE NAVIES OF THE WORLD AT THE
dawn of the twentieth century: steam, steel, electricity, wireless telegraphy,
torpedoes, submarines, accurate long range guns, and soaring costs and rapid
obsolescence. Britain’s Royal Navy was no longer solely supreme. Japan was a
new and formidable naval power. The U.S. Navy, since the Civil War, had
moved to world status. Germany, united since 1870, industrially strong, and
with aggressive Prussian leadership, built up a navy that was rapidly and
ominously tilting the international scales.
At the Colonial Conference in 1897, Britain pressed for financial support
for her navy. History supported the British view that “the sea was one,” that
the navy protected every corner of the Empire by neutrahzing the enemy fleet
wherever on the globe it might be. This was sound principle, but tell a
Dominion voter he should pay for a navy he might never see and that could be
moved at will by someone else’s admiral. Strategy was one thing, poHtics
another.
Wilfrid Laurier, newly elected Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, was in
London to hear Joseph Chamberlain of the Colonial Office rub Canada’s nose
in the hard North American fact:
... if Canada had not behind her to-day and does not continue to have
behind her this great military and naval power of Great Britain, she would
have to make concessions to her neighbours, and to accept views which
might be extremely distasteful to her in order to remain permanently on
good terms with them.
Laurier understood this very well but he would make no commitment on
22
THE BARE BEGINNINGS
naval collaboration. Just as business and government looked inland, so most

Canadians thought - if they thought of defence at all - in terms of an army.
The myth persisted that the mihtia had won the War of 1812 and could be
turned out to defend the borders once again if need be.
Navy-minded pressure groups then went to work. The Toronto branch of
the Navy League of Canada proposed formation of a naval reserve in 1898
and consistently supported Canadian naval development. The pro-EngHsh
Victoria branch favoured direct payments to the Royal Navy. The basic ques-
tion - whether to support the Royal Navy financially or build Canada’s own
navy - was to be one of the most contentious issues since Confederation.
Laurier had to move with care.
No longer able to take on the world, Britain leaned on aUiances: a defensive
one with Japan in the Pacific in 1902, an entente with France in 1904, and a
similar agreement with Russia three years later. Her relations with the U.S.
steadily improved. Arrayed on the other side were Germany, Austria-
Hungary, and Italy. Keeping the Royal Navy just ahead of Germany alone was
costing a huge amount, and Britain wanted help from the Empire that
flourished under its protection.
Raymond Prefontaine, Laurier’s Minister of Marine and Fisheries, went to
London with him for the Colonial Conference on Defence in 1902. This time
Chamberlain actively discouraged colonial or Dominion navies in favour of
straight financial support of the RN. Again there was no Canadian commit-
ment, but the British approach cut right across Laurier and Prefontaine’s
strong sense of Canadian nationaUsm. Things at Marine and Fisheries, the
largest government department, began to move.
Marine and Fisheries handled everything to do with the sea and inland
waters: hydrographic services, lighthouses and navigation aids, port faciHties,
fisheries, regulation of shipping, and so on, and it was responsible for Arctic
sovereignty. It had substantial resources, including the Fisheries Protection
Service, begun in 1886. In 1904 its fleet was eight armed fishery protection
cruisers, six icebreakers, and eighteen other vessels. It ran thirteen Marconi
marine wireless telegraphy stations on the east coast and five were added to
the west coast in 1906. Much could be done within the department’s existing
structure and budget toward establishing a Canadian naval service.
Prefontaine’s Commander of Marine Services, O.G.V. Spain, prepared ‘An
Act Constituting the Naval Militia of Canada” for first reading in the House
(it didn’t get there) and a proposal for a naval academy. In 1904 the department
bought Canadian Government Ship (CGS) Canada from Vickers Barrow in
England. She had the lines and performance of a torpedo gunboat. CGS
Vigilant, “the first modern warship to be built in Canada,” was bought from
the Poison Iron Works in Toronto. CGS Falcon arrived the same year. Canada
and the others were in fact small warships with ram bows and quick-firing
23
guns, and they were run like crisply disciplined navy ships. This was just what
Andrew Gordon and Sir John A. Macdonald had in mind in 1887.
At Prefontaine’s prompting, Canada, “armed and manned in all respects as
a man of war,” took a training class of young fishermen on a cruise to the West
Indies in 1905. It was a fine carrot for winterbound fishermen and they did
well. Mr. Spain proudly wrote: “The material we have in the Canadian Naval
Militia is probably the best in the world.” The Caribbean winter training
cruise is a popular part of the annual training cycle to this day.
Prefontaine’s successor in 1905 was Louis Phillipe Brodeur, a close friend
of Laurier’s and every bit as keen on having a navy. Progress in Canada was
slowed by other pohtical matters, but in Europe the arms race went inexora-
bly on. It focused on a new word in the naval lexicon - “Dreadnought.”
Over the years Admiralty in London had been very conservative about
major innovations for fear they might wreak instant obsolescence on a huge
fleet. But great improvements in the range and accuracy of naval gunnery
demanded a completely new approach to the design of the Hne-of-battle ship.
In 1905 Britain laid down a revolutionary new type and called her HMS
Dreadnought. She was the first all-big gun ship.
The age-old criterion of power was now calculated in Dreadnoughts. If
Germany built three, Britain must build five. The Hague Peace Conference of
1907 tried to cool the race. But Germany, in the catch-up position, would not
stop building without political concessions, and those Britain would not give.
The finish fine was war.
Without a world-wide empire, Germany could keep her growing fleet at
home. To counter it, Britain needed more and bigger ships in home waters.
The Pacific Squadron was pulled out of Esquimalt in 1905, except for the old
sloop HMS Shearwater and a survey ship. The HaHfax dockyard became
Canadian-owned for practical purposes in 1907, and Esquimalt in 1910. They
would be kept up by Canada and the RN could use them as required. The
garrisons of British regulars had left along with the Royal Navy. Canada, it
appeared, must do something serious about defence.
The dockyards were strategically vital. Add fishery protection, hydro-
graphic services, and marine wireless stations and Canada was making a
measurable contribution to the overall scheme of imperial naval defence. So
said Marine and Fisheries Minister L.P Brodeur at the Imperial Defence
Conference in 1907. Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord (i.e., the poHtical head)
of the Admiralty, underHned the British stance of “one sea, one Empire, one
Navy,” and again pressed for help but with Admiralty running operations as
it saw fit. But he acknowledged the value of local squadrons. Torpedo boats
and submarines, for example, would be effective against commerce raiders
and thus a contribution overall.
24
THE BARE BEGINNINGS
With European storm clouds gathering Canadians were getting far more
interested in the naval question. In January, 1909, Hon. George Foster, one-
time Minister of Marine and Fisheries under Macdonald and now a leading
member of Robert Borden’s Conservative opposition, gave notice of a
motion that Canada should provide for naval defence of its own shores. He
lobbied hard. It took him two months to deal with objections from F.D.
Monk, leader of the Quebec Conservatives, and others of his own party, but
by the time he rose in the House of Commons in late March his motion rode
the crest of dramatic events.
A few days earlier the British Prime Minister in the House in Westminster
had rung the alarm. By 1912 Germany would have twenty-one Dread-
noughts to Britain’s eighteen, and that was a mortal threat. New Zealand
instantly offered a Dreadnought, and AustraHa proposed immediate support.
Foster’s motion had stuck to coastal defence, but Sir Wilfrid Laurier exploited
the opening with consummate skill. A series of amendments transformed the
motion from the Opposition into the basis for a Canadian navy. The guts
of it said:
The House will cordially approve of any necessary expenditure designed to

promote the speedy organization of a Canadian naval service in co-
operation with and in close relation to the imperial navy, along the lines
suggested by the Admiralty at the last Imperial Conference, and in fuU
sympathy with the view that the naval supremacy of Britain is essential to
the security of commerce, the safety of the empire and the peace of the
world.
This first statement of naval policy in Canada’s history passed the House
unanimously. Brodeur took it as a ringing endorsement to a hastily convened
Imperial Defence Conference in London in July. The atmosphere there had
changed, for Britain agreed to the principle of Dominion navies and Admi-
ralty was prepared to talk.
With Brodeur was Rear Admiral Charles Kingsmill, a Canadian who
retired from the Royal Navy in 1908 to take the post of Director of Marine
Service. They asked for outline plans for various squadrons with cost options.
Admiralty recommended cruisers and destroyers, deferring submarines
because of the special skills required. They would lend two old Apollo-class
cruisers as interim training ships and provide RN volunteers to man them until
replaced by trained Canadians. Officers and instructors would be loaned and
Canadian cadets could be trained at the Royal Navy’s preparatory school,
Osborne, and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, in southern Devon-
shire. Australia stood with Canada on the matter of an independent navy and
25
Admiralty made similar arrangements with her. So the navies of the two
senior dominions were born out of the same imperial events.
THE COUNTRY DIVIDED

Canadians were generally behind the Foster resolution except in Quebec.
Opposition there was led by Monk, for the Conservatives, and Henri
Bourassa, leader of the Nationalistes who had been a Liberal colleague of
Laurier’s but broke with him in 1905. Bourassa was a brilliant and fiery orator
and an influential writer through his paper, Le Devoir. Now he uncompromis-
ingly opposed introducing any naval policy without consulting the people.
The Naval Service Act came before the House in January, 1910. With it
Laurier announced a program of eleven ships - a Boadicea-class armoured
cruiser, four Bristol-class light cruisers, and six destroyers. Insofar as possible,
they would be built in Canada. He acknowledged the cost would be about a
third greater than buying from Britain, but it was the only way to develop the
industrial base that a navy needed.
Robert Borden hedged. A Canadian navy would take years to build. The
crisis was now and Canada should vote money now: Dreadnoughts for the
RN it should be. Monk proposed a national plebiscite. In Montreal, Bourassa
said the choice of ships proved they were not only for local defence, that in
fact this was just a ruse for replacing the RN’s overseas squadrons and thus for
making the dominions pay the cost of Empire.
But the Naval Service Act became law on 4 May 1910, and L.R Brodeur
became the Minister of Naval Service. Rear Admiral Kingsmill was named as
director, a position he held until 1921. As well as a Regular Force, the Act
provided for a Naval College, a Reserve, and a Naval Volunteer force. Seven
Royal Navy officers were loaned. Openings were advertised for the Royal
Naval College of Canada, located in Hahfax, and the first entrance exams
were set for November, 1910. The British Naval Discipline Act of 1866
applied to all members of Canada’s Naval Service, as did the venerable King’s
Regulations and Admiralty Instructions (KR&AI). Forty years and two wars
would pass before Canada’s navy replaced these revered documents with
home-grown basic “bibles” of its own.
THE NAVY BEGUN

The first ships in the new Naval Service were the RN-built cruisers HMCS Niobe
and Rainbow. Niobe's full complement was 700 but she left England with only a
skeleton crew of RN volunteers, each with the option of transferring to the
fledghng navy. Her Captain was a British Columbian, Commander W.B.
MacDonald, RN. Niobe arrived in HaHfax on Trafalgar Day, 21 October 1910,
fired a twenty-one-gun salute, and “dressed ship” - the old custom for special
26
THE BARE BEGINNINGS
occasions of hoisting signal flags between mastheads, bow and stern. The Liberal
Halifax Chronicle was effusive; the Conservative Herald sniffed over the nouveau
HMCS for His Majesty’s Canadian Ship instead of the time-honoured HMS; the
Tory press in Toronto scoffed at her as “on her way to the scrap heap.” Bourassa
and Monk joined forces in a huge rally in Montreal and railed against Laurier’s
naval policy. Le Devoir called Niobe “canadienne en temps de paix, imperiale en
temps de guerre.” The new navy did not slide smoothly down the ways.
Niobe was an aging but in fact substantial ship - a “protected cruiser,”
launched in 1899, with sixteen 6-inch guns, a dozen 12-pounders, and two
18-inch torpedo tubes. Rainbow was a third Niobe's size, an Apollo-class light
cruiser with a main armament of two 6-inch guns. She left England headed
for Canada’s Pacific coast nearly two months before Niobe, but since the
Panama Canal didn’t open until 1914 she had to steam 15,000 miles via the
Strait of Magellan to reach Esquimalt on 7 November. B.C. was pro-Navy
and Victoria gave her a rousing welcome. Right away she set about a local
cruise program combined with fishery protection - basically chasing Ameri-
cans out of the three-mile Hmit - and on-the-spot recruiting. Twenty-three
young men joined up on her first trip to Vancouver. The west coast sun shone
on the new navy, happily distanced from eastern political storms.
Rainbow's Captain from mid-1911 was Commander Walter Hose, a widely
experienced RN career officer with several seagoing commands under his
belt. His wife was from St. John’s, Newfoundland. That and prospects of
quicker promotion in an infant service no doubt spurred him - adventurous
and energetic as he was - to write to Admiral KingsmiU for a post. He was
loaned at first to command Rainbow, and then in 1912 he resigned from the RN
for a career in the RCN. The future at that time was shaky at best and the navy
and Canada were lucky to have him.
Undismayed at Niobe's mixed reception and proudly waiting in Halifax to
step aboard their first big warship were six newly appointed midshipmen.
They had actually joined as cadets several months before the Naval Service
Act was passed and already had close to a year’s hands-on instruction in
seamanship and navigation in CGS Canada. Now they were ready for the next
phase of their training as Canada’s first home-grown naval officers before the
Royal Naval College of Canada had opened its doors.
The Minister had taken a personal hand in this flying start to an officer
corps. Naval Cadet Victor G. Brodeur was his son; Barry German was the son
of the Liberal MP for Welland-St. Catharines; Percy Nelles’s father was a
retired senior army officer; Charles Beard’s father was a senior government
official; John Barron’s was a judge; Trenwick Bate was the son of a Liberal
millionaire. All were insiders. They had written no entrance exams - the
method of selection was informal to say the least.
27
And brisk. Admiral Kingsmill’s interview with seventeen-year-old Barry

German in his office in Ottawa went thus:
W.M. German, MP, with pocket watch in hand: “This is the young man,
Admiral. I have an appointment in ten minutes to introduce him to the Prime
Minister.”
The Admiral: “Can you swim?”
The candidate: “Yessir, I can swim the Welland Canal in ninety seconds.”
The Admiral: “Catch the next train to Hahfax.”
It would certainly not do today, but the fact is this first class of naval cadets
produced leaders who served the navy through years of struggle and despair,
tremendous growth, and great achievement.
Their new shipmates in Niobe included Engine Room Artificer George
Stephens, who turned over from the RN to the new navy. He rose through the
ranks to become the Royal Canadian Navy’s first Engineer Rear Admiral,
Chief of Naval Engineering and Constructions, and member of the Naval
Board. He directed the extraordinary naval shipbuilding program and techni-
cal expansion of World War Two and laid the base for building the highly
sophisticated ships of the fifties and sixties.
Recruiting young Canadians for the lower deck started right away. Stoker
J.O. Cossette signed up from Quebec early on and served in Niobe. He
transferred from the boiler room to the ship’s office as a Writer, a naval clerk,
and worked his way up to head the Supply Branch and become the first Rear
Admiral (Supply) in the RCN.
In those days matters of importance between governments went through
the Governor General. Lord Grey, a strong supporter of Canadian initiative,
backed a proposal that RCN ships fly the traditional White Ensign with a
distinctive green maple leaf in the middle. The answer from Britain was the
White Ensign unadorned. Next Grey proposed a West Indies training cruise
with himself as a passenger, which was not approved “until the status of
Dominion navies was settled.” Further, Canadian ships would not cruise
outside the three-mile limit without Admiralty approval. Brodeur was justifi-
ably furious.
He was frustrated, too, over the matter of language at the Naval College.
He asked Deputy Minister Georges Desbarats, who was also French, to see
that the entrance exams were available in both languages and that the staff had
a command of French so French-Canadian cadets would have a chance to
adapt. Admiral Kingsmill’s two senior staff officers, both from the RN, dug in
their heels, and Kingsmill backed them - English in toto it must be. Hindsight
is easy, but those two matters, a distinctive flag and a bicultural officer corps,
could have given the RCN a Canadian distinctiveness that it never really found
in the nation’s eyes.
28
THE BARE BEGINNINGS
Canada lacked the marine engineering and shipyard capacity to build war-
ships. Admiralty offered technical support and proposed a cautious start. Build
the first few ships in Britain, they said, with some key Canadians learning on
the job. But Laurier plunged in: British know-how, yes, but in Canada and
from the start. The added cost and time were a reasonable price for the soHd
base a modern navy needed. The money would be spent largely in Canada, and
the nation would be the richer for a major new industrial enterprise.
Tenders were called to set up plant and build four cruisers and six destroy-
ers and a subsidy was offered to build drydocks. The deadline for bids was 1
May 1911. Canadian and British firms jumped at the chance, with bids around
$12 million, but before a contract could be signed the election plug was
pulled.
Parhament dissolved in July, 1911, and Niobe showed the flag - elec-
tioneering for Laurier, by any other name - in Quebec City, Charlottetown,
and Yarmouth, but in thick weather she ran aground off Cape Sable, suffered
underwater damage, and had to be towed back to Halifax. It was certainly bad
news for the Liberal campaign, and for the navy. In the inevitable Court
Martial the Navigating Officer was dismissed his ship and the Officer of the
Watch reprimanded. It was a salutary lesson for the young Canadian officers.
Being laid up alongside was no way to train midshipmen, though, so they
were packed off to the RN to finish their training in the mighty HMS Dread-
nought herself.
The election was fought on reciprocity with the U.S. Only in Quebec was
the navy a major issue, and there the Conservatives and Bourassa’s Nationa-
Hstes branded it the instrument of Empire and conscripter of young men.
Laurier lost support in Quebec and lost the election, and the navy lost its
champion. Quebec retained resentment of the navy for years. Robert Borden
and the Conservatives formed a majority government. In Borden’s first
Speech from the Throne the navy wasn’t even mentioned, and soon thereafter
the shipbuilders’ deposits were returned - there would be no ship construc-
tion program, no industrial base, and, for practical purposes, no navy. Repairs
to Niobe, meanwhile, took over a year, and by then there was no money to
send her to sea.
Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a scheme
worthy of his agile mind at the following summer’s meeting of the Commit-
tee of Imperial Defence. With a new threat in the Mediterranean from Austria
and Italy, he said, Britain would be short three Dreadnoughts. If they were
laid down for Canada as her contribution to Empire defence, then Germany
would have no reason to lay down more ships herself. This, Churchill sug-
gested, would be an interim solution to an urgent problem and not a perma-
nent naval policy for Canada.
29
The proposal suited Borden. He in fact agreed with a scaled-down

Laurier-style naval service but had to thread his own party’s internal mine-
fields. In December, 1912, he introduced the Naval Aid Bill, asking Parlia-
ment for $35 milhon for three Dreadnoughts as a one-time emergency
contribution to imperial defence. The ships would be part of the Royal Navy
but could be called back at some future date to form part of a Canadian unit of
the RN. Laurier’s Canadian-built navy would have cost one-third as much.
The Liberals fought the new bill tooth and nail. In the committee stage they
used every obstructive trick in the book. Finally, on May 9, Borden intro-
duced closure for the first time in Canadian parHamentary history, saying at
the same time that he favoured a modest navy for coastal defence. A week later
the bill passed third reading and went to the Senate for approval. But the
Liberals had been in power since 1896. The Senate, packed with Laurier
appointees, easily defeated the bill, and despite the predictable uproar and the
fact that the Naval Service Act stayed on the books, Canada had no naval
policy.
One brave pioneering hght still burned in Victoria, B.C. A group of young
men there started something akin to Britain’s Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
with an unofficial blessing from the Minister. They got no support from
Admiral Kingsmill, but Commander Hose, the man on the spot, pitched right
in. They trained in the dockyard and on board Rainbow with her officers and
petty officers as instructors. They had no uniforms, official status, or pay, only
their own enthusiasm. Ten years later Walter Hose would harness that kind of
spirit to virtually save the navy’s neck.
But now its neck was wrung. The RN volunteers went home. Naval pros-
pects in Canada were nil. In 1912 and 1913, 126 new enhstments were more
than offset by 149 desertions. High hopes had vanished with the poHtical
wind. By 1914 the Royal Canadian Navy had dwindled to 330 officers and
men and two old ships wasting in harbour without the funds to put to sea. It
was not much of a basis on which to fight an approaching war. And no one in
the country seemed to care.
THE ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE OF CANADA

Quite remarkably, the infant Royal Naval College of Canada escaped Bor-
den’s axe, continued through the Great War, and survived until 1922. The
Royal Navy had opened the doors of its colleges and gunrooms from the first
suggestion that any Dominion was interested in its own seagoing service.
Where better to become a naval officer than in the greatest navy in the world,
which had produced the hkes of Drake and Anson, Cook, Nelson, and Jackie
Fisher, the current First Sea Lord? Where better, from the British point of
view, to cast young colonials in the British mould?
30
THE BARE BEGINNINGS
Historically, the RN officer went to sea very young, usually as a servant

first, then as a midshipman sponsored by some senior officer. From the age of
twelve he was under the eye of the Captain and learned his profession from
professionals at sea. The non-commissioned midshipman had authority over
sailors, at least in theory. But he could learn from them, too, without losing
face. He messed and slung his hammock in the gunroom, a partitioned corner
of the gun deck that he shared with others of his ilk, men with warrants of
promotion from the lower deck (Hke James Cook), and a couple of 32-
pounders. A piping voice was no protection from being torn apart in battle.
For those who survived gunfire and disease, the commission as lieutenant
was earned by time, diligent study, and rigorous examination. The ethos - the
all-important basic outlook, moral standard, sense of duty, behaviour, self-
discipline, and professional attitude - rubbed off from one’s seniors. By and
large they were capable men, and for centuries the system worked.
With new technology more formal preparation was needed ashore. The
Royal Navy trained cadets in moored hulks from 1857, then founded the
Britannia Royal Naval College ashore in Dartmouth in 1903. Still, RN cadets
went off to sea as midshipmen in their middle teens. The United States Naval
School, later the Academy, started at Annapolis in 1845. In the USN, midship-
men graduated from the Academy and went to sea as ensigns four years older
with far more formal education and less horny-handed experience than their
RN opposite numbers.
The first move toward a Canadian navy in 1904 included the concept of its
own academy. The Naval Service Act of 1910 authorized the Naval College of
Canada “for the purpose of imparting a complete education in all branches of
naval science, tactics and strategy.”
The easy, cheap, and obvious solution was to use the RN training system.
But, as with building warships, Brodeur and Laurier saw the long-term
importance of educating officers at home. Also, it was the only way to attract
French candidates. They didn’t choose the well-established Royal Military
College at Kingston either - a navy was a navy to be led by naval officers, and
they would be Canadian trained.
Space was found for forty-five cadets in the old Halifax Dockyard Naval
Hospital. Twenty-one fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds passed the first exams.
After 1912 the original two-year course was lengthened to three and the
curriculum broadened. Admiral Lord Jackie Fisher, who towered as the
ruler of the Royal Navy through these years, believed upper deck and
engineering officers should be interchangeable, so there was a strong practi-
cal engineering element in the course. The little College was run with naval
gusto and produced spirited young men, giving them a sound start for an
adventurous life.
31
Applications had slowed to a trickle in 1913-14 when career prospects

were nil. Curiously, though, the government kept the College going. The
first class had just graduated in August, 1914, when the cruiser HMS Good
Hope, flying the flag of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock, coaled in
Halifax. Short-handed in the gunroom, she took fresh-minted Canadian
midshipmen Malcolm Cann, Wilham Palmer, Arthur Silver, and John Hatha-
way. It was a prize! Off to sea with the first guns of the Great War. They were
the envy of their classmates.
Good Hope went down fighting on the 1st of November, sunk by Admiral
Graf von Spee’s Pacific Squadron off Coronel, South America. The four
young midshipmen went down with her. They were Canada’s first casualties
of the war.
In the Hahfax explosion in 1917 several cadets were hurt and the College
was wrecked. It moved for a while to the Royal Mihtary College, Kingston,
then on to Esquimalt in September, 1918. There the old Rainbow served until
space was found ashore. Finally, in June, 1922, with no money in the naval
budget the College closed.
Today, the Royal Naval College of Canada seems to have been run on a
shoestring, but it did a fine job. Commander A.E. Nixon - initially the First
Lieutenant, then in command himself from 1915 - was its heart and soul,
planting in young Canadians the seeds of that aU-important, timeless naval
ethos. He was the essential example of what a naval officer should be.
The College passed out a mere 150 graduates in its eleven years. But this
vision of Laurier and Brodeur was an invaluable investment in people. It
produced a generation of Canadian naval officers that the country sorely
needed when the time came. And they served their country well.
32
CHAPTER THREE
THE
GREAT WAR
BRITAIN DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY ON 4 AUGUST 1914. SO, WITHOUT A

by-your-leave, did the British Empire, Canada included. Thanks to utter lack
of naval policy there was nothing more than a rundown cruiser on each coast,
350 officers and men, and some 250 shghtly trained members of the Royal
Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve (RNCVR).
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy mobilizing their armies against
France and Russia had seemed a pretty remote broil. Canadians didn’t even
know about Britain’s military understanding with France. When she
honoured it and war came, the expectation - in Canada, as elsewhere - was
that the bands would play, the flags would wave, the boys would march off,
and it would all be over in a matter of months.
Young Canadians answered the ringing call to arms. If they didn’t get in
quickly they’d miss the great adventure. By the 8th of September 32,000
volunteers had poured into a half-constructed army camp at Valcartier. By the
end of the month, barely kitted out and knowing little more about soldiering
than the refrain of “Tipperary,” they boarded transports at Quebec City.
Downriver they sailed to assemble in the great anchorage at Gaspe. On 3
October the biggest body of men ever to cross the Atlantic sailed in convoy.
Thirty-two passenger liners, mostly regulars on the Canadian run, carried
them across. Only three were Canadian-owned. The escort was four RN light
cruisers.
Prime Minister Borden, putting first things first, cabled London: “Proba-
bility elections makes it desirable to ascertain . . . what course would Admi-
ralty advise if we decided offer naval aid.” The reply: “Admiralty inform don’t
think anything effectual can now be done as ships take too long to build and
advise Canadian assistance be concentrated on army.”
33
In November, Borden pressed for destroyers and submarines to be built in

Canada and for RN units on loan in the interval. Churchill repeated: no ships
to spare; building in Canada not practical; send soldiers. Canada had neither a
navy nor a shipbuilding industry, or, by now, an ocean-going merchant fleet
with which to fight a war. Had Laurier’s plans been realized Canada could
have been far more a naval resource and arsenal for the Allies. As it was,
Canada’s answer was soldiers, a generation to die in the awful shambles that
was France.
THE SUBMARINE
The naval war was seen as protecting Britain’s trade, with the great fleets
reaching the final resolution in cataclysmic battle, which the Royal Navy
would by custom win. But what of the submarine, the great, new, admittedly
unblooded naval weapon of the century? All the major powers had embraced
it for their special needs. None, though, had yet divined its truly crucial role.
At the turn of the century the Holland submarine, devised by an Irish-
American of that name, was developing quickly and being bought from the
U.S. or built under licence by major navies. It was in essence the “conven-
tional” submersible of today, driven underwater by electric motors and
recharging its batteries as it ran on the surface on diesel engines. The threat of
cheap, invisible Httle submarines torpedoing their behemoths gave the Dread-
nought builders nightmares.
The Royal Navy wisdom of the day was that submarines would defend the
fleet at sea and counter raiders in coastal waters. Oddly, they hadn’t figured in
Laurier’s naval plan of 1910. A handful of submarines would have been a
bargain for Canadian coastal defence against marauders. But Rear Admiral
Kingsmill, Laurier’s adviser, had plainly missed the point.
As to attacks on shipping, the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 had,
of course, fixed that. The Rules of War said a warship had to search an
unescorted vessel for contraband prior to sinking her. Then it had to ensure
the crew safe passage to shore. Lifeboats weren’t counted as “safe passage” and
submarines could carry few prisoners. So submarines wouldn’t be used
against shipping! Even a reaHst Hke Winston Churchill didn’t beUeve a subma-
rine campaign on merchant shipping “would ever be done by a civihzed
power.”
Germany’s Admiral von Tirpitz refused to spend money on submarines as
long as they could cruise only in home waters. But in 1906 U-1, the first in the
iron line of deadly Unterseebooten, completed a 600-mile cruise. Tirpitz
moved fast. Inside three years Germany was building boats with four torpedo
tubes, a gun, and a twelve-knot surface speed. By 1913 they had a 3,000-mile
range at eight knots and carried efficient periscopes and powerful wireless
transmitters. They would certainly be used against Britain’s huge Grand Fleet.
34
THE GREAT WAR
New weapons breed counters. Ships could zigzag and use high speed.
Screening destroyers, there to protect the fleet from torpedo boats in any case,
could snag them with towed explosive paravanes. Periscopes could be sighted
and smashed with gunfire. Hydrophones could detect their underwater
sound. Surfaced, they could be rammed. They might indeed be spotted by
that other new device, the airplane.
Aircraft, of course, brought the third dimension to naval warfare just as the
submarine had added the second. Its potential was equally obscure. The
Wright brothers’ first piloted flight with a gasoline engine was in 1903. Louis
Bleriot flew the Enghsh Channel in 1909. The first successful flight by a
French seaplane came in 1910. A U.S. Navy plane took off and landed on a
special platform on the battleship Pennsylvania in 1911. The RN ran trials on
spotting submarines from aircraft in the same year.
By 1913 the new Royal Naval Air Service had some non-rigid airships and
fifty-two Short seaplanes, which could stay airborne for three hours and had
an operating radius of seventy-five miles. They were for reconnaissance and
gunfire spotting. The potential was clear enough against submarines, but no
one had an air-dropped or even a shipborne anti-submarine weapon. And no
one had any notion of what the U-boat really held in store.
By 1914 the Royal Navy had seventy-five submarines, the French sixty-
seven, Russia thirty-six, Germany thirty. Of the German boats, twenty were
operational and battle-ready. Then, on the very day war broke out, Canada
had a chance at two. The matter had come up over whisky and cigars at the
Union Club in Victoria on the 29th of July. J.V. Paterson, president of the
Seattle Construction and Drydock Company, was in town on business and
told Captain W.H. Logan, surveyor for the London Salvage Association,
about two submarines he had just finished for the Chilean government. He
was having a wrangle with the Chileans over the specifications and they still
owed some money. With the current threat of war, perhaps Canada would
hke them?
Captain Logan strode down Government Street to the Premier, Sir Richard
McBride. The Dominion Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Martin BurreU, was
on the coast and telegrams flashed to Ottawa on political and naval nets.
Cables were exchanged with Admiralty. Paterson’s price was $1,150,000 for
the pair. His $332,000 mark-up on the Chilean deal raised eyebrows, but he
was onto a good thing.
Logan dashed to Seattle on the 4th of August with a young Victoria Naval
Reserve officer in civilian clothes. The cloaks were out, if not the daggers. If
the American authorities or the Chileans or the German consul got a sniff of
the wind the game would be up. That day the war news exploded in the
streets. The boats would have to leave that very night or not at all. Logan
haggled but the price was final and the sale was COD.
35
By phone, the Premier agreed to have a B.C. treasury cheque at the border
at dawn the next day. It was a foggy night. The two subs silently crept out of
the shipyard on electric motors with Logan and Paterson on board. Clear of
the harbour, they blasted off on their diesels at full speed through the fog.
At first light SS Salvor waited, five miles south of Trial Island, just outside
Canadian territorial waters. On board with the B.C. government’s cheque in
his pocket was Lieutenant Bertram Jones, RN (retired). Several years’ experi-
ence in submarines made him a rare bird indeed, and during the summer’s war
rumblings he had presented himself at the Esquimalt dockyard.
Jones and the Chief Engineer Officer from Esquimalt set about a system-
atic inspection of the two submarines. No one was going to sell them a pig in a
poke. In Seattle, of course, the fat was on the fire; in Washington, President
Wilson was in the very act of signing the neutrality proclamation to slam the
door on such transactions. The wires hummed. The Germans raged, as did
the Chileans.
Four hours dragged by. Paterson fidgeted at the inspecting officers’ heels.
Logan scanned the horizon for the U.S. Navy. Satisfied at last, Jones handed
over the huge cheque, hoisted the White Ensign on the two submarines, and
set course triumphantly for Esquimalt. Next morning USS Milwaukee sternly
combed American waters for the rascally Canadians, a good show of official
indignation but nothing more.
The new prides of the west coast navy were named Paterson and McBride on
the spot. Ottawa reimbursed British Columbia and damped local pride by
ordering the anonymous names CCl and CC2, “C” for Canadian and “C” for
their rough equivalent, the RN’s C-class subs. The hard-nosed Paterson got
something more to his Hking in a handsome $40,000 personal commission
from the Electric Boat Company, and Premier McBride got B.C.’s money
back from the Dominion government. The submarines were commissioned
into the RCN and, like Niobe and Rainbow, their operational control was turned
over to Admiralty.
No torpedoes came with them. They had 18-inch tubes and Rainbow's were
the older 14-inch type, so Niobe's stocks in Halifax were raided. Crews were
the next problem. By a stroke of luck a very experienced submarine com-
mander, Lieutenant Adrian Keyes, RN (retired), was working in Toronto.
Admiral Kingsmill signed him on and in days he was taking charge of his two
boats, bare minimum support facilities, and 100 brave and largely uninformed
volunteers. Lieutenant Jones had fined up Lieutenants Wilfrid Walker, RN
(retired), and Barney Johnson, RNR. Johnson was an experienced Master
Mariner and B.C. coastal pilot. Fresh from the College in Halifax came
Midshipman William Maitland-Dougall.
Admiral von Spee’s cruisers were at large in the Pacific and there was no
way of knowing where they might strike. Fears fanned by the press conjured
36
THE GREAT WAR
bloody scenes - bombardments of Vancouver and Victoria, attacks on the

coal mines at Nanaimo, slaughtering of fishermen. One Victoria family out-
fitted their vault in the cemetery as a bombardment shelter. But no prudent
cruiser captain half a world away from friendly repair faciHties would risk
damage from a submarine-launched torpedo. Consequently, the mere pres-
ence of CCi and CC2 was vastly more effective than the dubious protection
offered by the venerable Rainbow.
RAINBOW^S WAR
Admiralty had pulled most of the Royal Navy back to home waters and the far
corners of the world were thinly held. The northwest Pacific boasted two
other ancients, the steam-and-sail sloops HMS Shearwater and Algerine. In
August they were off the Mexican coast with an international squadron
protecting foreign interests in the Mexican civil war. The modern German
cruiser Leipzig was in the squadron and in July had exchanged courtesies with
Algerine in Mazatlan. Another German cruiser, Nurnberg, was about. As war
began the two nigh-defenceless RN sloops were a long way from home and in
real danger.
Rainbow, under Commander Hose of the RCN, was at sea on 3 August. He
had done his best to whip his ship into shape, yet still she had less than half her
proper complement and over a third of those were local volunteer reservists,
keen but with no seagoing experience. Her wireless had a nighttime range of
only 200 miles. Her ammunition outfit, quite incredibly, included only
ancient gunpowder-filled shells. Modern high-explosive (HE) shells were
stored at an inland magazine but the railway company was not organized to
handle big shipments of explosives. Hose had just received a signal saying his
HE shells had arrived in Vancouver when he got another from NSHQ:
Nurnberg and Leipzig reported August 4th off Magdalena Bay [Mexico]
steering north. Do your utmost to protect Algerine and Shearwater steering
north from San Diego. Remember Nelson and the British Navy. All Can-
ada is watching.
A stirring exhortation cum epitaph! Should Hose head for Vancouver and his
shells? Being Hose, he turned south immediately at his best fifteen knots,
pondering the tactics for his two old 6-inch guns and four 12-pounders
versus two fast twenty-three-knot cruisers. Each of them had full comple-
ments, modern gunnery control, ten 4.1-inch guns with longer range than his
- and they had high-explosive shells. The scene could be a quick and ugly one
for all of Canada to watch.
Hose went into San Francisco seeking news, but there had been no reports
of Shearwater or Algerine and they had no radios. The enemy cruisers, though.
37
had been seen off San Diego heading north. One day’s steaming at twelve
knots! Hose steamed out, patrolled near the Farallones Islands west of the
Golden Gate, right across the enemy’s path, plotting time, speed, and distance
on his chart, waiting for the two sloops - or the German squadron.
Preparing for battle, the ship’s company ripped out and ditched all the
inflammable peacetime woodwork. On 10 August, with his coal running low
and when he reckoned the sloops must be safely to the north. Hose headed up
the coast. Next day, unknown to Hose, Leipzig was sighted off the Farallones.
Hose worked Rainbow slowly north, not running from the Germans but
keeping himself between them and where he estimated his unseen charges
were. At eight a.m. on 12 August a big, three-funnelled ship was sighted
ahead, approaching fast. Hose rang full ahead, put the wheel over, sounded
action stations. All hands stood to with pounding hearts and dry mouths,
ready for a desperate battle. Then the “enemy” was identified. She was SS
Prince George.
Back in Esquimalt it had been quite clear that Rainbow was on borrowed
time. Those who saw her leave seriously doubted she would return. But there
were no reinforcements to send. There weren’t even torpedoes for the subma-
rines. At least, though, wounded could be cared for. Prince George was hastily
complemented with medical staff, marked as a hospital ship, and sent south.
With her three funnels and tidy Hnes she’d been taken by Rainbow for the
enemy.
By now Shearwater was almost at Esquimalt, but there was no sign of
Algerine. Hose dashed into harbour for a quick coaHng and - wonderful sight
- his outfit of high-explosive shell, but no fuzes came with them and none
were to be found. Regardless, he set off and next afternoon met Algerine
getting some badly needed coal from a passing colEer. Algerine signalled: “I
am damned glad to see you.” As Rainbow turned north to escort her safely
home, Walter Hose and his whole ship’s company no doubt echoed the
words.
Now the Germans were reported off San Francisco taking British prizes
and on the 17th Leipzig steamed in for fuel. Her captain held a press confer-
ence, saying the German navy would sweep the seas, presented the city zoo
with two Japanese bear cubs, and sailed again by midnight.
Commander Hose got the news of Leipzig the next day, and Rainbow took
on her fuzes at Esquimalt. Hose signalled for permission to go south and fight
and sailed immediately. He was well on his way when Admiralty’s signal
arrived with permission to “engage or drive off Leipzig from trade route . . .
off San Francisco.” The following day, though, both German cruisers were
reported there and Admiralty recalled the pugnacious Rainbow to await HMS
Newcastle, now on her way from Yokohama.
38
THE GREAT WAR
Within a day, a three-funnelled cruiser was reported off Prince Rupert and
Rainbow raced north. Imaginations get inflamed and reports can grow quickly
in transmission during war. Nurnberg was never within 2,500 miles of B.C.
Rumour notwithstanding, she took not a single prize. None of that, of course,
in any way diminishes the problems, pressures, and hard decisions faced by
Commander Walter Hose.
By the end of the month Newcastle, a fast Bristol-class cruiser, had arrived.
Japan was now an ally and her powerful armoured cruiser Idzumo joined the
force. Rainbow was useful mainly as a radio link. But no more was seen of the
Germans. Admiral von Spee’s task of destroying Britain’s trade in the Pacific
was wrecked by Japan’s entry in the war. Now he was simply trying to get his
ships back home.
Leipzig and Nurnbergjoined von Spee. Then, at Coronel on 1 November, he
met Craddock’s RN squadron and dealt the British an overwhelming defeat.
The Alhed squadron in Esquimalt braced for von Spee to come north. Walter
Hose signalled Admiral Kingsmill to ask Admiralty that Rainbow “... be in
company with squadron when engaged with enemy.” Such was the
unquenchable spirit of the man. Kingsmill turned him down. If the ship were
lost “there would be much criticism on account of her age in being sent to
engage modern vessels.” Fear of criticism - such was the Ottav/a mind.
Von Spee’s success was short-lived. Off the Falkland Islands on 8 Decem-
ber he met Rear Admiral Sturdee’s squadron, including two powerful battle
cruisers. All but one of the German ships were sunk. Only Dresden remained
in the South Atlantic, a thorn in the RN’s flesh until she was destroyed in
March, 1915.
The danger to the west coast had passed. Japan controlled the Pacific.
Rainbow made some forays south, took two prizes, and tied up German ships
in neutral ports. When the U.S. entered the war in April, 1917, the last vestige
of a threat was gone and Rainbow was at last paid off. If old ships dream in their
retirement as old sailors do, she had some memories to warm her rusted heart.
NIOBE^S WAR
As in the American Civil War, the commerce raiders drew great public atten-
tion, brewed myth and rumour, incited near panic along the seaboards, and in
fact achieved httle in the total scheme of war. Admiral Tirpitz had no illusions.
In late September he wrote: “The cruisers out at sea must one after the other
perish for lack of coal, provisions, and refitting stations.” They lived on
borrowed time. Their chief value, as always, was in tying up large hunting
forces.
In the northwest Atlantic the 4th Cruiser Squadron had to deal with the
raiders, and also round up German merchant ships or bottle them up in
39
neutral harbours. To handle the job, until his ill-fated cruise west, Rear Admi-
ral Craddock had five cruisers. The fast cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe were
somewhere along the Atlantic coast. In the first few days of war Craddock
actually spotted Karlsruhe. His ships were too slow to catch her but he cut her
off from shipping in the rich hunting ground off Newfoundland. Big ocean
hners and a stream of freighters passed as usual off Newfoundland and Nova
Scotia. It was the focal point for raiders. Convoys weren’t organized, though,
except for troopers, and these were well protected: the first million men from
overseas reached England without loss of a single life.
On the outbreak of war Niobe, like the west coast ships, was turned over to
the RN for operational control with Captain R.G. Corbett, RN, in command.
Stirred from her state of near decay in Halifax, she was ready for sea in three
weeks. The two old sloops on the west coast were of no use as warships.
Algerine became a depot ship and Shearwater the submarine tender. Most of
their companies were rushed across to man Niobe. Volunteers across Canada
with some kind of experience found their way on board. Still short-handed,
she steamed to St. John’s. The Royal Naval Reserve branch there had been
going since 1900 and provided 107 trained seamen. Niobe for the first time in
her Canadian career had a full complement of 700.
She took a trooper with the Royal Canadian Regiment to Bermuda in
September, but defects stopped her from escorting the great October troop
convoy out of Gaspe. She searched among the icebergs off Belle Isle for a
raider reported - falsely - inside the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then joined the RN
cruisers blockading off New York. Sheltering in neutral ports from Cartegena
to Boston were some ninety enemy merchant ships; thirty-two were in New
York. Blockading was tedious work: sixteen days off New York, boarding
and searching every vessel for contraband and for German reservists trying to
get home, back to Halifax for the filthy job of coahng ship, fresh provisions,
then on station once again. The winter chili was warmed by the friendliness of
the U.S. Navy, whose ships would raise a cheer in passing, and by British
Hners who stopped to send over lush goodies from their galleys.
By midsummer 1915, Niobe was worn out. Her funnels were collapsing,
her boilers and main bulkheads were in bad shape. She needed a major
overhaul, but at her age and stage it wasn’t worth it. Admiralty offered a
replacement cruiser three years younger, but by now the RCN couldn’t find
the men. Its hands were full trying to maintain a modest fleet of small ships for
coastal patrol and trade protection.
THE U-BOATS
On the other side of the Atlantic the U-boat had surfaced dramatically as a
tremendously potent weapon of war. Within the first few weeks four RN
cruisers had been sunk, three of them by a single U-boat in a span of two
40
THE GREAT WAR
hours. U-boats began sinking merchant ships in October, scrupulous at first

about the rules. Most sinkings were by gunfire or by scuttHng or placing
explosives on board after the ships’ crews took to the boats. Torpedoes were
saved for large, fast merchant ships, troopers, and warships. The RN had only
the imprecise hydrophone and the naked eye to detect U-boats, and nothing
but guns or ramming to fight them. The simple depth charge only started
development in 1915 and got its first kill two years later.
In February, 1915, with his hopes dashed for a quick victory in France,
Kaiser Wilhelm declared the approaches to Britain a war zone. Allied ships
could be sunk without warning or any guarantee for safety of the crew.
Neutrals would be respected but they took their chances. The gloves were off.
Sinkings increased dramatically - by summer of 1915 they had climbed to
nearly 100 a month. Still, ships sailed independently. Admiralty made no
move toward convoy for protecting trade. Escorts were for troopships only.
In May, the twenty-six-knot Cunard luxury liner Lusitania sailed from
New York, her departure advertised as usual in the New York Times. Right
below the ad was the German embassy’s announcement that British flag
vessels were “liable to destruction . . . and that travellers sailing in the war
zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.” She sailed
with a full passenger list, streamers flying, the band playing, champagne corks
popping. In sight of the south coast of Ireland in broad dayhght she was hit by
a single torpedo from a submerged U-boat and went down with loss of 1,000
hves. Among the drowned were 128 Americans.
The U.S. was outraged. President Wilson didn’t go to war - that would
take another two years - but the seeds were firmly planted. Germany reined in
the U-boats for a time. They had a hey-day in the Mediterranean and off
Africa and were careful with neutrals. Still, by the end of 1916 they had sunk
1,360 ships.
During this period the U-boat fleet continued to grow and the sinkings
continued to climb. The RN tried everything; blockading the submarine
ports; anti-submarine minefields; search and patrol by sea and air in subma-
rine transit areas and in shipping focal points. They hatched desperate tricks
Hke the “Q” ships, little coasters or fishing vessels with concealed guns that
lured U-boats close, then dropped their disguise and blazed away.
An Okanagan fruit farmer, Clarence King, was a “Q” ship Navigator, First
Lieutenant, then Captain. He’d come to B.C. from England before the war
and had a merchant service Master’s ticket and in 1915 got a commission in
the Royal Naval Reserve. King duelled one U-boat to death, got two possi-
bles, and won a Distinguished Service Cross. His confirmed kill was one of
fourteen by the “Qs” through the war.
Naval intelhgence had broken the German codes early in the war and the
RN held that enormous advantage right to the end. There was also a fast
41
developing direction-finding net to fix U-boat positions by their wireless

transmissions. U-20, which sank Lusitania, had been accurately plotted by
Admiralty from intercepted signals on the day of the attack. But it all did Httle
good.
MADE IN CANADA
In spite of Admiralty blocking destroyer building in Canada there was some
complex warship construction. The technical know-how came from the
United States. In 1914 Admiralty had ordered twenty H-class submarines
from Bethlehem Steel and the Electric Boat Company of Groton, Connecti-
cut. Electric Boat held the Holland patents, which were the basis for most of
the submarines built before the war, CCl and CC2 included. U.S. neutraHty
caused problems so ten of the H-boats were built at Canadian Vickers in
Montreal under American supervision.^ Six completed in July, 1915, were
the first submarines to cross the Atlantic under their own power.
Shipyards build on building. Seamen learn by doing. After the first crash
training with CCl and CC2 out west, Adrian Keyes rejoined the RN. Young
Maitland-Dougall joined H-10 completing at Canadian Vickers. He then
qualified formally in RN submarines and spent a lot of time at sea in them on
anti-submarine patrols. In January, 1918, he took over command of subma-
rine D-3 from Barney Johnson, who had been with him in CCl and CC2. That
March D-3 was taken for a U-boat by a French airship, bombed, and sunk.
There were no survivors.
Barney Johnson had taken to submarines quickly, too. In 1915 he got com-
mand of the RN’S H-8, building at Vickers, a first for a reserve officer - and a
Canadian at that. Johnson took H-S to the U.K., stayed in command, and won
the Distinguished Service Order for courage and seamanship on hazardous
operations. He commanded RN submarines with hardly a break, including D-3.
In May, 1918, he went to the States to bring back the new H-14 and H-15, which
were transferred to the RCN to replace the worn-out CCl and CC2.
Johnson retired as a Commander, RNR, at war’s end, went back to the
marine business in Vancouver, and joined the RCNR at the first gun in 1939.
On his sixty-fifth birthday in 1943 - also the fiftieth anniversary of his
seagoing career - he was back at sea commanding the depot ship Preserver. In
the meantime, his son had been through the Royal Naval College of Canada
and gone to sea in merchant ships in the lean years between wars. Cast in the
Johnson mould, Barney Junior commanded the corvette Agassiz and two
* Canadian Vickers was a productive shipbuilder in World War Two as well. It was the lead
yard in building the high-tech St. Laurent classes in the fifties and sixties, and fifty years after
the H-boats Vickers was building nuclear submarine hull sections under contract for its old
mentor, Electric Boat.
42
THE GREAT WAR
frigates, fighting submarines during World War Two. Seagoing runs in the
blood.
JUTLAND
An intercepted German signal in late May, 1916, warned Admiral Jellicoe up
in Scapa Flow that at long last the German High Seas Fleet was coming out.
Admiral Scheer was heading up the North Sea, racing for the open ocean. The
Grand Fleet put to sea. With Beatty’s battle cruisers from Rosyth, it was an
enormous fleet of 150 ships: thirty battleships, eleven battle cruisers, thirty-
four cruisers, seventy-four destroyers, and one seaplane tender.
Near Jutland Bank off the entrance to the Baltic, JeUicoe joined battle with
Admiral Scheer and his somewhat smaller force. He lost six ships to the
German’s five. British communications didn’t measure up, and Scheer’s ships
proved better at night fighting. He got his fleet back to harbour pretty well
intact. JeUicoe had failed, and he found himself behind a desk as First Sea
Lord. The High Seas Fleet never seriously put to sea again. But intact and
snug in harbour, it pinned the RN’s Grand Fleet down.
As for centuries whenever Britain fought, the crux of any long and grimly
grinding war was trade - the food and fuel, the sustenance for people, the
material of war, the men in millions who must move across the sea. The
privateers and corsairs and flying squadrons of the past had never won a war.
But guerre de course by U-boats with their speed, their kilUng power, their sheer
numbers, and their near invulnerability could very weU succeed. In a single
week in 1916 three of them sank thirty ships on the south coast of England,
then eluded a huge search-and-patrol force. Widening the U-boat war, how-
ever, risked bringing in the United States. To the Httle ships patroUing around
Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence this was aU very far from Canadian
shores, but in the summer of 1916 there had been a grim note of warning.
The British naval blockade was squeezing Germany very hard and in
August their Deutschland, a big, unarmed cargo-carrying submarine, ran to
the U.S. for a cargo of nickel, tin, and crude rubber. To the American public it
seemed a rather glamorous venture. Then U-53 entered Newport, Rhode
Island. Without even topping up with fuel and within a few hours of sailing,
she sank five British ships just outside territorial waters. USN destroyers stood
back and watched, then rescued survivors. So U-boats could carry their attack
clear across the Atlantic when they chose.
UNRESTRICTED WAR
In January, 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm weighed the odds. Germany’s economy was
in deep trouble and her armies were mired down on two fronts, quite unable
to force a decision. She had 100 operational U-boats, and the U.S. would come
into the war sooner or later with her big, capable navy and huge resources. An
43
all-out effort now could drown Britain and resolve the issue, so on 1 February
unrestricted submarine warfare became the order of the day - no holds
barred, no ships spared. In three dark and bitter winter months 800 ships and
8,000 seamen went to the bottom of the sea. Fully a quarter of the merchant
ships that sailed from British ports were being sunk. By spring, losses were so
great that Admiralty’s analysts baldly projected the effective destruction of
the merchant fleet by November. That meant defeat for Britain, whatever
miracle might be wrought in France.
The ghastly statistics of loss were almost entirely of unescorted shipping.
Yet general convoy, the ancient device proven over centuries of sail in time of
war, was still resisted at the highest level. Admiral Jellicoe and Rear Admiral
Duff, his choice as head of the new Anti-Submarine Division, wouldn’t have
it. The arguments were various: congestion of ports; slowing down traffic;
inabihty of merchant ships to keep accurate station; ships gathered together
Hke sheep for slaughter; too few escorts to go around; the chronic resistance of
shipowners. Not one of these objections was new - all had been overcome
down the centuries. Technology had changed, and that was what the admirals
saw. Basic principles had not.
Convoy was as old as war at sea. Henry III had ordered Enghsh ships into
convoy in 1226. Acts of the British Parliament from 1650 had made convoy
mandatory in time of war. Shipowners, to be sure, didn’t like it, and merchant
captains chafed at being held back to the speed of the slowest, tied into
formation with the risk of coUision, and pushed around by the navy. And
delays, delays, delays. But convoy worked. In the War of the Austrian Succes-
sion, 300 unescorted British ships were taken by the enemy while ninety-six
convoys sailed without a single loss. At Lloyd’s Coffee House in London
underwriters’ rates reinforced the law. Between 1793 and 1815, for example,
premiums for convoyed ships were a half to a third of those for independents.
And here was a very important point: convoys brought the enemy to battle.
He couldn’t snatch prizes at random using single cruisers in guerre de course, so
he must come to the convoy, fight the escort, and risk battle with the support-
ing squadron. For almost 150 years nearly every major naval battle that had
been fought was over a convoy, merchant or military. Admiral Lord Nelson
said himself, “I consider the protection of trade the most essential service that
can be performed.... No ship, even the fastest, shall sail out of convoy.”
In February of 1917 the French government insisted the decimated cross-
Channel coal trade be put in convoy. The colHers crossed almost untouched.
The Scandinavian trade was losing a quarter of all its saiHngs, and Admiral
Beatty finally got authority to try convoys there in April. Losses dropped
immediately to one-quarter of one per cent. The case for convoy was clear.
At the end of April, faced with overwhelming evidence, the urging of some
junior admirals, and pressure from Prime Minister Lloyd George himself.
44
THE GREAT WAR
Admiral Jellicoe made the decision that was long overdue. Convoys were
quickly organized for inbound ships. The first reached Britain in May
unscathed. Halifax and Sydney became assembly ports and the first trade
convoy left Sydney on 10 July. Eastbound convoys were marshalled and
escorted seaward by little ships of the RCN. Royal Navy and U.S. Navy
cruisers and auxiliary cruisers served as ocean escort; destroyers and aircraft
met them in the U.K. approaches and successfully held off the U-boats.
By August, outbound vessels from the U.K. were in convoy. Sinkings
dropped below half of those in April. By October, losses in convoy were less
than one in a hundred, one-tenth the rate of independents. Convoy was
restored to its historic place in spite of the First Sea Lord’s dilatory hand and in
the barest nick of time.
That April, too, the United States declared war. The U-boat certainly was a
strong factor - by far the largest in the pubhc view. USN destroyers arrived at
Cork in southern Ireland to heavily reinforce the British escorts, and their
aircraft gave the Royal Naval Air Service a major boost.
It was not detection or weapons but the very nature of the convoy that
won, as it had for centuries. Urdike a scattered stream of independents, a
convoy could be routed around danger areas. Ships swept together into
convoys meant the U-boats had to search a vast empty ocean for a fraction of
the number of targets. To attack a convoy meant closing with the enemy,
risking a fight with the escort, and convoys could be reinforced with surface
and air escorts when they got to dangerous areas.
U-boats might slip in for torpedo attack, but the old days of finishing ship
after lone ship at will with cheap and easy gunfire or by boarding and
scutthng were no more. As unescorted ships grew rare in British waters the
U-boats had to reach further and further for their targets. With the U.S. in the
war from April, 1917, new hunting grounds for the Germans opened off
North America.
THE EAST COAST PATROLS

Against this darkening background the Canadian navy organized the East
Coast Patrols. Canada had requisitioned auxiHaries from the beginning of the
war and armed them with 3- and 6-pounder guns, and a 12-pounder when
one could be found. In 1916 seven vessels scratched together from govern-
ment service and yacht basins were the core of the east coast navy. With eight
more small auxiliaries they ran coastal patrols in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and
along the shores of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
Admiralty pointed out gratuitously that RN cruisers couldn’t protect trans-
ports against submarines and advised the RCN that year to triple its force to
thirty-six ships with 12-pounder guns, at least. The RN would provide noth-
ing but an officer to advise or take command.
45
Canada fired back. Britain had said from the start the Canadian effort
should be on land, and Their Lordships had blocked all Canadian proposals to
build warships in Canada. The RCN had rounded up every gun and every
volunteer it could find and sent them to the RN as they’d asked. The Overseas
Division of the RNCVR had sent 1,200 men and forty-seven of the best-
trained permanent force officers to the RN. The RN had demanded and got
much; it had given httle.
Kingsmill ordered a dozen trawler/mines weepers from Canadian Vickers
(an experienced yard now, no thanks to the RN) and the Poison Iron Works in
Toronto. Admiralty ordered twenty-four more. They also released some
trained men, including a number of Canadians, and sent a commander for the
East Coast Patrols.
He was an ill-considered choice. Sir Charles Coke had been Vice Admiral
in charge at Cork when Lusitania was sunk. He fared badly in the furore and
he was being shunted off. For him it was a dead end. The last thing Kingsmill
needed was a high-blown flag officer with a chip on his shoulder. Coke
wouldn’t adapt. He put his fingers in everything except his own business, got
people’s backs up in Ottawa and on the coast. Then he was dumped. An RN
rehef was on the way, but Kingsmill, unusually quick and decisive, chose his
own Captain of Patrols, the redoubtable Walter Hose.
Captain Hose had his problems. The operational chain of command was a
jungle: a Royal Navy rear admiral in Sydney ran the ocean convoys and
reported to Admiralty, while coastal shipping and convoys were controlled by
the RCN reporting to Ottawa. Captain Hose, in charge of patrols, provided
escorts for all of them, including the first leg to seaward of the ocean convoys.
He had a deputy. Commander Newcombe, in Hahfax who ran the patrol
ships stationed there.
But Rear Admiral WO. Storey, RN (retired), the superintendent of the
Halifax dockyard, had charge of all local defence forces, including mine-
sweeping and patrols in his area. He, hke Hose, answered to Ottawa. On top
of this, the RN’s Commander-in-Chief America and West Indies co-
ordinated all the British and Canadian authorities in Canada and the U.S.
involved in protection of trade. He dealt with Washington, went often to
Ottawa and Hahfax, and frequently ecHpsed Kingsmill as naval adviser to the
government.
To the RN the RCN was an appendage, and an awkward one at that.
Kingsmill wasn’t the man to sort things out. His experience was at sea. He had
had no staff training and was not a notable administrator or an assertive or
colourful man. With a tiny staff he had to deal almost alone with these tangled
threads of command and try to build his untidy Httle navy into something far
bigger. That needed support from his pohtical masters. But with the country
sucked completely into the terrible carnage of France, with the shattering
46
THE GREAT WAR
issue of conscription and an election looming in late 1917, politicians were

little help to the navy they had never understood.
Watching developments in the U-boat war, aircraft were clearly essential.
Admiralty recommended Canada get its own, but Kingsmill couldn’t get the
money from Prime Minister Borden. It was a blessing the U-boats didn’t
come west that summer. In the fall Admiralty warned Kingsmill that the
success of the convoy system would Hkely push U-boats across the Atlantic to
find easy targets. Attacks by big, powerful, heavy-gunned U-cruisers should
be expected any time after March, 1918. They could lay mines, too. Admiralty
ordered another thirty-six trawlers plus 100 drifters from Canadian yards.
Some would be available in spring to strengthen the patrols, but Canada
would have to man them.
Transatlantic convoys sailed from Hampton Roads, New York, and Sydney
from July, 1917. The fast convoys of British and U.S. troopships and big cargo
vessels ran from Hahfax starting in September. Feeders came down from
Quebec. In December, when the river froze, the slow convoy terminal shifted
from Sydney to Halifax. This meant even greater strain on port facilities:
loading berths, fueUing, suppHes and provisions, stevedoring, maintenance
and repair. And for the navy this called for more minesweeping, more patrol-
hng, more escort work. Demands grew as winter came.
HALIFAX CATASTROPHE
On the morning of 6 December, SS Mont Blanc of French registry steamed into
Hahfax harbour to anchor and await her convoy. She passed the dockyard,
then, going through to Bedford Basin, she collided with another ship. On
deck was a cargo of benzol. Some drums ruptured, bursting into flames, and
the Mont Blanc crew scurried off and abandoned her. She drifted, blazing and
out of control, down the harbour.
On board the old Niobe in the dockyard the alarm was raised. Through the
flames the red flag at Mont Blanc's masthead said she carried explosives. In fact,
in her hold were 2,700 tons of guncotton, picric acid, and TNT. In double time
Niobe’s bosun. Warrant Officer Albert Mattison, was away in the ship’s
pinnace with six men. They swarmed up Mont Blanc's side aiming to scuttle
her and at that moment she exploded.
Mattison and his crew were gone in a flash. It was the biggest man-made
explosion ever, until Hiroshima. The force of it levelled a full square mile of
the city. Sixteen hundred died that day; 9,000 were injured, including 200
blinded by flying glass; 6,000 people in the city of50,000 were homeless with
winter setting in. Niobe was badly damaged and naval installations suffered
heavily. The College had to be abandoned. When the ensuing fire threatened
the naval magazine, the city was evacuated until that danger was over. The
explosion was a terrible catastrophe for Halifax and its people; as well, it
47
crippled naval, shipping, and transport operations at a most crucial time,

especially since Russia was out of the war and the battle in France was in a very
bad way.
THE BATTLE OF 1918

A monumental task fell on the undersized Royal Canadian Navy. In March,
1918, American troops, Canadian reinforcements, and masses of material
moved in convoy across the ocean. By April, Captain Hose had fifty ships
operating. New construction followed the ice down the St. Lawrence and he
had 100 by July, working out of Sydney, HaHfax, and St.Johns. There was a
cruising base with fuel and essentials at Gaspe for the Gulf force and another
at Louisbourg. The little ships, half-equipped and thinly manned, had all the
endless wearying services on their backs - approach and harbour patrols,
daily minesweeping of harbour approaches, assembly of convoys, local
escort, escort of ocean convoys for a day or two outbound.
Hose needed 2,300 men for his ships and he had 1,500. Admiralty returned
200 RNCVRs and a few RN specialists. Three hundred more came from the
Newfoundland Reserve. He urgently needed fast sloops, destroyers, or fast
trawlers. Without them, he reported, his force had “not one gun which would
be able to get within range of a U-cruiser before the patrol vessel would, in all
probability, be sunk.” Admiralty could provide no ships, other than lending
some of their Canadian-built trawlers. As for the USN, the RN Commander-
in-Chief was squeezing everything he could get for Britain’s approaches.
But the U.S. Navy did provide valuable help where the Royal Navy didn’t.
In spring they took over patrols eastward to the longitude of Lockeport, Nova
Scotia, and sent six sub-chasers and two torpedo boats to HaHfax under
Canadian control. They also agreed in April, 1918, to help the RCN start its
own Naval Air Service and sent planes to HaHfax and Sydney in the mean-
time. Now Borden had to foot the bill.
With the submarine season at hand and new trawlers coming down the
river. Hose had more problems: hasty construction in inexperienced yards
meant hull and machinery defects; dockyard facilities were wretched; the new
crews were high on new-entry seamen dead low on experience, and he had no
trained people to work them up into effective ships’ companies. In addition,
equipment was terribly short, with everything having to come from the U.K.
There were not nearly enough hydrophones to go around, and some ships
went to sea without guns. Half a dozen depth charges was the ration.
The first U-boat crossed the Atlantic in May and found what she wanted -
coastal traffic wasn’t convoyed. Off Maryland in one month U-151 sank
twenty-two ships in the old famiHar way. Not one was under escort. The
same boat also laid mines off Delaware that sank a tanker. Next came U-156.
She announced her arrival by sinking two big sailing ships southeast of Sable
48
THE GREAT WAR
Island in early July. Then she ran to the U.S. coast and laid mines. The cruiser
USS San Diego struck one off Fire Island Light and sank. The submarine then
sank ships off Boston and Newport, in plain sight of vacationers on Cape
Cod. Tracked by Admiralty’s communications intelligence, she moved to the
Gulf of Maine for more sinkings, then to Canadian waters.
On 2 August U-156 stopped a big four-masted schooner called Dornfontein
off the Fundy shore and set her afire. The crew rowed ashore in their dories
and the news flashed to Hahfax. In the next two days seven schooners were
sunk further around the Nova Scotia shore. In Hahfax the effect was electric.
A vital convoy, HC 12, was about to sail with seventeen ships and 12,500
Canadian and American troops. Escort forces were thin and ill-equipped. The
enemy could be right at the harbour mouth. And the 130 miles of continental
shelf was a fertile field for planting mines: U-cruisers carried forty each.
But the convoy was ready and it sailed on the afternoon of 4 August. The
trawler minesweepers led, then came the three U.S. sub-chasers on an anti-
submarine sweep. A close escort of ten trawlers and drifters led the troopers
out, but they were too slow and gradually dropped behind. Luck was in,
though. As HC 12 cleared to seaward U-156 was dawdHng over far smaller fry
- a fishing schooner near Shelburne and two more the next day off La Have.
That morning, the 5th of August, a British tanker cleared Halifax for
Mexico at first light. The Master of Luz Blanca had ignored Naval Shipping
Control’s warning to wait till dusk and he didn’t bother to zigzag. Just before
noon, thirty-five miles south of Sambro Light, he took a torpedo from the
Halifax-bound U-156. Luz Blanca, damaged but unbowed, turned back and
bravely fought off the surfaced U-boat with her 12-pounder. After a lopsided
exchange of gunfire the tanker lay stopped and afire with her gallant company
pulhng for shore. They were seventeen miles from Sambro Light.
The alarm spread from a steamer that saw the attack and the trawlers and
drifters returning from convoy HC 12 got the message from Hahfax radio. But
they got the wrong position, for they found nothing in the haze. Other ships
arrived very late. First on the scene were the submarine-chasers. They picked
up survivors from the boats five hours after the torpedo struck. Sweeps for
the submarine by every ship available turned up nothing. Wireless procedures
were poor and no one showed up very well. U-156, in fact, had raced south to
American waters where she sank three more steamships before having
another go off Nova Scotia en route home.
Those four frantic days had immediate repercussions. C-in-C immediately
suspended Halifax as a convoy terminal. The next HC convoy gathered at
Sydney while ships due from American ports gathered at New York. The two
sections joined well out to sea for the ocean leg. Shipping control was tight-
ened. Canadian coastal shipping and traffic for convoy assembly were
grouped into local convoys and escorted to the limit of meagre resources.
49
Quebec became the terminal for Canadian convoys so more escorts were
needed for the vulnerable 600 miles of the river and the Gulf.
No lone Canadian ship was, as Hose had said, any match for a U-cruiser on
the surface, but they were all Canada had. Admiral Kingsmill had time to sign
a tactical instruction on 7 August. It was drafted by his newly arrived and
sorely needed RN Staff Officer Operations. Apparently the first issued to the
fledgling flotilla, it warned that they’d be out-gunned by a U-cruiser. But, the
Admiral said, press in, fire at the pressure hull, zigzag to avoid being hit, and
try to cause some damage. U-boats were a long way from home, their aim was
sinking merchant ships, and they’d be rash to risk damage. They’d most likely
submerge and could be attacked with depth charges. More succinct instruc-
tions followed, and these were crystal clear. And timely.
The first U.S. Navy air detachment, as promised, arrived at Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia, on 19 August and an American escort squadron swept Nova
Scotia waters just about the time U-156 came back. The U-cruiser struck first
near Cape Breton. Her captain, a real innovator, captured a Canadian steam
trawler called Triumph off Canso, put a gun aboard, and sent her off as a mini-
raider. Triumph was a familiar vessel on the fishing grounds. The German crew
gleefully deceived and sank six Canadian schooners. When the coal ran out
they scuttled her. The word came ashore when Triumph's crew rowed into
Canso. U-156 sank another small steamer west of St. Pierre on the 25th of
August and later that day caught a group of four schooners and set about
sinking them with explosives.
Right at that point over the horizon hove a Canadian search hne. They were
Cartier, the senior officer, Hochelaga, and two trawlers all in Hne abreast and
four miles apart. Hochelaga spotted two schooners and turned toward, fol-
lowed by Trawler 32, to warn them about the latest U-boat scare. At about four
miles Hochelaga saw one of the schooners suddenly disappear, then sighted the
enemy - the low ominous shape of the big U-cruiser.
Hochelaga's Captain put his wheel hard over and rang on full speed - not
zigzagging right for the enemy with his 12-pounder blazing, but back toward
Cartier. As soon as Cartier read Hochelaga's “enemy in sight” he ordered all
ships to go for the U-boat full speed. But it had submerged and the four
warships combed fruitlessly through the wreckage of the schooners. The
golden moment for Walter Hose’s East Coast Patrols was gone. There were
six more sinkings from Sable Island to the Grand Banks in August, one of
them to U-156. But she didn’t make it home. Off Scotland she hit a mine and
became one of the thirty-five U-boats sunk by mines during the war.
Hochelaga's failure in the face of the enemy wasn’t for inexperience or lack of
training. Her Captain, Lieutenant Robert Legate, had been on active service
since the start of the war, was commissioned in 1915 in the RNCVR, and had
held command at sea for nearly two years. Kingsmill’s instruction must have
50
THE GREAT WAR
been fresh in his mind, but in the moment of decision his nerve had failed.
Now he faced Court Martial. The judgement: he failed to “use his utmost
exertion to bring his ship into action.” He was dismissed from the service.
Captain Hose, who always took a warm interest in all his people, must have
been a deeply disappointed man.
The last marauder, Deutschland, again laid mines near Sambro Light and
another field off Peggy’s Cove, then sank a trawler. The Quebec convoys
now were routed north through the Strait of Belle Isle. Thanks to the patrols
they, and the Sydney convoys, all got through unscathed.
The U-boat and its truly destructive powers had been hysterically portrayed
by the press. Its sinister spectre had mesmerized Canadians in their armchairs for
over three years. Now these U-boats were right at Canada’s door, wreaking
havoc as they pleased. Where was the navy? The press blasted it as ineffectual,
helpless, while fishermen drowned. Twenty-eight vessels had been sunk in
Canadian waters in a little over a month. Nineteen were victims of U-156. But
twenty-three were fishing vessels. Only Luz Blanca and one other independent
ship were significant in the scheme of war. Convoy was the important thing, not
trying to be everywhere at once, and convoy had proved its point. The U-boats
themselves all reported a shortage of major targets in Canadian waters while
there were plenty off the States. The ragged, half-trained East Coast Patrols made
convoy possible at a crucial time in a crucial place. The RCN did the job.
Captain Walter Hose had the art of getting the best out of whatever he was
given - ships or people. But he had to report that fall: “The officers and men
of the vessels are untrained, not only in the technical knowledge required to
handle the weapons and offensive appliances on board the ships, but also in
service discipHne, being drafted to ships as hardly more than raw recruits.”
And the war wasn’t over. The U-boats had had such a time along the U.S.
Atlantic coast they’d surely be back in strength. Again the Minister, C.C.
Ballantyne, asked Britain’s First Lord for equipment and expertise for build-
ing destroyers in Canada. Again the request was turned down. With all the
rebuffs from Britain and all the generous aid from the U.S., still no one
ventured to stretch the apron strings of Empire and ask the next-door
neighbour for a hand with building ships.
Ballantyne had Httle confidence in Kingsmill now, but the government had
given him practically nothing to work with. Time and again he had appealed
for ships and staff and equipment. But neither his pohtical masters nor Admi-
ralty had paid effective heed.
THE ROYAL CANADIAN NAVAL AIR SERVICE

The one bright light in the darkness of approaching winter was the presence
of U.S. naval aircraft. By September they were covering convoys eighty miles
to seaward of Halifax and Sydney and responding quickly to sighting reports.
51
A USN-RCN-RN meeting in Washington in April, 1918, had put things

together and Borden had belatedly agreed. Canada built air stations at North
Sydney and Eastern Passage, south of Dartmouth. The U.S. Naval Reserve
Flying Corps brought six Curtiss flying boats to each station, all under
command of Lieutenant Richard E. Byrd, USN. Dirigibles were ordered. Kite
balloons went aloft from ships with submarine lookouts. Naval air was in
business under a very capable man - Byrd became famous as the Antarctic
explorer - and a vast rehef it was to Walter Hose.
At the same time, Canada’s first air force, the Royal Canadian Naval Air
Service, was begun. The Royal Air Force lent an officer to command. Fhght
training of eighty cadets and 1,000 airmen began with the USN in Boston. A
few cadets and some sailors went to England to train as airship coxswains.
Within a month, though, the war was over and none of them saw action. The
USN gave Canada the aircraft, equipment, and spares.
Canadians had flocked to the Royal Naval Air Service from the beginning
of the war, the brilliant Raymond Colhshaw among them. John Barron of the
old Canada cadets was the first Canadian to quahfy as an RNAS pilot. He flew
airships, was mentioned in dispatches for an attack on a U-boat, and was
decorated by Italy for commanding the naval air group at Taranto. Only seven
U-boats were actually sunk by British air/sea co-operation in the war. Five of
them were by Canadian pilots. The only U-boat killed solely by a British
aircraft was hit by Canadian Sub-Lieutenants N.A. Magor and C.E.S. Lusk in
September, 1917, flying an American Curtiss flying boat. Here was a fine pool
of experienced naval aviators for the Canadian Service, but they could not be
spared in 1918. With peacetime, however, the people and the planes were all
disbanded. At the same time, the Canadians serving in the RAF, who had
formed a Canadian air force overseas, were also discharged.
THE MERCHANT SHIPS

Canada’s great merchant fleet had practically disappeared by 1914 and there
was virtually no capacity to build. A new policy for a government-owned
merchant service began to stir in 1917. Losses were soaring. Borden was
angry at Britain’s offhanded requisitioning of Canadian-owned ships. Can-
ada built shipyards and a steel rolHng mill, and building boomed. By the end
of the war twenty-six steamships had been built for Britain and sixty-three
for the Canadian government. The sixty-three new ships were completed just
after the war and formed the first national flag fleet, the Canadian Govern-
ment Merchant Marine. It was operated by the newly formed Canadian
National Railway. Hold-over technology from the days of sail produced
forty-five wooden-hulled steamers for Britain. To cover losses some sixty
Great Lakers went to sea as well. Altogether, the U-boats sank forty-five
Canadian steamships.
52
THE GREAT WAR
THE RECORD
The first U-boat war was foreseen by no one and it was a turning point in the
history of sea warfare. Command of the sea by a superior fleet hke Britain’s
now was not enough. Striking directly at trade, the awesome and economical
new weapon, the U-boat, could actually win.
The record was there to read. The German U-boat fleet was not vast. At its
peak in mid-1918 there were fifty-five operational boats on patrol. The
Germans built 345 during the war and lost 178 in action. Of 13,000 who
went to sea in them, fully 40 per cent died. But in four years they destroyed
over 5,000 ships - 11 million tons - and killed 15,000. Of those ships, only 5
per cent were sunk in convoy - a mute indictment of the admirals’ stubborn
stand against it. Only one-tenth of one per cent were sunk in convoy escorted
by ships and planes together.
The only answer to the U-boat was convoy. That meant escorts in great
numbers, small enough for economy but long in endurance, fast enough, and
specially equipped to detect and fight an elusive, dangerous enemy. And it
meant aircraft co-ordinated closely with the ships.
The U-boat men came within a hair of winning the Kaiser’s war. And they
had found out plenty for themselves, which they wouldn’t forget if others did.
Late in the war, frustrated at trying to slip through convoy screens sub-
merged, they tried something new: get well ahead, then run in on the surface
at night, Hke a torpedo boat, but submerging if attacked. It worked. It worked
for young Leutnant Karl Donitz on a convoy in the Mediterranean. From this
he built his Rudeltactik, the wolf-pack attack that would nearly win for Donitz
and for Germany another battle, another war, only twenty-five years later.
THE NAVY’S PLACE

Twelve of the minesweeping anti-submarine trawlers commissioned in the
RCN in late 1918 were named for the wrenching land battles of France and
Flanders - Ypres, Vimy, Armentieres - where thousands of young Canadians
had died. That the navy should wear the army’s battle honours said what was
foremost in Canadian minds. That so many died in the mud can, in some part
at least, be put at the door of the failed naval and maritime policy of the young
Dominion. From Britain and its Admiralty, beset with war on a great scale,
had come no encouragement, Uttle help for Canada, and an insatiable appetite
for her manpower. Mother England’s priorities were hers. If her children
wanted a set of their own they were on their own.
By November, 1918, the Royal Canadian Navy had scratched together
some 9,600 all ranks, over 100 ships, and an embryo Naval Air Service. A
national flag merchant fleet was emerging, too, and modern shipbuilding had
begun. But the public mainly scorned the navy, tiny compared with army
numbers and without a victory to its name. Neither public nor politicians
53
understood its very real achievement. The witnesses to it were the U-boats
themselves that found no worthwhile targets when they came to Canadian
waters. The young and struggHng RCN filled a certain vital gap in the whole
great net of trade protection. Without that net the war in Europe could never
have been won. For trade, as always, was the key.
Another old lesson was new to Canada, steeped as it was in the myth that
militias won the wars. A navy must have a soHd professional peacetime base; a
navy can never be built overnight. Neither could the industrial base, and a
navy and a country must have that if it would survive. For those who faced the
tumult of expansion in the RCN in World War Two and who, with untrained
men, ill-fitted ships, and weak air cover, did desperate battle with Admiral
Donitz’s U-boats, this whole story had a terribly famOiar ring. Every act,
except the long delay in starting convoy, had been played through tragically
before.
History’s lessons are there to see. But one must always look.
54
CHAPTER FOUR
INTERMISSION
POST-WAR POLITICS
ON 11 NOVEMBER 1918 THE GREAT WAR WAS OVER. SIXTY THOUSAND OF
Canada’s young men and women were dead, as many more broken in mind or
body. The survivors picked up their Hves. The navy that had just begun to find
itself dispersed. Canada wanted nothing more of war.
During the Imperial Conference of 1917, Admiralty had proposed again
their single-navy notion with contributions from the dominions and col-
onies. Sir Robert Borden had learned a good deal in the war about British
thinking, British generals and “colonial” troops, and their dedicated self-
interest. Flatly, he said no. Canadians would control their own forces, their
own men, where and when they fought. They would control, too, what they
paid for - though when peace came that meant next to nothing.
In late 1919 Admiral Lord Jellicoe swung around the globe. The man
whose Grand Fleet in the eyes of the world hadn’t met the mark, and who had
been so slow to make the one decision that beat the U-boats, now advised
Commonwealth governments on their navies - a used warship salesman by
any other name. In Ottawa he found Kingsmill a Vice Admiral and knighted,
too. Sir Charles’s staff was smaller than a squadron’s and his navy even
smaller. It was down to 500 officers and men, two useless old cruiser hulks,
and a couple of submarines. The Naval Air Service was gone, the dockyards in
decay. Naval policy did not exist.
The U.S. Navy equalled Britain’s now, but war with the United States was
unthinkable. The enemy of the future was Japan and her navy was growing. If
Japan and the States fought, Canada would need a decent-sized force on the
west coast to preserve neutrality, and there were two coasts. Jellicoe knew
Canadians had never agreed on naval policy and he whipped out a whole
menu of options complete with prices. At $4 milHon Canada could have a
55
minimum local defence: eight submarines, four destroyers, eight anti-

submarine patrol boats, and four minesweepers. A tidy two-ocean navy able
to contribute to Empire defence could be had for $20 milHon tops: two battle
cruisers, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, sixteen submarines, thirteen
destroyers, and local defence vessels and auxiharies.
Before the war Borden had been pushing $35 million for three Dread-
noughts for the RN, so this was certainly a bargain. But no pohcy decision
came from cabinet. If ships were going free, though . . . Canada took the two
U.S.-built submarines, H-14 and H-15, that Barney Johnson had left in Ber-
muda at the end of the war, and the light cruiser Aurora and destroyers Patriot
and Patrician. Aurora was commanded by a Royal Navy captain and the
destroyers by RCN Lieutenants Charles Beard and G.C. Jones. Both were
cadet-trained in Canada and since midshipman days had been at sea with the
RN.
Arthur Meighen, briefly Conservative Prime Minister, argued at the
Imperial Conference of 1921 that Britain shouldn’t renew her treaty with
Japan. It wouldn’t go with the League of Nations idea. Besides, it could stir
mistrust in the U.S. - for Canada, a live consideration. Then President Warren
Harding invited the world powers to Washington to confer on disarmament.
They agreed to a ratio of capital ships - Britain 5, U.S. 5, Japan 3, Prance and
Italy 1.75 - and a Hmit on total tonnage. That meant scrapping many ships.
Canada grandly agreed to a 40 per cent cut of next to nothing.
Later that year the Liberals and Mackenzie King were in power. King had
deep-rooted anti-military views. So did his diverse caucus, which was about
all they had in common. King said at the next Imperial Conference that any
future decision for Canada to go to war was “a matter which her own
Parhament will wish to decide.” But he cut defence spending to the point
where such talk was meaningless.
The League of Nations, not the old system of alliances, seemed to promise
peace. The temper of the world was certainly to reduce armaments. But
Canada’s defence spending in the roaring twenties was a whisper at the
bottom of the heap. In 1922 cabinet slashed the navy estimates from $2.5 to
$1.5 million. In 1923-24, for example, Canadians spent $1.46 per capita on
defence. Britons spent $23.04; France somewhat more than that; Australians
$3.30. The isolationist Americans spent around $7.
MERE SURVIVAL
Canada had won the real feel of independence in the war. But she hadn’t faced
the hard reality of looking after herself. Captain Walter Hose, having taken
the helm from Kingsmill, faced the crucial question. How, on less than a
shoestring, would he keep the navy alive? Since Laurier in 1910, no sort of
consensus on a navy had emerged. It had stumbled into a real raison d'etre late
56
INTERMISSION
in the war but produced no gripping Canadian feats at sea. On the contrary,
Canadians still had no idea what a navy was about.
Britons were weaned on theirs. Americans understood their navy well in
terms of their own place in the world. Vital as a navy was for a sovereign
trading nation, Canadian politicians wouldn’t generate the leadership. Cap-
tain Hose remembered his experience helping the self-generated Victoria
RNCVR of 1913, with Reserve sailors in Rainbow, in the submarines, and in the
patrols. Canada, Hose argued, never would have a navy until it found a place
in the hearts and minds of Canadians. His answer then was to take the navy to
the people, to start Reserve units right across the country. Where militia
regiments had for years been such a part of the local fabric. Naval Reserve
units must go, too; and, of course, they would provide a pool of naval-trained
civilians and the machinery for inland recruiting in event of war.
Hose made the hard decisions. He returned Aurora and the submarines to
the RN and shut the Youth Training Estabhshment for young sailors in Hali-
fax. The Naval College - the only continuous thread since the navy’s birth -
closed its doors. From then until 1942junior officers for the RCN were trained
with the Royal Navy’s cadets in England. He pressed Admiralty to find billets
at sea and on advanced courses for his handful of RCN officers. The RN was
offering junior officers a year at Cambridge University, but Canadians inter-
ested in broadening their education were told their navy couldn’t afford the
cost of £1 per day.
Walter Hose deliberately scrapped the navy as a force and spent every
penny he could find on the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. One
destroyer and two trawler minesweepers remained on each coast and they
were devoted to training Reserves. He made it quite clear to the tiny perma-
nent force that “its main role was to foster, encourage and train the RCNVR.”
History would prove his decision sound.
THE WAVY NAVY

Hose’s two staff officers plugged away tirelessly, spoke to service clubs,
cajoled, encouraged, found a few dollars here, a few there. Local effort had to
do it. In each town it was a handful of keen people, usually with wartime
experience at sea, who got on with it in the resourceful sailor’s way. They
found corners in drill sheds, quarters over laundries and in old factory build-
ings. They dipped in their own pockets. They scrounged equipment, devised
training aids, organized seamanship training camps at summer cottages. A
naval wireless net linked them and trained telegraphists, too.
The RCNVR (not the old RNCVR, which was a recruiting device for the
Royal Navy) grew steadily. By 1925 there were “half companies” at fifty men
each in fifteen major cities. Montreal had one English, one French. They all
grew, and there were nineteen Naval Reserve divisions by late 1939. The main
57
ports had registries of trained merchant service officers and men who agreed
to serve in emergency. That was called the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve or
RCNR.
RCNVR ratings got twenty-five cents per drill and such uniforms as could
be found. Most were kitted out with old wartime flat caps and collars with
wavy tapes stitched around the edge, which had distinguished Reserves from
the permanent force. Officers were paid nothing and had to dig in their own
pockets for their uniforms. It was quite an outlay - regular blue uniform,
greatcoat and burberry raincoat, plus the ceremonial frock coat, sword, and
mess jacket and several sets of high-necked summer whites. They must at
least look the part.
The war-surplus sailors’ caps and collars disappeared, but RCNVR officers
kept the same “wavy” shaped gold rings on the sleeve that the Royal Navy
had devised for their RNVR. In the same RN mould, the professional merchant
service officers of the RCNR wore rings of narrow interwoven gold lace on
their naval uniforms. Only permanent force officers could wear the sohd
straight rings with the round “executive curl.”
This kind of distinction, between those who were and those who weren’t
quite, was the sort of Enghsh aberration that Canada’s navy could well have
done without. It served no useful purpose. An officer must stand or fall on
capability, not cosmetics. It was divisive. When war came, the navy was so
largely “wavy” that the few straight-ring RCN officers seemed to be a some-
what snobbish elite. A standing British jest was transplanted to Canada: “The
RCNVR are gentlemen trying to be officers; the RCNR are officers trying to be
gentlemen; the RCN are neither trying to be both. ” That difference in the rank
rings persisted until after World War Two.
Summer training at the coasts, and learning from the few professionals at
sea, was the highHght of the Reservist’s year. And for that period he was
actually paid! In the lean depression years the naval divisions provided a lot of
support for those on tough times. The Wavy Navy built up a special esprit of
its own.
And as it was, in 1939 the RCNVR had some 2,000 officers and men and that
about equalled the number in the permanent navy. As well, in every city in
Canada the navy was there. A man could join it by taking the streetcar
downtown. In fact, the great majority of Canada’s wartime sailors had never
seen the sea before.
INTEGRATION, 1922
Government economies that forced the 1922 cuts put the three services into
one Department of National Defence and “integrated” them under one Chief
of Staff. Major General J.H. MacBrien now controlled the three services and
became chief adviser to the government on all mihtary, air, and naval matters.
58
INTERMISSION
Walter Hose dug in his heels. He would simply not accept a situation where
he, as head of the navy, had no direct access to the Minister. Small as it was, the
navy’s voice must be heard at cabinet level. There were some very difficult
and acrimonious times, but Hose had an astute ally in Georges Desbarats, the
deputy minister, who had been with the navy from the start. Doggedly he
pressed the navy’s point. MacBrien resigned in frustration and the post of
Chief of Staff disappeared. Finally, in 1928 Commodore Walter Hose became
the first Chief of Naval Staff. The RCAF, formally in being since 1924, stayed
under the Chief of the General Staff until 1938.
THE MERCHANT FLEET

The war-built merchant ships managed by Canadian National Railways were
slow and coal-fired, and few could carry passengers. Thus, they were uneco-
nomical and one by one were sold or scrapped. No government merchant
service pohcy emerged so they weren’t replaced.
The sole addition was a prestige service begun in the mid-twenties to the
Caribbean by the five “Lady Boats” - Lady Rodney, Lady Nelson, etc. But great
shipping names Hke Canadian Pacific and Cunard had only the memory of
Canadian roots. The Canadian Government Merchant Marine dwindled
away. Foreign flag ships enjoying their own governments’ subsidies pros-
pered on Canada’s huge overseas trade and passenger traffic. In the United
States the Jones Act made it illegal for non-American ships to ply the coastal
trade. It kept their shipping alive and apphes to this day. But in Canada, as
before 1914, there was no policy at all. By 1939 there were only thirty-eight
Canadian ocean-going ships, averaging httle over 6,000 tons.
NEW SHIPS, NEW LIFE

In 1928 two used RN destroyers renamed Champlain and Vancouver replaced
the worn-out Patriot and Patrician. Commodore Hose got approval for two
brand new ships to be built in Britain, the first-ever ordered to RCN specifica-
tions. They made some concessions to the North Atlantic, which the Royal
Navy had never deigned to admit - hull strengthening for ice-infested waters,
extra stability to counter icing, and steam heat.
Their sailors - as in all RN-built ships from the days of sail - still Hved in
messdecks where they slung their hammocks, stowed their gear, ate their
food, and spent their off-watch hours. Showers (quite new in RN ships!),
improved ventilation, and extra refrigeration made Hfe a little more amenable
for all. HMCS Saguenay and Skeena, by RN standards, were luxurious. When
they were commissioned in 1931 they were dubbed the “RoUs-Royce
destroyers.”
Commander Percy NeUes was appointed Captain of Saguenay and Com-
mander Victor Brodeur of Skeena. Since leaving the crippled old Niobe as
59
midshipmen in 1911, they had spent most of their time with the RN. Nelles had
edged Brodeur by a hair on promotion to Commander. That one place on the
Navy List defined their careers. Brodeur in 1939 was Commodore in command
on the west coast. NeUes had taken over as Chief of Naval Staff in 1934.
The year the Rolls-Royce destroyers were commissioned Japan invaded
Manchuria, and the League of Nations failed to act. From then on that inter-
national body carried only the hopes of the naive. At the same time the world
sunk into the Great Depression and there was another drive toward disarma-
ment. Canadian defence estimates were slashed and slashed again. Classmates
of Nelles and Brodeur and the Naval College graduates were mostly gone.
Ken Adams skippered tugboats on the west coast; John Grant was a school-
master; Pip Musgrave was a physical training instructor. Barney Johnson’s
son, following his father, had gone through the Naval College and to sea with
the merchant service. Sam Worth struck a bonanza - he ran an efficient
communications network for the rumrunners on the east coast but shpped
out with a whole skin when the underworld took over.
In 1933 came a major round of government spending cuts. The Chief of the
General Staff, Major General A.G.L. McNaughton, offered the opinion that
air and ground forces alone could deal with any invader. There wasn’t enough
money to properly run three services. So why not drop the navy? With
Canada’s geography - unless McNaughton was still thinking 1812 - that was
absurd, but no doubt the proposal appealed to the Treasury Board. Because
Walter Hose had stuck to his guns in 1922 there was till a navy head to speak
for the navy. Now he ran the guns out again.
Hose closed the range on the ministers and the mandarins at Treasury
Board and fired away. Canada needed a navy to prevent being drawn into a
war between the U.S. and Japan, which was by no means unlikely. Next there
was Canada’s very big trade to protect if she did go to war. No navy could be
run with any kind of effectiveness or economy below a certain size, nor could
it be improvised from nothing if and when war came. If government insisted
on reductions that would effectively destroy it with its 900 men, he, Walter
Hose, would have to resign.
He won the day. Had he not, Canada’s navy would have disappeared in
1933, the very year that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and set
the world on the road to death and devastation once again.
Canada is lucky that young Walter Hose married his lady from Newfound-
land. He brought full measure to the infant navy’s struggles. He was a fine,
experienced seaman, a brave fighting officer, and an inspiring leader. All of
that he showed in the Rainbow days. Organizing abihty, energy, and the talent
to make the most of meagre resources had pulled the East Coast Patrols into
an effective force; it was the first that Canada’s navy really had. Professional
60
INTERMISSION
capacity, wise judgement, and the courage of his convictions nursed the navy
through those famished years. His soundly built Naval Reserve took some
notion of a navy across the land and gave a base for expansion when the time
did come to fight. Walter Hose was, in truth, the father of Canada’s navy.
PEOPLE
Percy Nelles, who took over from Hose, had been Kingsmill’s Flag Lieuten-
ant. After commanding Saguenay he had had brief command of an RN light
cruiser. He was short on experience to be chief of any naval staff, and he wasn’t
cut from the same cloth as Walter Hose.
Nelles was a small man, bouncy and affable, with unsailor-Hke horn-
rimmed glasses. He carried Httle weight in his presence, more the comfortably
situated senior pubHc servant than the professional seadog. He was a sound
administrator, thoughtful and considerate, but not a resounding leader, and he
lacked the toughness to act in spite of personal feehngs. Therein lay a prob-
lem. Friends were friends. The tight and tiny club of naval officers went
through lean and bitter times together. They looked out for each other and
their famiHes, too. They knew each other well. Too well. Navy pay was so low
that to have some comfort in Hfe, much less meet the social obligations of
senior rank, a private income was considered de rigeur. Nelles had married a
lady of substantial means and forceful character. Woe the young naval officer
whose bride failed to pass the social tests.
Victor Brodeur, senior officer of destroyers on the west coast, was a prickly
character and a stern discipHnarian who kept some distance even from his
own officers. In his young days with the RN he took more than a fair share of
the condescension and ribbing that “colonials” got from many of their British
messmates. A Canadian accent was one thing, but with his French-Canadian
accent Brodeur really stood out. The RN sailors who couldn’t fathom it
dubbed him “Scottie.” While others shrugged off the joshing and simply
made up their minds to beat the Brits in due course at their own game,
Brodeur retained suspicion, if not actual antipathy. He admired the RN as a
service, but he was certainly no Anglophile.
When officers spent so many of their early years with the RN some of the
British manner, custom, and accent was almost bound to rub off, on some
more than others. The young men who joined the lower deck from the farms
and small towns and cities across the land brought initiative and indepen-
dence but not much education. Bill Manfield was a rare bird because he had
some schooling when he joined as a Boy Seaman in Esquimalt in 1927. Few of
his messmates in the bleak new entry block where they slung their hammocks
could read or write. Manfield was quickly singled out. He was helped by the
resident “Schooly” and by Lieutenant Harry DeWolf studying navigation.
61
He passed the educational tests and worked up rank by rank to retire as

Commander Manfield with some forty years of outstanding service.
The British social structure that from time immemorial set officers and
men on such different levels in the RN didn’t fit well with Canadians. Manfield
and his shipmates ran into the caste system in the British West Indies and
Bermuda, where sailors weren’t allowed on “white” beaches and signs pro-
claiming “Sailors and dogs not allowed” weren’t unknown. And in the ships
there wasn’t much rapport between officers and men. Something rather hke
guerrilla warfare simmered between mess decks and wardroom, buffered by
the chiefs and petty officers. But the younger RCN officers, Manfield found,
were good men, without the biases of class.
These were depression days. An ordinary seaman made fifty cents a day, a
heutenant $5, and there was no marriage allowance. Still, the navy was a job
and there was a line-up to get in. So they quickly learned to choke down the
spartan Hfe, the rigidity of new entry training, and some absurd restrictions.
In the early thirties the destroyers Saguenay and Champlain were on the east
coast and Skeena and Vancouver out west. By carefully husbanding fuel all four
got south in winter. They met in the West Indies when there was enough
money to transit the Panama Canal. It was a tight-knit httle service. Everyone
knew each other and even with so Httle to work on, at sea it ran very weU.
Indeed, one-on-one the smartly handled, sparkling clean fighting ships of the
RCN were every bit as good as those of the big-name navies.
PLANS AND POLICIES

Military plans in the pigeonholes of National Defence, thick with the dust of
1812, still dealt with invasion from the south, and indeed there were U.S.
plans on file for the invasion of Canada. Every armed force has to have at least
a paper enemy. But attack on either country could reaUy come only from
outside North America and the U.S. must then be Canada’s aUy. The other
new factor, and a great unknown, was airpower. It was the looming spectre of
the thirties. By 1936 the U.S. had a bomber that could strike Europe with one
refuelling stop. So what was to stop a European enemy from landing at some
remote Canadian coastal point, clearing airstrips, and destroying North
American cities with their bombs?
Contrary to MacNaughton’s muddled view it would take a navy and an air
force. From 1934 to 1939, defence estimates increased fourfold to a tentative
$8.8 milhon. Mackenzie King, with home defence in mind and dreading
being drawn again into European war, put the miHtia at the bottom of the pile.
The air force got top priority. The navy, modest though its aUocation was,
came next.
Fraser and St. Laurent, used RN C-class destroyers, replaced the worn-out
Champlain and Vancouver in 1937. The same year a fine Nova Scotian-built
62
INTERMISSION
three-masted schooner, HMCS Venture, commissioned as a new entry seamen’s

training ship. She cruised mainly in the Caribbean and turned the modest
intake of sixty recruits a year into first-rate young seamen. Two more C-class
destroyers, renamed Restigouche and Ottawa, made six all told in 1938. Four
Canadian-built minesweepers - coal burners to satisfy Cape Breton and
Nanaimo miners - topped off the tiny fleet. Then, in May, 1939, the govern-
ment announced plans for quite a respectable navy.
Canadian-American mihtary talks had gone on from 1937 without much
result. King noted in his usual circuitous way in the House of Commons that
year that if Canada did not want to become a belligerent it at least had to
defend itself against a belligerent operating from Canada against “some other
country with which it may be at war.” In plainer words, Canada should be
prepared to stop Japan from gaining a lodgement in British Columbia to
attack the States.
President FrankHn D. Roosevelt said clearly in Kingston the following year
that the U.S. “would not stand idly by” if “domination of Canadian soil was
threatened by any other empire.” This was a momentous statement of policy.
King responded in the House that Canada had obHgations to a friendly
neighbour to make itself “as immune from attack or possible invasion as we
can reasonably be expected to make it, and that . . . enemy forces should not
be able to pursue their way, either by land, sea or air, to the United States.”
There was no move though for any kind of joint naval exercise.
The Ogdensburg Agreement between Roosevelt and King put the two
countries’joint concerns on paper and set up the Permanent Joint Board on
Defence in August, 1940. By then France was overrun and Britain at bay.
Ogdensburg was the basis for the ongoing Canadian-American hemispheric
defence alliance of today. It was natural and inevitable. Just as inevitably, it led
later to the comfortable Canadians’ conviction that whatever they did or
didn’t in their own defence, they were safe behind the shield of Uncle Sam.
In 1935 Italy had invaded Abyssinia. The League of Nations proved as
impotent as it had with Manchuria and it was finished as a force for peace. The
following year Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and signed the Axis
pact with Mussolini. The Spanish Civil War, a proving ground for German
and Italian arms, began; Addis Ababa fell to the ItaHans; and Hitler marched
into France’s Rhineland unopposed. Germany at that point was militarily
weak but no one had the guts to call Hitler’s bluff. In 1937 he annexed Austria
without a shot and moved on the borders of Czechoslovakia. That same year
Japan invaded China. Japan’s navy, like Germany’s, was growing fast.
In September of 1938 Britain and France traded Czechoslovakia for
Hitler’s meaningless guarantee to go no further. Britain’s deluded Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain called it “peace in our time” - and only a small
group of British politicians led by Winston Churchill inveighed against him.
63
Mackenzie King, another appeaser, heaped Chamberlain with praise and

wrote to Hitler lauding him for stabilizing Europe and preserving peace. But
seeking to appease by tossing bones was futile. Hitler understood the sword
alone and he was forging navy, army, and air forces for a Third German Reich
that would last “a thousand years.”
Canadian opinion on defence ran the gamut: pacifism; let Britain and the
U.S. do it; territorial self-defence and no truck with European affairs; no
involvement in foreign war; back the Mother Country through hell and high
water. It wasn’t Quebec versus the rest by any means, though certainly
Quebecois were against foreign involvement and dead against conscription.
As far as a navy was concerned, few Canadians had any interest. In Mother
Country-minded B.C. the Vancouver Province said in May of 1939: “What our
money should be spent for is to make the most weighty contribution possible
to the combined mihtary strength of the British Empire. We cannot do that by
frittering it away in piffling httle adventures in coastal defence.”
One newspaper editorial in the four years before the war dealt seriously
withnavalpolicy. The Montreal/Gillette on 4 May 1939 editoriahzed: “ . . . the
proposition is that Canada must go on sponging on the Mother Country and,
what is even worse, upon the goodwill of a foreign nation, the United States,
for the protection which Canada itself should provide, having regard to the
position it occupies as a trading country. The Dominion should be either in a
position to protect its own trade routes or to cooperate adequately with Great
Britain in providing the protection that is necessary. It is absurd to suggest
that anything Hke this is possible with six destroyers, four of which are
antique, and a few minesweepers.”
By March, 1939, King’s cunning had brought consensus in the House of
Commons: neutrality was out; if it came to war Canada would fight along-
side Britain; there would be no conscription for overseas service. Canada’s
loyalty to the Mother Country was clinched that summer by the stunningly
successful Royal Tour of King George VI and his warm and gracious Queen
Elizabeth.
The Throne Speech after Munich had firmly talked defence, and in May,
1939, the Minister of Defence, Ian Mackenzie, announced the goal for a navy
of eighteen destroyers, sixteen minesweepers, and eight anti-submarine ves-
sels - all divided evenly between the coasts - and eight motor torpedo boats
for the east coast. Apart from lack of submarines it was a respectable force for
guarding Canada’s approaches.
Lieutenant Commander Harry DeWolf, a Naval College graduate of 1921
and one of the rare trained staff officers in Naval Service Headquarters, had
developed the expansion plans for Percy Nelles. Now with six destroyers in
hand and the grand plan announced, DeWolf could let out a hearty cheer.
He’d been appointed to command St. Laurent and with war in the wind that’s
64
HMS Shannon leads her prize, USS Chesapeake, into Halifax. Powerful American frig-
ates had won several ship-to-ship victories. In May, 1813, to redress the score. Shan-
non sent a written challenge in to Boston and Chesapeake came out. With many
pressed Nova Scotians in her crew Shannon won a fierce boarding action. Commerce
raiding and privateering drew a lot of attention but the Royal Navy controlled the
sea and Canada stayed British. {Maritime Museum of the Atlantic)
HMS Cormorant formally opens the Esquimalt drydock in 1887. Steam-driven vessels
needed fuel and technical support and the Esquimalt dockyard and drydock brought
the North Pacific into the orbit of Britain’s seapower. With the new Canadian Pacific
Railway a great new link in the imperial chain was forged. {National Archives of
Canada)
The first class of naval cadets, under training in CGS Canada in 1910. From left to
right (back row): Charles T. Beard, P. Barry German, Victor G. Brodeur, Wright;
middle, Fisheries’ officers Fortier, Stewart, Woods; front, Henry T. Bate, Percy W.
Nelles, John A. Barron. (Maritime Command Museum)
HMCS Niobe anchored in Digby Basin in 1911. She had arrived in Halifax on Tra-
falgar Day, 21 October 1910. Niobe was a powerful coal-burning ship, 11,000 tons,
15 knots, with sixteen 6-inch guns. (National Archives of Canada)
Commander Walter Hose joined the
Royal Canadian Navy from the RN in
1912. He commanded Rainbow, then
became Captain of Patrols on the east
coast in 1917, Director of the Naval
Service in 1921, and Chief of the
Naval Staff in 1928 before retiring in
1934. A remarkable leader in very
thin times. (National Archives of
Canada)
A heavy-gunned U-cruiser holds up a merchant ship. The U-boats found plenty of

unescorted targets along the American seaboard after the U.S. entered the war in
1917. Their campaign of 1918 brought the war right to Canada’s shores, sinking
mostly small vessels and stirring panic in the press. (Imperial War Museum)
HMCS Fraser in the Panama Canal in 1937 en route to Esquimalt. She had just com-
missioned in England, the third modern destroyer to join the little fleet in the thir-
ties. Off the coast of France, on 25 June 1940, she was cut in half by RN cruiser
Calcutta and lost forty-seven of her company. This was Canada’s first loss of World
War Two. (National Archives of Canada)
His Majesty King George VI presents the first King’s Colour to the Royal Canadian
Navy in Victoria, in the summer of 1939. The triumphant royal tour on the eve of
war firmed Canadians’ resolve to back Britain. The colour officer is Lieutenant J.C.
Hibbard, who commanded Skeena and Iroquois, then after the war the cruiser
Ontario. (National Archives of Canada)
Bedford Basin, with over fifty ships assembled to form a convoy. Through the Nar-
rows lies Dartmouth on the left, and on the right the dockyard with the port of
Halifax beyond. McNab’s Island shelters the harbour from the open sea. Miles of
steel-wire nets across both channels protect it from the U-boats. Trade and troop
convoys have gathered and sailed from this magnificent harbour since the mid-
1700s. (National Archives of Canada)
A Convoy Conference in Admiralty House, Halifax, March, 1941. Commander

Richard Oland (the tall officer in the middle) was the first Naval Control Service
Officer in Halifax. The elderly officer with the broad stripe at the head of the right-
hand table is the convoy Commodore. Seated left of Oland is the Captain of the RN
heavy ship escort. Few merchant service masters wore uniform. (National Archives of
Canada)
Left to right: Lieutenant Commanders Harry DeWolf, Horatio Nelson Lay, and
James C. Hibbard. They commanded ST. Laurent, Restigouche, and Skeena, respec-
tively, in 1940 during the evacuation of France, the threat of invasion, and then
battling the U-boats in the Western Approaches. They all commanded other ships
later in heavy fighting and went on to Flag rank, DeWolf to become Chief of Naval
Staff. (National Archives of Canada)
HMCS St. Croix, one of the seven American four-stackers that the RCN manned in
late 1940, nears the gate-vessel at Halifax. The four-stackers were miserable at sea
but they had 28 knots, which was badly needed to catch surfaced U-boats. St. Croix
sank two U-boats and was sunk herself by an acoustic torpedo in 1943. There was
one survivor. (National Archives of Canada)
Winston Churchill comes aboard Assiniboine in Hvalfjord for passage to Reykjavik
on 16 August 1941. He was visiting Iceland after drawing up the historic Atlantic
Charter with President Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. Assiniboine^
Captain, Lieutenant John Stubbs, is ignored as the Prime Minister looks for some-
one more senior in command. On the left is Lieutenant Ralph Hennessy. Able Sea-
man Moody and the Chief Bosun’s Mate, CPO Orr, man the side. A year later
Assiniboine sank U-210. Stubbs went down with Athabaskan, his last command, in the
Channel in April, 1944. (National Archives of Canada)
The corvette Battleford on convoy escort in November, 1941. Her open well-deck
can be seen between bridge and forecastle. The forecastle was extended to enclose
the well and pnwide more space and more comfort, but nc)t until mid-1944. She has
SWlC radar atop the foremast. The minesweeping gear (the davits project forward
from the stern) was retained for some time “in case, ” which precluded carrying a
full load of depth charges. (National Archives of Canada)
The destroyer repair ship HMS Hecla at a mooring buoy in Hvalfjord, Iceland, with
corvettes nested either side. Essential support was provided afloat by the RN in this
bleak gale-swept anchorage from April, 1941. It was the turn-around point for the
Newfoundland Escort Force until they switched to the Newfy-Derry run in Febru-
ary, 1942. {Imperial War Museum)
Relaxing time in the stokers’ mess, HMCS Assiniboine, November, 1940. Living was
tight, even in destroyers. Each man had a “ditty box ” for personal items (on the
table), a tin hat-box (on the shelf), and a small built-in locker for his clothes (they’re
sitting on them). Food was carried from the galley and served at the table using
dishes kept by each mess. They washed them there in a dishpan. They slung their
hammocks overhead. {National Archives of Canada)
INTERMISSION
where he wanted to be. But the government’s show of support was political
eyewash. The money actually voted in 1939 did no more than buy the
drawings.
The “anti-submarine vessels” in the plan weren’t described. Admiral JeUi-
coe, who had learned something, said in 1927 that fast anti-submarine con-
voy escorts would be needed in another war. Further, they could not be
improvised in a hurry. But nothing happened until the urgent expansion of
the Royal Navy in 1938, when a “coastal escort” was quickly designed for
Admiralty by a Yorkshire shipyard. The lines came from a successful whale-
catcher, Southern Pride. Production began in 1939. The dumpy little work-
horse and the rust-streaked vision of slogging along escorting merchant
convoys held no appeal for fighting navy men. Winston Churchill, who knew
his sailors, ruled out the drab name “patrol vessel, whaler type,” dipped back
in history, and crowned the little ship “Corvette.” She was designed as a
coastal escort but by default became the mainstay of the ocean convoy lanes.
In the great battle to come she would fight her way to naval immortality.
But Canada’s navy wasn’t thinking convoy escort. The plan tabled in the
Commons showed that. An enemy seeking lodgements, carrier- or land-
based air attack, surface raiders, mines, bombardment of ports by surface
ships or U-boats, torpedo boats launched from mother ships - these, it was
deemed, were the threats on either coast. The new destroyers would be the
most powerful ever built - the RN’s Tribal class with eight 4.7-inch guns and
four torpedoes. A flotilla of eight Tribals could give any raider a hard time.
They were short-range ships, but this kind of defensive operation was close to
home. The undefined anti-submarine vessels plus mines would keep off
marauding U-boats. Naval officers, of course, could see those big destroyers
fighting in surface actions alongside the Royal Navy. Convoy escort didn’t get
a word. Dockyards and repair facilities, the vital shoreside back-up that had
fallen so short in the Great War, hardly got a cent.
THE THREAT
In the RN mind, and the RCN followed, the submarine threat had waned. With
Japan the prime enemy it would have been a blazing big-ship war of the
glamorous kind, not another grubby battle of attrition on the trade routes.
Hitler on the scene changed things. But surely he’d never risk bringing in the
United States with unrestricted U-boat warfare as the Kaiser had in 1917. He
had a few U-boats, yes, but also very powerful surface units. Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, and three new pocket battleships were formidable ocean raiders.
Bismarck and Tirpitz, two super battleships, hadjust slid down the ways. Those
were the big threat to the shipping lanes, and the Germans would send out
merchant raiders, too. The big ships of the Royal Navy would contain them
all. The worldwide organization for wartime naval control of shipping was in
65
place to marshal the convoys as and when necessary and Canada had its
important place in that.
There was less resistance to convoy than in 1917, but naval thinking fav-
oured hunting groups rather than using ships as convoy escorts. Modern
wisdom added that convoys would be sitting ducks for air attack. In practice,
though, gathering ships together and concentrating defence around them
applied to aircraft as it did to surface ships and U-boats. Convoy could be
introduced if really needed for the surface threat, or if the U-boat really did
prove to be a problem. Convoys with surface and air escorts had, after all,
beaten U-boats in the last war when there vcere no effective detection devices.
And really cHnching things was asdic.
Now called sonar, asdic was a highly secret device developed by the end of
the Great War but not early enough to get in service. Basically, a sound
transmitter housed in a dome sticking out from the ship’s bottom projected a
narrow beam of high-frequency sound. The operator turned a hand wheel to
point it in the direction he chose and he Hstened on headphones to the
reverberations from the sound transmission. They tailed off in the famihar
P-I-I-I-i-i-i-n-n-n-g-g . . . which was the random return from all the min-
ute sea life, bubbles, fish, and foreign bodies. With a soHd object in the way,
Hke a submarine, back came a metalHc echo. BeeepW Sound travelled at a
known speed through water so range as well as bearing could be quite
accurately read. “Doppler,” the changed pitch of the returning echo, told if
the submarine was steering toward you or away. The maximum range for
asdic was about 2,000 yards.
To those reared on hydrophones, this was an amazing leap ahead. Spoken
of in hushed tones only, it attained an unearned and mystic reputation as the
final answer. Because of its “secret weapon” status very few in the RN knew
much about it. Even the name was barely known. It was probably coined in
1918 as a cover for the key word “supersonic” and derived from “Anti-
Submarine Division-ic.” Not even the word became pubhc until Winston
ChurchiU used it in the House of Commons in 1939. The erudite Oxford
University Press, seeking its etymological root, was handed the hastily fabri-
cated story that it came from the “AUied Submarine Detection Investigation
Committee” of the last war, a body that never in fact existed.
Partly because so Httle was known about asdic and so much expected, the U-
boat was seen by the RN, and so by the RCN, as no serious threat. The First Sea
Lord in 1936 said the RN’s anti-submarine measures were 89 per cent effective.
The next year an RN destroyer was completely baffled in an encounter with an
Axis submarine in the Spanish Civil War. Anti-submarine exercises were rare,
but when they were conducted they normally were set-pieces favouring the
defence of the fleet with a tidy screen of destroyers “pinging” ahead of a battle
group. The submarines nearly always sHpped through but that was conve-
66
INTERMISSION
niently ignored. Convoy escort and exercises against submarines simply never
took place. Neither did ship-air anti-submarine co-ordination. If there was
httle interest from the ship side, there was none at all from the air. At the end of
the Great War Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service had
been amalgamated into the Royal Air Force under the new Air Ministry.
Whatever the rationale, for the navy it was disaster. Not until 1936 did the RN
finally wrest back aviation afloat and form the Fleet Air Arm. In those eighteen
years aircraft and techniques stagnated. The shore element. Coastal Command,
stayed RAF, and remained the poor relation.
Coastal’s role was spotting surface raiders breaking out. Or, in the case of
the Royal Canadian Air Force, breaking in. They paid no heed to anti-
submarine warfare. In fairness, the RN hadn’t pushed and neither had the RCN.
The RCAF had some 4,000 men and eight permanent squadrons in 1939. Only
one, nominally a torpedo bomber squadron, had any notional attachment to
the maritime scene, but they never worked with the navy on anything resem-
bhng defence of shipping against the U-boat.
The U.S. Navy had even less interest in ship anti-submarine capabihties
than the RN. They and the Japanese, though, were streets ahead in carriers,
naval aircraft, and naval aviation techniques, and controlled their own shore-
based maritime air.
NAVAL DIRECTIONS
RCN thinking followed the RN’s Hke a shadow. In 1937 Commodore Nelles
wrote:
If international law is complied with, submarine attack should not prove

serious. If unrestricted warfare is again resorted to, the means of combat-
ting submarines are considered so advanced that by employing a system of
convoy and utiHzing Air Forces, losses of submarines would be very heavy
and might compel the enemy to give up this form of attack.
Percy Nelles was a wishful thinker, not an original one, and he sorely lacked
technical understanding. His staff was minute. There were too few with the
time, professional knowledge, staff training, and experience to do much
systematic and detached Canadian naval thinking. The RCN was far too small
to have effective training or staff schools of its own, where such thinking
usually generates. Officers trained with the RN from cadet right through to
the advanced staff courses. Higher specialist and technical courses for ratings
in gunnery, signals, torpedo, the mystic submarine detection, and engineering
all took place in Britain.
Administration and discipline came from the Royal Navy, and uniforms
were identical except for “HMCS” on sailors’ cap tallies and a tiny “Canada”
67
on officers’ and chief and petty officers’ buttons. Ships flew the White Ensign
unalloyed. For practical purposes the RCN was a tiny carbon copy of the RN. It
seemed, externally at least, to lack an identity of its own. And that was the
root of a long and underlying problem.
Through the thirties the east coast destroyers, sometimes joined by those
from the west, exercised with the RN’s America and West Indies Squadron and
some big ships from the Home Fleet who followed the sun. “Fleet work” was
exciting stuff dashing around with battleships and cruisers, high-speed
screening and torpedo attacks, smokescreens and night encounters. But the
West Indies Squadron was no training ground for anti-submarine warfare.
The RCN wasn’t dead on the subject. Captain Leonard Murray wrote an
appreciation of the submarine threat to the St. Lawrence, and the RN was
asked to loan a submarine for exercises but declined.
The acronym ASW hadn’t been coined. In the RN, the subject wasn’t top
drawer. The few anti-submarine speciahsts were counted as rejects from the
glamorous fields of gunnery and torpedo and signals. Only two RCN officers
had done anti-submarine courses, in 1927, and they hadn’t worked at it since.
Reared as they had been, it is hardly surprising that sea-going RCN officers
gave no more weight to anti-submarine warfare than did their own Chief of
Naval Staff. The RCN had exactly eight trained submarine detector ratings in
September, 1939, and one officer who had done a course in England ten years
before. No Canadian destroyers had ever trained with a five submarine. When
the war started two of the six did not even have asdic.
U-BOATS RESURFACED
The Germans didn’t forget the U-boat war they nearly won. When Hitler
repudiated the Treaty of Versailles in 1935 they were set to move. The Kxupp
steel empire had run a German-staffed design and engineering office in
Holland since 1922, advancing the U-boat art by building them for other
countries. They had also secretly stockpiled key long-lead components like
diesel engines.
Commodore Karl Donitz was in charge of the U-boat force. Drawing on
his own Great War experience, he expounded Rudeltactik, which concentrated
many U-boats on a single convoy, positioning ahead in dayHght and racing in
on the surface to attack at night. Staying on the surface would foil underwater
detection; speed and low profile would get them past the escorts. Donitz
drilled his elite young U-boat force incessantly and instilled his own extraor-
dinary esprit. He ran a major convoy-kiUing exercise in 1938. Also, he wrote
it all down in an article, publicly available in the magazine Nauticus in 1939: U-
boats would destroy Britain’s trade, he said; they would slaughter the inde-
pendents first, then decimate the convoys with the deadly wolf pack. It should
have been required reading at every British naval school.
68
INTERMISSION
Donitz estimated 300 U-boats would beat Britain. Hitler, though, put
priority on the surface fleet with its visible prestige and power. Donitz had to
start the second U-boat war with only fifty-seven operational boats. But that
was three times the German force of 1914.
PREPARING FOR WAR

Neither naval force nor thinking was in gear to fight the U-boat, but a very
important element was in place when war broke out. Commander Eric
Brand, RN, became Director of Naval Intelligence at NSHQ in Ottawa injune,
1939. He collected intelHgence and collated and reported shipping move-
ments in all North and South America to feed into Admiralty’s global net.
Brand was an experienced first-rate officer who had lost out in the RN
promotion stakes. He was quite unlike the up-stage RN officer who had
blustered out to show Canadians how to run the patrols in 1917. He was
friendly, cultivated, highly competent, an outstanding organizer and leader
with the art of getting on with people and getting the best from them. Like
Walter Hose, he threw himself into the RCN and later joined it. He later
became Director of Trade and his dedication and briUiance fashioned a major
Canadian contribution to the war.
The whole complex shoreside business of ship movements, naval control
of shipping, convoy organization, plus gathering, digesting, and disseminat-
ing operational intelligence was Brand’s work. His office in Ottawa was a
vital part of the vast AlHed network that kept trade moving and alive and so
finally resolved the war. Raiders or U-boats, battle squadrons or anti-
submarine escorts, in 1939 the organization and control of trade was firmly in
place. The convoy system could be implemented whenever a decision was
made, and it came very early in the game.
Navy life during those pre-war years had been as lean as the navy itself.
Twice, without the heroic Walter Hose, it would have disappeared. Knowing
that your own country resented you as a burden or ridiculed you as “tin-pot”
or a “piffling little adventure in coastal defence” was hard to take. Being in the
navy was a job in the depression years, yes. But going to sea, as it had been
forever, was a challenge, a life of its own fit for the young man with adventure
in his blood. In the little RCN there was a tight-knit camaraderie, a special
esprit, a pride in doing things right - and better even than the RN could - that
kept hearts high.
That last peacetime summer the four west coast destroyers held their
largest exercise. They dashed in full speed, as destroyers should, on a target
vessel representing an enemy battleship. Each ship had its eight torpedoes
finely tuned and tipped with practice heads. Signal flags snapped at the
yardarms. Beautifully co-ordinated, with precise skill, over went the helms;
four destroyers heeled, carving foaming wakes, fired, and raced away making
69
thick black smoke. Thirty-two torpedoes fanned the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
The “battleship” was “sunk.”
In truth, though, this two-thirds of the RCN was on the wrong coast
dealing with the wrong target and firing a weapon only very few would ever
use again. These Canadian sailors would have to learn a new kind of war, and
when it came they would show others what they quietly understood them-
selves - they could fight at sea with the very best.
70
CHAPTER FIVE
BUILDING A N^Y
IN WAR
THE STORY OF CANADA’S NAVY IN WORLD WAR TWO, AND INDEED ITS
history thereafter, was overwhelmingly shaped by the Battle of the Atlantic. It
thrust on the tiny service a vast expansion. From a token force, the RCN
became the third largest of the AlHed navies. By 1943 fully half of the convoy
escort on that most crucial artery, the North Atlantic route from America to
Britain, was provided by the RCN. By mid-1944 Canada carried it all.
The Royal Canadian Navy went to war with a permanent force of about
1,800 and 1,700 reserves. It had six destroyers, five minesweepers, and two
small training vessels. In five years it multiphed by a factor of fifty to reach
100,000 men and women and over 400 fighting ships, with more than 900
vessels all told. By comparison, the RN multiplied by eight and the U.S. Navy
by twenty. Numbers alone, however, don’t spell effectiveness. The dramatic
rise itself brought huge problems and revealed serious shortcomings. As a
small offshoot of the RN, the RCN lacked the essential base for a self-sufficient
navy.
Right to the very brink of war, successive governments failed to develop a
naval policy. So, quite apart from ships and sailors, critical ingredients -
experienced staff, specialist and technical expertise, scientific haison, training
facihties and organization, shipbuilding and repair capacity, dockyard facili-
ties and logistic support - scarcely existed. As the Battle of the Atlantic built
to its crescendo, these elements all too often fell far short. A sound naval
policy for Canada, as Laurier well knew in 1910, would have produced the
essential industrial and technological base. In 1939 it didn’t exist.
Pre-war plans for a respectable Canadian fleet were too Httle, too late.
Canadian shipyards had scant capacity and none at all for building modern
warships. The only naval vessels built in Canada since the drifters and
trawler-minesweepers of the Great War were four coal-fired minesweepers
71
completed in 1938. A whole new industrial base had to be created. It took

time to muster the resources of a nation with such tenuous naval roots. Many
elements were lacking still in 1942 and early 1943 when the Battle of the
Atlantic reached its crucial peak. But in times of dire necessity remarkable
things are done, and for the first time in Canada’s history the strands finally
pulled together into a fighting navy. It built a proud tradition of its own.
Any seagoing ship demands special skills and experience, which scarcely
exist in the civilian world. The small Canadian professional merchant service
provided about a thousand first-rate people - deck officers, engineers, sea-
men, and technicians who were used to living in ships and getting them and
their cargoes safely about the ocean. But even they were a considerable step
away from taking a full and effective place in a fighting ship.
The neophyte - and the great majority of officers and men aHke had never
even seen the sea - had to fit into a disciplined organization, grasp mysterious
nautical customs and language, and learn a whole new range of skills. He had
to live, day after seemingly endless day, in extraordinary discomfort in a small
ship battered incessantly by a hostile sea. He had to conquer seasickness, bitter
cold, chronic fatigue, and the suppressed fear of an unseen enemy. He had
somehow to carry out wearying, often complex duties in situations where
failed alertness could mean disaster to his ship, death to his shipmates. The
transformation - from farm boy, factory hand, bank clerk, or stockbroker to
fighting seaman - had to happen, not in years, but in a matter of weeks.
Canadian sailors fought in every element of the war at sea - in battleships,
cruisers, fleet destroyers, motor torpedo boats, landing craft, carriers and
naval aircraft, minesweepers, submarines - and in every theatre of war, many
“on loan” to the RN. The great majority, though, were in Canadian ships, and
three-quarters of them served in the battered, unglamorous Httle escorts that
had such a vital role in winning the most crucial, long-drawn-out struggle of
the war.
Fighting the U-boat was not supposed to be the greatest task. The threat
had all but been dismissed. But wars don’t run as expected. Soon the need for
more convoy escorts, and Britain’s inabihty to build and man them, raised
demands for ships and men that Canada valiantly answered but found nigh
impossible to bear. What made it work at all was the eternal, intangible,
greatest single factor in the sea-fighting equation - the quaHty of people.
In Ottawa the Naval Service Headquarters staff - all of ten officers under
Rear Admiral Percy W. Nelles - was hard at work before the first gun. On 29
August 1939 Admiralty flashed the codeword “Funnel” by wireless around
the world. With that signal, all British registered merchant ships, Canadian
included, came under naval control. The compulsion was very simple.
Acceptance of naval control meant Admiralty provided the war risk insur-
ance, far beyond any Lloyd’s Coffee House capacity to write. So the first and
72
BUILDING A NAVY IN WAR
fundamental act was to take control of trade. Commander Eric Brand’s skele-
ton Naval Control Service (NCS) instantly became a vital element of the
worldwide organization that controlled the movements of every Allied mer-
chant ship for the next six years.
In spite of events in Europe four of six destroyers were still on the west
coast. On 31, August Fraser and St. Laurent were showing the flag at a civic
celebration in Vancouver. Headquarters ordered them to Halifax. In under
three hours they were off across the Georgia Strait at twenty-five knots.
Esquimalt was their home port but the only good-bye to families and friends
their people could manage was a wave as they raced by. To their astonishment
they were going to war. Many never returned. Heading south for Panama
they heard Britain had declared war on 3 September, and within a day the
Cunard liner Athenia had been sunk by a U-boat. On 10 September, the day
Canada declared war on Germany, the destroyers were transiting the Panama
Canal. Five days later they were in Halifax.
Admiralty immediately asked Canada to turn over control of the destroy-
ers to the RN. Nelles leaped at it; being part of the imperial fleet was some-
thing he took for granted. Mackenzie King, though, had a deep-seated
aversion to British control, stemming from the debacle of the Great War. Only
Canada would decide where Canadians would fight; cabinet authorized full
co-operation, but not control. The implications of this crucial decision only
struck home when the RCN launched its huge expansion. Admiralty provided
total logistic support for the Allied navies-in-exile it controlled - Norwegian,
Free French, PoHsh, Dutch, and Belgian - but not for an independent Cana-
dian navy. Help was not denied, but fundamentally the RCN must now
provide all those critical ingredients to run a navy for itself.
The Cunard liner Athenia was first blood of the war and her sinking was
directly against Hitler’s orders to observe the Hague Convention Prize Rules.
He expected to make peace with Britain quickly before he turned on Russia,
and he didn’t want to rouse the neutrals, especially the United States. But Fritz
Lemp, Captain of U-30, thought the ship he had dead in his periscope was an
armed merchant cruiser. Athenia was carrying 1,000 civilian passengers; 118
of them went down with her, including twenty-two Americans. It was all too
reminiscent of Lusitania.
Winston Churchill, back in his Great War post as First Sea Lord, saw this as
a declaration of all-out U-boat warfare and ordered convoy on the spot. In
Halifax the Naval Control Service Officer (NCSO), Commander Richard
Oland, dragooned eighteen reluctant merchant skippers into the unpalatable
business of convoy. On 16 September HX 1, the first transatlantic convoy,
steamed out of Halifax for the United Kingdom. The “H” in the British
convoy numbering stood for “Home”; “O” convoys were “Outbound”
from Britain. Adding an “S” meant “Slow.” For some 350 miles HX 1 was
73
escorted by Saguenay and the newly arrived St. Laurent. To seaward, RN

cruisers Berwick and York took over as ocean escort. The U-boats were most
certainly at sea, but they were in the rich and ready hunting ground of U.K.
waters. The convoys picked up their anti-submarine escorts in the Western
Approaches to the British Isles.
But there were too few escorts. The RN, perhaps mesmerized by asdic’s
magic, deployed a big effort on search and patrol of focal areas and U-boat
transit routes. It proved as fruitless as it had in the previous war and robbed
the convoys of needed escorts. Fleet aircraft carriers confidently patrolled the
Western Approaches as part of this offensive. They were prime U-boat targets.
U-39 narrowly missed torpedoing Ark Royal before being sunk by screening
destroyers. Then Courageous was torpedoed and sunk. Asdic was certainly not
infallible. Neither were the scouting Swordfish or even the defences of the
great fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow. In October Gunther Prien in U-47 crept
through a narrow channel with brihiant seamanship and sank the battleship
Royal Oak. The blockship that would have barred his entry arrived one day
too late.
Donitz, however, had too few U-boats for an all-out campaign. During the
winter between two and ten were operating in British waters, sowing mines
and attacking ships in harbour approaches. But they had easy pickings -
forty-six ships in October alone. They didn’t have outstandingly greater
performance on paper than the U-boats of the Great War, but they were far
more efficient. In the first six months shipping losses reached 700,000 tons -
over twenty ships per month. (An “average” ship was 5,000 tons.) Indepen-
dents suffered heavily, but the convoys, with only one or two anti-submarine
escorts, had heavy losses, too.
The U-boats had no need to reach far for easy targets, so beyond 15° west,
halfway between Ireland and Iceland, convoys had surface escort only. The
threat on the broad Atlantic was surface raiders, such as the pocket battleships
Deutschland and Graf Spee, both loose at the outbreak of war. In the same
period these raiders between them sank less than one-tenth of the U-boats’
score. As in any guerre de course, though, they tied up forces out of all propor-
tion. Graf Spee, for example, sank only eight ships with her 11-inch guns but
she drew every cruiser in the Atlantic and the attention of the world until she
ended her career, scuttled on a mud bank in the Rio de la Plata estuary off
Montevideo.
Ottawa and Restigouche came round from the west coast, leaving nothing
there to mind the shop other than the httle vessels of the Fisherman’s Reserve.
It had been formed in 1938 by enlisting fishing vessels, owners, and crews
wilhng to serve in time of war. Close to fifty lightly armed craft, some fitted
with minesweeping gear, were on patrol soon after hostiHties began. They
were the sole defence of the west coast until the first corvettes came out of
74
B.C. yards in 1941. Assiniboine, a secondhand flotilla leader similar to the other
RCN destroyers, came straight to HaUfax from her commissioning in Eng-
land. Remembering that the Hahfax harbour approaches had been mined in
1918, the minesweepers plodded away at their monotonously essential work.
To counter surface raiders the venerable heavy ships of the RN’s 3rd Battle
Squadron were based at Halifax. Their Royal Marine bands played hvely airs
as the great grey shapes shpped through the fog, reminding the historic
waterfront of more gracious and less fatal days.
Merchant ships assembled in Bedford Basin. The convoys sailed on an
expanding schedule. On 10 December the first troop convoy sailed with the
First Canadian Division, 7,400 strong, in five ocean Uners. The destroyers
saw them on their way and a heavy surface escort then took them across the
sea.
By the end of the year the Royal Canadian Navy had gathered a curious
collection of some sixty vessels. Armed merchant cruisers were a useful
counter to the surface raider so the navy bought Prince Robert, Prince David, and
Prince Henry - 6,000-ton, twenty-two-knot luxury liners - from Canadian
National Steamships. They were converted and each armed with four old 6-
inch guns from Admiralty stocks. But the shaky technical organization took a
whole year to convert them.
Auxiharies came from various government departments. Luxury yachts
were extracted from the U.S. by devious means. Some fishing vessels were
requisitioned. Mostly, their crews donned uniform. The dockyard fitted a gun
if it was available, they hoisted the White Ensign, and they were in the navy.
Theirs were the endless chores around the defended ports - minesweeping,
local anti-submarine patrol, examination service to check the papers and car-
goes of incoming vessels, harbour duties. Some of the yachts, though quite
unsuitable, were used as A/S escorts. The venerable Acadia, which had served as
an anti-submarine escort in the Great War with her kite balloon, came on
strength again. The least mobile became gate vessels for harbour anti-
submarine net defences. All the dreary but essential harbour defence parapher-
naha - booms, anti-submarine nets, detector loops, shore signal stations, and
communications systems - had to be installed and experts found to run them. It
was a good thing the U-boats had plenty to keep them busy elsewhere.
Canada’s first concern was defence of her own coast. It might have been the
“phony war” in Europe, but at sea the war had been all too real from day one.
The Tribal-class destroyers called for in peacetime plans couldn’t be built in
Canadian yards, and Britain’s first corvettes were just getting to sea. The RN
needed many more and agreed to build two Tribals in England in return for
ten corvettes built in Canada. The corvette seemed to meet Canada’s need,
too, for a coastal escort with minesweeping capability. The RN also had a
suitable minesweeper called the Bangor. Both designs could be handled in
75
ordinary commercial yards and the ships were small enough to navigate the
canals from the Great Lakes.
And now politics was on the navy’s side. Downgraded to a mere token in
peacetime, it found new favour in cabinet - though not for the sound strategic
reasons that certainly prevailed. Mackenzie King feared that another huge
1914 army in Europe would bring dreadful casualties and the poHtical night-
mare of conscription. Thus, it was deemed politically wise to put the coun-
try’s effort toward the navy and air force. They were far less man-
power-intensive and demanded much greater industrial effort. The country
could profit from that. If war must be, then reap the industrial harvest, save
your citizens, and sell your wares! The RCAE had the British Commonwealth
Air Training Plan; the RCN got the go-ahead for ships and men.
This was easier said than done. Armies could be expanded and trained quite
quickly in war, building on the organized mihtia Canada had always kept in
place. But building ships, training sailors, and combining them into effective
fighting units was a far more sophisticated process. A tiny handful of officers
had to figure this out and somehow make it work.
Sixty-four corvettes and eighteen Bangor minesweepers were to be built in
Canada. Simple vessels though they were, it was a mighty plunge. Not only
ships, but an entire industry had to be built, requiring yard capacity, tooHng,
and a trained work force with a multitude of special skills. Capacity for steel
plate was lacking and boilers, main engines, condensers, pumps, propellers,
fans, anchors, compasses, radios, direction finders, echo sounders - the items
that go into any ordinary ship - were not made in Canada. Nor were the
special items of naval equipment - asdic sets, guns, depth charge throwers, and
later on, radar sets. But the job simply had to be done. By February, 1940,
fifteen shipyards - East, West, up the river, and in the Great Lakes - were busy
building corvettes and Bangors. Fourteen corvettes were commissioned by
year’s end, including the ten slated for the RN; fifty came in 1941, forty-nine
more later. Over fifty Bangors were commissioned in 1941 and 1942.
Captain Angus Curry, the lone engineer officer on the staff in Headquar-
ters, began the monumental task. At the end of 1940 he was relieved by
Engineer Commander George Stephens, who had been a non-commissioned
Engine Room Artificer 5th class in the old Niobe in 1910 when Curry was a
sub-lieutenant. Stephens was promoted to Captain and Engineer in Chief and
later became Canada’s first Engineer Rear Admiral and Chief of Naval Engi-
neering and Construction. He masterminded the massive naval shipbuilding
program through to the end of the war, then well beyond. Remarkable times
bring forth remarkable people.
By late winter the destroyers were finally let off the leash, rotating to the
Caribbean to help the RN. In March Commander RoUo Mainguy’s Assiniboine
joined the cruiser HMS Dunedin, which had intercepted a German merchant
76
ship, Hanover, west of Puerto Rico. Her crew had set the cargo afire and
crippled her engines and steering gear. But boarding parties kept a belligerent
crew in line, fought the fires, and towed their prize to Jamaica. Repaired, she
ran the U-boat gauntlet in convoy under the Red Ensign. Then, with a flight
deck added, she became HMS Audacity, the first auxiliary aircraft carrier. In a
renowned and bitter convoy battle in December, 1941, she took a decisive part
but fell prey herself to a torpedo from the frustrated pack.
Otherwise, held home by Ottawa, it was local escort and patrol for Cana-
da’s destroyers. They could only read of the mounting toll on trade and fret at
being so far from the action until the disaster of Dunkirk in the spring of 1940
pulled them across the Atlantic to the vortex of the war.
THE FRONT LINE

In April, 1940, the sinkings dropped, but it was only because Donitz redis-
posed his U-boats for Hitler’s lightning blow on Norway. The Luftwaffe
leapfrogged planes to forward airfields there, and in the fierce inshore fighting
up the narrow fiords, the RN lost precious destroyers. The U-boats were back
at the convoys quickly, in renewed strength. Germany had what it wanted
from Norway: airfields, valuable new bases for U-boats and the surface fleet
with open access to the northern seas, and - an ace in the hole when the time
came to attack Russia - the flank of the sea route to Murmansk.
Then, with hardly a breath, the blitzkrieg slashed through Holland, Bel-
gium, and France and hurled Britain’s army to the sea at Dunkirk. The RN,
desperate for destroyers, called on the RCN. Winston Churchill and the Cana-
dian staff convinced Mackenzie King that the English Channel was Canada’s
first line of defence. The fate of North America, as history told, would be
decided there. Restigouche, Skeena, St. Laurent, and Fraser raced across the
Atlantic; Ottawa, Assiniboine, and Saguenay would follow when current refits
were complete.
In Plymouth each ship got a 3-inch gun for anti-aircraft fire. Like the ships’
single 2-pounder pom-pom guns from the Great War, it was aimed with open
sights. Stuka divebombers had already taken a heavy toll of the RN. The same
thing was happening day by day off France. As with the U-boats, peacetime
complacency about the air threat had been shattered, but the technical
answers just weren’t there.
Every available hand plunged into the evacuation. Trainees were hauled off
courses. Sub-Lieutenant Jack Pickford, RCNVR, led demoUtion parties ashore
in Brest to destroy what they could ahead of the Germans. Sub-Lieutenant
Bob Timbrell got his first command, one of the great ragtag armada ranging
from destroyers to cross-Channel ferries to private motor cruisers that braved
shellfire and strafing and Stukas to haul load after load of exhausted soldiers
from the beaches to Britain. Timbrell won the Distinguished Service Cross.
77
The destroyers, racing out of sunny Plymouth, missed the main evacuation
and plunged into hectic operations along the French coast. Now the job was
to pluck out pockets of retreating soldiers - British, French, Polish, Dutch -
as the German army raced southward. On 11 June Restigouche and St. Laurent
took off wounded from St. Valery, near Dieppe. Lieutenant Desmond
“Debby” Piers went ashore and found the general commanding the 51st
Flighland Division. But he was holding a flank and decHned the invitation to
embark. German guns moved in. Shells whistled close over the destroyers.
They briskly hoisted their boats, returned fire, and zigzagged out between the
splashes.
France surrendered to Flitler at Compeigne on 21 June 1940. Evacuations
now centred at St. Jean de Luz near the Spanish border. Fraser, the senior
Canadian ship under Commander Wallace Creery, plucked a party of fugitive
diplomats from a sardine boat off the beleaguered coast, among them the
British ambassador to France, the South African minister, and an old friend of
Creery’s. Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Vanier, Canadian minister to France
who became Canada’s Governor General. They were sent to the U.K. in an
RN ship. Fraser and Restiôuche went to work at St. Jean de Luz, marshaUing the
transports and patrolling for U-boats. They pulled out the better part of a
Polish division. Restigouche's Captain, Lieutenant Commander Horatio
Nelson Lay, and three of his ship’s company were later awarded the PoKsh
Cross of Valour.
The destroyers headed north and joined the cruiser HMS Calcutta, flying the
flag of a Royal Navy Rear Admiral. Their target was the Gironde River, Uned
with oil tanks and shipyard and port facilities of great value to the enemy. On
the night of 24 June they headed in fast, bows cutting through mounting seas.
It was dark and Calcutta signalled the ships to form single Hne ahead. As
Nelson Lay records it, Restigouche was three miles off Calcutta's starboard
quarter. Fraser, with Commander Wallace Creery, was off in the dark on the
cruiser’s port bow. The ships had not been assigned sequence numbers by the
Admiral and so it wasn’t clear what order they should take in the Hne.
Creery turned Fraser inward to take station astern. Somehow she got right
across Calcutta's bow. The cruiser cut her clean in two, right below the bridge.
Calcutta stopped briefly and dropped one boat. Restigouche was left to do the
rescue work and sink what was left. Lay took his ship right alongside the after
half, kept his own screws clear of damage, and ground against the broken hulk
for ten long minutes plucking off survivors. , The bow still floated with men
aboard and he risked using Hghts and rescued more before it sank. Then he lay
off while Fraser's engineer officer and party went calmly back aboard the
floating half to scuttle it.
At first Hght when Restigouche rejoined Calcutta, the cruiser’s bow seemed
turned up by the colHsion. But, incredibly, it was Fraser's bridge sitting there.
78
It had been sheared clean off and deposited neatly on the cruiser’s forecastle.
The horrified Commander Creery and his bridge team had stepped down to
safety while the two halves of their ship disappeared in the dark. Forty-seven
Canadians and nineteen RN sailors lost their lives.
The toll could well have been much higher but for Nelson Lay. Dick Malin,
one of his asdic operators, who frankly didn’t like him, said, “He was one of
the best guys to serve with when the shooting started. Coolness, nothing
phased him ...” And Malin remembered when a signal came to leave the
scene that Lay said to the yeoman, “I won’t read any messages for the next
hour.” How else can a man live up to being christened “Horatio Nelson”?
High-speed manoeuvring on a dark night at close quarters calls for skill,
precise judgement, and quick response to rapid change. Ships had no radar
and showed no lights, but that was standard. Their captains, all experienced
officers, were on their bridges, but they had had very little sleep in ten days
and nights of constant action. Reactions and judgement were overstretched,
dulled inevitably by fatigue. There was no Board of Inquiry, no Court
Martial.
Forty-five years later, long after retiring from a distinguished career. Rear
Admiral Wallace Creery believed that if he had admitted his exhaustion to
himself and turned over to his First Lieutenant, Fraser might have Hved. Valid
or not, it is an awesome load that a warship’s Captain carries. The life of a ship
and all her people hang time after time on that split second of judgement,
decision, action. The feeling that your beloved ship and all your shipmates
would still Hve “if only ...” is a burden that many fine sea officers over
centuries of war have carried to their graves. Fraser's was a tragedy to be
repeated in everybody’s navy as the war ground on.
Now Hitler mustered the armies and the landing craft for Operation Sea
Lion, that short step across the Channel that would conquer England and lay
bare the world. Napoleon had mustered his army and thousands of craft, too,
and Nelson and the Royal Navy stopped him. But now Hitler had aircraft and
U-boats and bases for them from the northern tip of Norway to the south of
France. Britain was encircled and alone, her army in tatters with its equipment
left behind, her fleet hard hit and stretched too thin.
The Channel must be held. All England girded for invasion. The Canadian
destroyers stayed. Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Hibbard in Skeena read the
basic order: to fire to the last shell, then ram the landing craft to the bitter end.
Marshal Goering’s Luftwaffe flew wave after wave on Britain to destroy the
RAF. But the Spitfires and Hurricanes held. Without a fleet to match the navy
in the Channel and without controlling the air. Hitler could not command
that twenty miles of intervening sea.
Sea Lion was called off but Britain was under siege. London and the
Channel ports were bombed unmercifully, and the U-boats exploded from
79
their brand new bases in France. Working with them, too, were the Kondors,
long-range maritime patrol aircraft flying from Bordeaux. They spotted
unopposed over the Channel and the route to the Mediterranean. Efficient
bombers as well, the Kondors sank thirty ships in their first sixty days. Donitz
had forty operational boats, averaging eight on each of the shipping routes.
They were his elite. They picked off independents and stragglers and made
bold, single-handed attacks on convoys. The young aces called this their
“Happy Time.” They raced each other for tonnage and more tonnage.
Returning to their massive concrete pens in Brest, St. Nazaire, Lorient, and La
Pallice, they flew strings of pennants, each for the death of a ship. It was a
hero’s welcome: flowers and favours from the girls; an Iron Cross for the
Captain. Then they would turn the boat over to a maintenance crew and go
home for a month, or carouse in Paris with U-boat pay in the pocket and the
elite U-boat badge as passport to untold delights.
WOLF PACKS AND THE WESTERN APPROACHES

In September of 1940 Donitz ordered the wolf-pack attacks on the surface at
night. A group would be positioned by U-boat headquarters on a patrol Hne
at right angles across the expected route of a convoy. The boats were too far
apart to talk to each other and used high-frequency wireless to report their
positions to shore. When one boat sighted a convoy he reported and shad-
owed while headquarters directed the others in ahead of its track. They all
reported by wireless and when they were effectively gathered headquarters
released them to attack. They simply swamped the defence, picking their own
opportunities to go in and attack and attack again till their torpedoes were
gone. Their Achilles’ heel was their heavy use of wireless. The transmissions
could be fixed quite accurately by high-frequency direction finding or HF/DF
stations ashore in the U.K. and then in Newfoundland and Canada.
Meanwhile, Hitler’s “blitz” on London went on night after night to shatter
its enormous port. The Channel was closed to shipping by October and all
Atlantic convoys were re-routed north of Ireland to Liverpool and the Clyde.
The key battle now was in the Western Approaches to Britain and the Cana-
dian destroyers were all there. By mid-summer they had joined the Clyde
Escort Force, covering outbound convoys beyond Ireland to 12 or 15° West
and bringing another back in. When the U-boats raced in on the surface asdic
couldn’t detect them by pinging, though they could be heard on hydrophones
at short range, and at night the low-profiled U-boat, which could pick its
direction of attack, could always spot the bigger escort first. One by one the
destroyers got the first seagoing RDF, Radio Direction Finder Type 286, or
radar. It was a long wavelength set that could spot other ships at about three
miles but could rarely detect a surfaced U-boat.
80
September, 1939 - May, 1940. Convoys had anti-submarine escorts only in the
Western Approaches to the British Isles. But the U-boats didn’t have to go far to find
unescorted ships. Of 215 sunk only twenty-one were in convoy. Twenty-one U-boats
were sunk.
It was a fierce fall and winter. The escorts were far too few, and the wolf packs
had the upper hand. A fast convoy coming in from HaHfax, HX 79, was loaded
with munitions. Even with an especially heavy escort it lost thirteen out of
forty-nine in a single night. Slow convoy SC 7 lost twenty sunk and two
damaged out of thirty-four. Very few enemy were killed. Hundreds of oil-
soaked survivors were fished from the icy seas. St. Laurent, stiU commanded by
Harry DeWolf, rescued nearly 900 from Arandora Star, With the destroyer
stopped and a sitting duck in those U-boat waters, the seamen in the boats and
over the side on the scramble nets hauled in the survivors. Nearly aU, as it
turned out, were Germans and ItaHans, enemy ahens from Britain bound for
internment in Canada. When DeWolf signalled the information to a circUng
RAF Sunderland, he flashed back, “How bloody funny” and flew off.
The RN, meanwhile, had found another destroyer to replace Fraser. She
commissioned as HMCS Margaree and a lot of Fraser’s survivors joined her.
They finished a refit in the worst of the bHtz in London’s Albert Dock. Every
night the sirens howled; incendiaries showered down; high explosive bombs
flung splinters. The dutymen ran out hoses, fought fires, dug people from the
81
rubble. Ashore, the tube to Piccadilly Circus could get sailors to the hght
(inside the blackout curtains) and the music and laughter of the West End, to
the Windmill Theatre with its famous nude tableaux where the decorative
ladies were forbidden by the Lord Chancellor to move - even when the
bombs fell close. The anti-aircraft guns in Hyde Park hammered away, fires
raged, and rubble filled the streets. But the Windmill - as it still says proudly
on its marquee - “Never Closed. ” Canadian sailors, making their way back to
the wreckage of the docks through the tube stations crowded with night-
sheltering Londoners, saw the cheerful, indomitable courage that kept Britain
fighting and ahve.
Margaree, on her first convoy in late October, was lost, cut in half by a
merchant ship in poor visibility. The bow went down Hke a stone. Port Fairy,
who had rammed her, came alongside the after part and took off some men.
Margarets Captain (Commander Rouer Roy) and 140 men, many of whom
had survived the sinking of Fraser, were lost.
Fraser survivors Lieutenant Bill Landymore, Surgeon Lieutenant Blair
MacLean, and later arrival Sub-Lieutenant Bob Timbrell wrestled a carley
float over the side and survived again.
The urgent dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit “SSS” heard so often on the
merchant ship frequency meant submarine attack. Ottawa and HMS Harvester
raced to a call from the independent Melrose Abbey off Ireland. When they
raised her there was the U-boat, an ItaHan in fact, blazing at her prey. The
destroyers closed at full speed, opened fire, and the Itahan boat submerged.
Commander RoUo Mainguy in Ottawa was senior officer and the two ships
searched systematically for five hours. Finally, they got soHd asdic contact,
and the ships took turns in co-ordinated attacks. Harvester lay off, holding
contact; Ottawa ran in deHberately on the target’s beam. The HSD, the Higher
Submarine Detector Petty Officer, quietly called out the ranges and bearings.
The U-boat was moving slowly, conserving batteries. Range, two hundred
yards. Mainguy “threw-off,” aiming the ship ahead to allow for the move-
ment of the target while the charges sank.
“Target moving slowly right,” from the HSD, and “Doppler sHght high.
Target coming towards.” Yes. Ottawa would pass nicely ahead of the subma-
rine. Then the HSD, “No echoes. Contact lost.”
The asdic’s pencil beam was passing right over the submarine. It was
running deep. The depth-charge crews were ordered to make deep settings.
From the Anti-Submarine Control Officer: “Fire by recorder.” The rudi-
mentary computer, a paper trace with a range mark for each asdic echo plotted
against time, showed a sloping Hne. Projecting that ahead gave the zero range
point and rang the fire buzzer.
Down aft the depth-charge crew dropped their pattern. After a long sink-
ing time a jolting clang sounded in the engine room as each charge exploded.
82
Then Ottawa circled to regain contact. Harvester moved up and attacked, then
circled back. And so the deadly game went on, drawing circles on the sea and
blasting at the enemy below. The destroyers delivered nine careful depth-
charge attacks between them. Ottawa, under-equipped still, had only the
single rail aft and one thrower each side for firing five-charge patterns. Har-
vester was up to date and could fire the standard ten. After two of Harvester’s
attacks they heard underwater explosions. In the morning there was an oil
slick. Mainguy was convinced they had a kill. So was Captain (D), the officer
responsible for escort vessels, in Liverpool. There was no wreckage, though,
and Admiralty’s U-boat Assessment Committee gave it “probably damaged.”
Historians are always at it and over forty years later solid evidence pieced
together the story ofFaa di Bruno, actually sunk by Ottawa and Harvester on 6
November 1940. So Ottawa and RoUo Mainguy in fact got the RCN’s first
submarine kill of the war. It’s a pity they didn’t get the credit in his Hfetime
with the Distinguished Service Order for himself and likely the DSC for the
asdic CO and Distinguished Service Medal for the HSD. Decorations went
with a victory. In a good fighting ship every man, and especially those who
received them, knew the “gongs” were for the whole team.
Soon the Itahan navy struck back. On the night of 1 December Saguenay
spotted a U-boat on the surface astern of her convoy. Almost at the same
instant she was struck by a torpedo. Fire blazed fiercely forward and many
were killed. The submarine, the Itahan Arô, circled on the surface for another
shot. Able Seaman Clifford McNaught, burned in the fire, dashed aft to
supplement the depleted gun’s crew by passing up shells. Argo was forced
down by the gunfire and only then did Louis Audette, the Lieutenant in
charge of the gun, see that McNaught was terribly burned on his face and
hands. He was huddled now by the silent gun, sobbing quietly. Passing each
shell with those mangled hands had been agony unimagined.
Up in the forecastle, skiU and gut bravery finally controlled the flames.
Flooding was limited in the pitch black bowels by shoring bulkheads with
timbers. Lieutenant Commander Gus Miles got his ship under way on one
engine, then, entering harbour, proud Saguenay was struck once more, this
time by a German acoustic mine. But she was repaired to fight again, less
twenty-one good seamen who had fought their last. Admiralty noted the fine
seamanship of Miles and his company, as well as the speed of that after gun’s
crew that saved the ship and the convoy from further attack. But the war was
taking a severe toU on the RCN.
Lieutenant Herbert Rayner took St. Laurent over from DeWolf after Aran-
dora Star. It was Rayner’s first command and in that dark and dirty December
the Western Approaches gave him his due initiation. “Sally,” as she was called
(“Sally Rand” was her full nom de guerre after the famous fan dancer of the day),
was detached from her convoy to support another under heavy night attack.
83
Pounding through heavy seas and swirling snow, Rayner found that four U-
boats had sunk ten ships and crippled an armed merchant cruiser called Forfar.
“Sally” gathered survivors and started escorting the cruiser eastward only to
be called away again - another sinking, more survivors hauled on board. And
there were U-boats everywhere. To confirm that unpalatable fact came the
signal that Forfar was hit again and sinking.
Heading to the rescue through the murk, St. Laurent came upon a U-boat, a
mile off and diving. She closed and picked it up on asdic. A U-boat! By the
tail! But Herbie Rayner was a very careful, quietly systematic man. Coolly, he
held the U-boat by asdic, circled round, holding his attack. He radioed for
help. A single ship could easily lose a submarine. Running over it to drop
depth charges, the ship’s asdic always lost contact so she would then have to
open to regain it, at which point the U-boat with a burst of speed could
wriggle off. In addition, the depth charges churned the water up, giving cover
and false echoes, and often the explosions knocked out power in the attacking
ship. A second ship in the equation made a kill far more than twice as certain.
Forfafs survivors were in the water some miles off, but a Captain must make
the hard decisions. The U-boats had killed too many this night, and this one
must not escape to kill again. Rayner bided his time.
Soon the old RN escort destroyer Viscount arrived. She moved in and gained
contact, too, and held it, then followed behind the U-boat slowly. Now it was
co-ordinated attacks. “Sally” came in on the U-boat’s beam to drop her ten-
charge pattern while Viscount held contact. The deadly dance again, and again:
eight patterns, eighty charges, over three hours. At last diesel oil spread on the
surface and the contact faded. Both captains were confident they had a kill.
Next, Forfafs survivors had to be found in the poor visibiHty and rising
seas. Twenty still hung grimly to life and they were hauled aboard, stripped,
warmed in the showers, cleaned of the terrible oil, their wounds tended, and
tucked down wherever space could be found among so many others. “Sally”
headed for the Clyde and in came another emergency call. Fifty miles away an
independent merchantman had been torpedoed, which Rayner found crawl-
ing for home at five knots. Even worse weather now added its force to the U-
boats. Towering seas threatened to overwhelm the crippled ship. Three days
of struggle brought both exhausted vessels in to anchor in the haven of the
Clyde.
St. Laurent landed her broken human cargo, and then began the work to get
back in the fray: the clean-up of the oil and vomit and excrescence; the
weather damage to be repaired; fuel and ammunition to be topped up; provi-
sions and stores to be humped aboard. The ship’s company would sleep - a
httle - and then take their turns for a run ashore in the blackout to the pubs of
Greenock, or catch the train to Glasgow; for the officers there was the bar at
the Bay Hotel in nearby Gourock. There might even be a girl, if a man was
84
lucky, and perhaps a warm bed. Or else it was back aboard to the cold
messdeck to crawl in the hammock or flake out on the locker tops and sleep.
And then turn to in the early morning and it was back to sea. Out on the
Western Approaches.
The certainty of the St. Laurent/Viscount kill was downed a bit to “probably
sunk” by Admiralty’s killjoys. But it was a higher rating, ironically, than
A
Ottawa's. Herbie Rayner won the DSC, and richly deserved it for those four
days of fighting the U-boats and the sea. But “Sally’s” U-boat, as evidence
much later was to show, was a very tough nut. After the heavy pounding she
actually had got home.
Of the few characters we have met so far. Lay, DeWolf, Creery, Hibbard,
Piers, Landymore, MacLean, Mainguy, Rayner, Timbrell, and Pickford all
became admirals in post-war years and Miles a commodore. Mainguy,
DeWolf, and Rayner became, in that order. Chiefs of the Naval Staff. They
learned their trade in a good hard school.
STRETCHED TOO THIN

By year’s end the prospects were bleak. In twelve months the U-boats had
sunk 400 ships - over 2 million tons. Only twenty-two U-boats had been
killed and many more than that had been built. Since the war started over 5
million tons of shipping had been lost from all causes and only one-third of it
replaced. Try as the escorts might, they were being beaten.
One overwhelming need was for more escorts. In late summer there had
been a windfall. Fifty American Great War vintage flush-deck destroyers
were turned over to the RN in the Churchill-Roosevelt destroyers-for-bases
deal. Under heavy pressure from Admiralty the RCN took six and later a
seventh, though manpower resources were far overstretched and the first
corvettes were coming down the river.
By January, 1941, all six River-class destroyers and the four four-stackers
not under repair - Columbia, St. Francis, Niagara, and St. Clair - were in the
Clyde Escort Force. So, too, were ten corvettes. These were the ships, built to
Admiralty’s account, that had been brought down the St. Lawrence before
freeze-up and ferried to Britain by skeleton RCN crews. They were barely
outfitted and stored to the minimum in Canada. Some had even crossed the
Atlantic with dummy wooden guns mounted bravely on their forecastles.
The RCN intended the Canadian scratch crews would form a small and
badly needed manning pool at Greenock for replacing men in the destroyers.
But things were so bad in the Western Approaches that the new corvettes
were thrown willy-nilly into operations. The RN said they’d replace the
Canadian crews but didn’t. In Admiralty’s view, the Western Approaches
took priority over the RCN’s need to man new ships at home. The Canadian
position had been made completely clear when the barrel was scraped to man
85
the four-stackers in September. There is no doubt that the RN still looked on

the RCN as a convenient appendage there to do its bidding, rather than as an
independent service. In retrospect, Canadian senior officers seemed too will-
ing to comply. But these were desperate days.
Manning six four-stackers and ten corvettes quite unexpectedly in three
months over and above planned commitments may not have loomed large in
RN terms, but those 1,700 officers and men equalled the size of the whole of
the RCN just one year before. Conjuring them up beyond the expansion
already planned was squeezing blood out of a stone. Captain Harold Grant,
the Director of Personnel, had done the squeezing. But four more corvettes
were commissioned by the end of 1940, and nineteen more would need crews
before the end of May, 1941, with thirty-one still to come and twenty-five
minesweepers as well over the rest of 1941. And the RN would take none of
them. So the RCN had to ram three years’ emergency expansion into a chaotic
two. To expect the men would be adequately trained and the ships properly
equipped, tried and tested, worked up, and ready to fight at sea was beyond
reality.
There was no doubt about the crisis in the Western Approaches. But escort
vessels were useless without trained officers and men. That fall of 1940 Grant
needed 7,000 more officers and men for the corvettes and minesweepers and
the first of the Fairmile anti-submarine motor launches. He also had to
provide people for the essential shoreside support. He needed 300 trained
RCNVR officers by spring, and they had not even been entered. The training
schools didn’t exist. The experienced people needed to do the training were
fighting the enemy at sea.
In short, the navy was already stretched far too thin. As late as May, 1941,
RCN four-stackers and corvettes made poor showings in RN anti-submarine
and communications exercises and two of the “British” corvettes that trained
at HMS Western Isles, the RN’s escort work-up base at Tobermory, were well
below the RN par.
Operational training facihties like Tobermory and the experts to run them,
the kind of things a major navy took for granted, the Canadians simply didn’t
have. Basic training geared up in 1940. On top of discipHne and learning
something about seamanship, nearly everyone needed speciahzed training, be
it gunnery, asdic, electronics, torpedo, signals, wireless telegraphy, coding,
engines, boilers, hull, plumbing, cooking, supply, pay and administration,
medical aid, storekeeping. Every ship needed a great range of skills. Officers
had to be versed in navigation and shiphandhng and must understand signals,
tactics, and weapons as well as administration, organization, naval discipHne,
and law. And they must demonstrate that essential, elusive quahty, leadership.
Schools were cobbled together, but equipment was short and the experts were
at sea. Individual training lagged far behind.
86
Even a small warship was complex. Experienced people needed time to

learn to handle a new one: to operate the engines and make ordered sense out
of a myriad bells and buzzers and lamps, a tangle of voice-pipes and tele-
phones, a forest of pipes and valves and shafts. It took time to shake down, just
learning to get in and out of harbour safely.
Then the fighting teams needed practice on shoreside trainers like asdic
teachers and gunnery battle trainers. They had to run their own equipment
until they knew it bHndfolded and upside down. Only then would they be
ready for an experienced work-up team of officers and petty officers to
oversee hve exercises - firing at targets day and night; pinging on submarines;
working with other ships, signahing and manoeuvring; sending boats away
with boarding parties in rough weather; fighting fires and controlHng action
damage; the battle problems thrown at everyone from the Captain down;
hashing over the mistakes and doing it again and again until it’s right. All of
this was necessary for proper training. Then a ship and her company could go
to sea, trained but untried, to join an operational escort group or squadron.
But in the RCN the system just didn’t exist. Harry DeWolf commanded
Skeena through the Channel fray, was Staff Officer Operations in HaHfax in
late 1940 and then Director of Plans in Ottawa until he took command of his
famous fighting destroyer HMCS Haida in 1943. He said, “We had no facihties
really for training. As we found a crew for a corvette we’d send an officer to
sea the first day with them to show them what to do. It was almost as simple as
that.”
An escort group, even of properly worked-up ships, needed time to work
together, communicating under all conditions day and night, hunting target
submarines, protecting dummy convoys, illuminating targets for each other,
reviewing and remedying mistakes. The captains and their officers must
thoroughly understand anti-submarine and convoy protection operations
and know exactly what the Senior Officer expected of them. But the Cana-
dian escort group that stayed together was an ideal hardly ever achieved.
Ready or not, though, escorts were desperately needed with the convoys.
The Captain of a new corvette was Hkely a qualified merchant service
officer with the rank of Lieutenant, RCNR. He was an experienced seaman and
navigator who could get a ship safely about the ocean. He was likely the only
officer on board capable, as a bare minimum, of avoiding marine disaster. But
his knowledge of fighting a ship and defence of a convoy and his general
experience in naval operations were minimal. He might have a junior RCNR
officer as ship’s navigator. The First Lieutenant, responsible for organizing
the ship’s company to work and fight, was an RCNVR officer who might
possibly have had a few months at sea. The other two or three officers would
be Sub-Lieutenants, RCNVR, straight from basic training. On the lower deck,
a lucky corvette had half a dozen trained permanent force petty officers and
87
leading seamen. That was how newly commissioned Canadian corvettes and
sweepers went off to fight the sea and a professional enemy. They were
terribly ill-prepared.
And most were dreadfully seasick. There was no cure for it other than
toughing it out in tiny overcrowded, reeking ships that would “roll on wet
grass,” with chores and vital jobs that simply had to be done in any and all
conditions however ghastly one might feel, weak from constantly vomiting
such food as the truly miserable diet provided and exhausted from fighting
the endlessly violent gyrations of the ship. The cold. The wet. The everlasting
pounding and jarring and noise. These were the conditions that suddenly
enveloped thousands of young men and boys who had spent only weeks in
uniform. This was the navy. But they had volunteered, and tough it out they
did. They learned by doing - on the job, at sea, where people died.
Percy Nelles, under pressure from the RN, forced conditions on his seago-
ing navy that the Royal Navy would never inflict on its own. As in the case of
the ten corvettes, the RN was quite prepared to throw unreasonable demands
at Canadians. That first scrambling, excessive expansion dogged Canada’s
navy through the war. As Harry DeWolf said, “We never caught up. We were
always under pressure to man more ships.” The essential conditions for
attaining and maintaining operational efficiency eluded the RCN’s escort
forces until about the middle of 1943.
Until the spring of 1941, convoys steamed with no anti-submarine protec-
tion from flashing farewell to the local escort out of HaHfax to meeting the
Western Approaches escort west of Ireland. But the wolf packs reached
further west to get at the merchant ships unopposed. In March Winston
Churchill underlined the terrible danger out at sea when he declared “the
Battle of the Atlantic.” He appointed the first C-in-C Western Approaches,
Admiral Sir Percy Noble, in charge of operations and training for all the escort
force. In April the RN set up a base in Iceland. Now the convoys could be
covered twice as far. In three attacks in the newly covered area that month,
three U-boats were sunk. Then in May the wolf packs moved even further
west, between Iceland and Newfoundland. They sank five ships in an east-
bound convoy before it reached anti-submarine protection. Naked, the con-
voy dispersed and there were more losses. Complete transatlantic escort was
the only answer, and in May of 1941 Admiralty asked the RCN to cover the
western Atlantic. It would be a new escort force, mainly of RCN ships, based
on St. John’s, Newfoundland, and under Canadian command. Canada
agreed.
THE NEWFOUNDLAND ESCORT FORCE

Now all ships except harbour defence and local escorts in Halifax and Sydney
were committed to the Newfoundland Escort Force, the NEE. The destroyers
88
and corvettes came back from the Western Approaches backed by some old
RN destroyers of Great War vintage called “V’s and W’s” because their names
began with these letters. Canadian escort groups were formed. Corvettes
joined them as they commissioned. If the far-reaching U-boats made the
through-escort plan essential, it was the rush of newly constructed corvettes
from Canadian yards in the spring of 1941 that made it possible. Quantity
was there - though it was never enough to provide proper rotation, training,
and refit cycles or a reserve for inevitable action and weather damage - but
quahty, as we have seen, was not.
On top of that, the Canadian corvettes weren’t really up to ocean work.
Initial design was for a coastal escort, not for long, gruelHng open-ocean
passages. But now there was no choice. The RN, learning from early experi-
ence, was improving its own corvettes’ seakeeping, capacity, and Hvability by
extending their forecastles, enclosing the well-deck to make accommodation
bigger and drier, and instalhng breakwaters. Ottawa knew this, but to modify
Canadian construction would slow the flow. Then, because of overloaded
shipyards it was mid-1943 through late 1944 before the first seventy
Canadian-built corvettes were modified with extended forecastles. In that
long interval Canadian corvettes fought on the ropes. With the best of crews
their efficiency was impaired. And the creature comfort of their companies
was rock bottom.
In 1941 most still carried minesweeping gear, which took up needed
depth-charge space on their quarterdecks. They had only magnetic com-
passes, which were very unstable in rough weather and - most critically -
while manoeuvring to attack. Gyro compasses were not manufactured in
Canada. Most of the Canadian corvettes had no searchHghts, carried no radio
telephones, and were fitted with the rudimentary type 123A asdic, vintage
1920s. The RCN was at the back of the queue and everything had to come
across a hazardous sea.
Initially an escort group had one destroyer and three or four corvettes. The
senior of the officers in command, whether RN, RCN, or other Allied navy,
automatically became the Senior Officer Escort (SOE) and in charge of
defending the convoy in addition to handling his own ship. Usually he was in
the destroyer, which was best equipped for the task.
A group would leave St. John’s, take over from the local escort that had
brought the convoy from Halifax or Sydney, slog northeastward until
relieved by an RN group at the Mid Ocean Meeting Point (MOMP) south of
Iceland, then steam into HvalQord for fuel. In that gale-plagued Iceland
anchorage the RN provided bare subsistence: a depot ship for essential stores
and emergency repair, ammunition ships, and tankers for fuel and water. On
rare occasions there would be a dance ashore with some silent, icy, and well-
defended blondes. Then it was out to pick up a westbound convoy, turn that
89
over to the western local escort off the Grand Banks, and run back into
“Newfyjohn.”
Seven corvettes had arrived there on the 27th of May: Agassiz, Alberni,
Chambly, Cobalt, Collingwood, Orillia, and Wetaskiwin. Their Senior Officer was
Commander J.D. “Chummy” Prentice, CO of Chambly and also designated
Senior Officer Canadian Corvettes. He had had the winter to work to some
extent with these first corvettes around Halifax and they were far better
manned and trained than those that followed.
LEADERS
Prentice was a Canadian who had joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1912
and retired in 1938. At the outbreak of war, Hke aU the ex-RNs living in
Canada, he was placed by Admiralty at the disposal of the RCN. He was the
right kind of officer for building seagoing efficiency in such a ragtag force -
energetic and dedicated with a fertile and innovative mind, a sense of humour,
and a particularly colourful personahty. He wore a rimless monocle in his
right eye and could toss it in the air and catch it unerringly between bushy
eyebrow and lower hd. He had a coffin-hke box with a hinged lid built on his
bridge so he could catch a Httle sleep between crises and it was said that even in
there his monocle was always firmly in place. Legendary people are needed at
times hke these and Prentice fihed the bill.
Commodore Leonard W. Murray, RCN, who had been Commander of
Canadian Ships and Estabhshments in the United Kingdom, arrived to com-
mand the Newfoundland force in June. He was a Nova Scotian from Pictou
County who had been a cadet in the Naval CoUege class of 1912. He served
with the RN in the Great War and periodically in peace. In 1919 he was a Sub-
Lieutenant under Captain Dudley Pound, who by 1941 was First Sea Lord.
Pound was influential in Murray’s appointment to Newfoundland. It was
very important that the RCN officer there should have the RN’s confidence
and, in fact, Murray was the best possible choice.
In an RN or ex-RN officer like Prentice, the distinctive accent and manner-
isms running to handkerchiefs up the sleeve, boat-cloaks, and silver-knobbed
canes roused no resentment among young Canadian officers and men. They
served quite happily when, as was often the case, the CO of a Canadian ship or
school was a Royal Navy officer on loan. Those officers were carefully
selected and were inteUigent enough to know that the class system so rigidly
separating officers from men in Britain did not apply in Canada. They
brought professionahsm with them, which was the main thing, and their
customs were just the way Brits were. But when an RCN officer brought such
foibles back with him from his time with the RN or appeared to look down his
nose at fellow Canadians, it was indeed resented.
90
Commodore Murray was not one of the latter, though his time with the Royal
Navy had marked him somewhat and he was a bit remote, perhaps shy. He gave
the impression of a rather portly stodginess. That was belied, though, by the
hard-hitting brand of hockey he played whenever he could get on the ice. Right
through his career he had a strong feeling for his men. Murray was a thoroughly
competent officer and an able administrator. He was not the fire eater, the dashing
leader. He did not have the flamboyance of Prentice or the presence of Admiral
Percy Noble who, as Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches, was Murray’s
operational boss, or the ruthless toughness of Admiral Max Horton, who
relieved Noble. But Murray inspired confidence, maintained a balanced view of
what was possible, and coaxed rather than browbeat results from the extraordi-
narily limited resources he had at his disposal.
He had a well-earned reputation as a fine shiphandler. This might seem
inconsequential for a shorebound senior officer, but shiphandfing skill always
carried a certain stamp of approval through any officer’s career. It could
strongly outweigh other shortcomings in a ship’s Captain in the minds of his
own people. Taking his ship alongside is the one time when the Captain’s skill
is on naked display to everyone from the admiral in his flagship and the other
ships in harbour to the coxswain at the wheel and right below to the engine
room crew working the throttles.
If, in his first command, an officer brought his ship alongside a jetty or up
to a buoy, day and night in all kinds of weather, with precision and dash - and
destroyers particularly had to be handled with dash - he had it made. The
engine room staff would boast that their Old Man never used more than three
engine movements to come alongside. The seamen would have all fines
secured, be down out of the rain, dressed in their number ones, and off ashore
before that other ham-fisted ship in the group had even got a headrope ashore.
And their Old Man never so much as scratched the paintwork.
Good shiphandling, as much as in the days of sail, breeds admiration,
confidence in the Captain, and pride in the ship. It has always been a real factor
in reaching that most satisfyingly important state - a happy and efficient ship.
And those two characteristics invariably go hand in hand. The often unfortu-
nate corollary abides, however. A ship’s company will growl and find it hard
to forgive poor shiphandling.
The navy’s memory of one distinguished career officer of otherwise
Nelsonian cut who retired as a rear admiral is still dogged by his inept
handhng of one of the notoriously difficult four-stackers in 1941. The Halifax
dockyard lies along the west side of the harbour and across a half-mile of
water fies the city of Dartmouth. On a particularly cold and blustery day, after
several attempts to get the ship alongside in the dockyard. Commander Hugh
Pullen bellowed to the forecastle, “For God’s sake, get a line ashore.” An
91
unidentified voice responded with equal frustration, “Which side? Dart-

mouth or Hahfax?”
Commodore G.C. Jones was the Commanding Officer Atlantic Coast,
situated in Halifax at that time. He was not in direct command of Murray,
which was a good thing as the two were quite different in personality and
never hit it off. Jones was a bright staff officer but not much of a seaman. Early
in the war he ran his ship into a ferry, thus keeping her alongside for repairs
when others were off fighting in the Channel. From then until he died the
navy called him “Jetty” Jones.
On the other hand Murray, whose contemporaries remembered him forty
years later as a consummate shiphandler, had the regard and confidence of the
ones who counted most to him - those who served at sea. Both officers
reported directly to NSHQ and Murray served the operational requirements of
C-in-C Western Approaches. Otherwise Jones, as COAC, was in charge of
everything on the east coast - operations, allocation of ships, the dockyard,
the shore and sea training faciHties and organization - such as they were, as
well as the very important function of manning. So Murray to a very large
extent had to depend onjones for the tools - the ships and the people and the
support facilities - to do his job. And he often considered he got short shrift. ‘
They were in the same term at the Naval College but Jones was the senior
by a hair, was promoted to Rear Admiral one day earher, and in September,
1942, left Halifax to become Vice-Chief and then Chief of the Naval Staff in
Ottawa. Murray succeeded him as Commanding Officer Atlantic Coast. He
became Ahied Commander-in-Chief Canadian Northwest Atlantic in April,
1943, and remained in that post until the war’s end.
The shortage of trained people was chronic and as each new ship commis-
sioned the situation got worse. Later in 1941 Murray and Jones had a major
confrontation on the matter of manning ships. Murray knew how important
it was that ships’ companies stay together; it was the only way a fighting team
got moulded. But when a Newfoundland Escort Force ship went to Hahfax
for maintenance or refit, experienced people would be yanked by Jones’s
manning commander to provide the core for a new corvette’s crew. That, in
fact, was the poHcy of NSHQ. In the Naval Board’s view the operational fleet
must suffer “temporary” inefficiency to get those new ships out to sea. Jones
had to make the numbers and he was an ambitious man. Murray, who all his
career thought of his people first, saw the results of that poHcy etched in the
harrowed faces of his young ships’ captains and in the terrible losses out at sea.
Command of the Newfoundland Escort Force was, operationally, the most
daunting challenge ever put in the way of a Canadian naval officer. By the
time Murray took command in June, 1941, the force consisted of six RCN and
seven RN destroyers and twenty-one corvettes, all but four of them Canadian.
There were forty corvettes by August, most of them terribly short on training
92
and experience. Logistically, it was a nightmare of missing elements. For what

became almost overnight the major naval operating base in the western Atlan-
tic, St.John’s, Newfoundland, had the leanest of facilities.
NEWFYJOHN
The entrance to St. John’s harbour is a mere cleft in the massive wall of rock
that faces the harsh Atlantic. Sailors for centuries have found it - or foundered
near it - in fog and ice and gales and in those rare and lovely spells of fine, fish-
curing “civil weather” that come in the late, brief summer. St.John’s has seen
centuries of war. Its harbour gives wonderful shelter in any weather, but it is
rock-girt, steep-sided, and small - only 700 yards across and shghtly over a
mile long - and in wartime always overcrowded. Apart from its natural shelter
and the friendship that Newfoundlanders always extend to men of the sea, it
had httle to offer the Escort Force. There were fuel tanks, one small drydock,
some shaky jetties, and, at the beginning, no shore support facilities, no
training equipment, no amenities of any kind - and the winter weather was
almost as bleak as Iceland’s.
For ships there were only the basics of fuel, water, ammunition, stores,
provisions, and emergency repairs; for men, mail from home, a brief run
ashore, beer or bootleg screech, a movie. There might be a dance in a church
hall up the rain-lashed hill, a girl perhaps, or a welcome from a friendly family
with a decent meal and a warm bed. While base facilities - to be called HMCS
Avalon - were planned and built, support was afloat. HMS Forth, a submarine
depot ship (without the submarines), provided running repairs and accom-
modation. Then an RN store ship and two oilers came, plus a Great Lakes
steamer for a floating barracks called Avalon 11. There were Free French,
Belgian, Polish, and Norwegian corvettes, too. They were crewed by profes-
sionals who had escaped from their overrun countries and had been given
Httle ships the RN couldn’t man.
It was a major business starting from scratch to set up a naval operating
base for some sixty ships. Anti-submarine defences, controlled minefields
with detector loops, and anti-torpedo nets were installed. The nets were
awkward to get around but well justified. A U-boat tried to fire torpedoes
into the harbour mouth a year later. Over the next year wireless station, port
war signal station, hospital, dockyard shops, new jetties and wharves, bar-
racks and administration, stores, magazines, and fuel storage were completed.
Admiralty paid the capital costs, the RCN carried operation and maintenance.
While this was going on the U.S. Navy was fast building its own massive base
facility at Argentia in Conception Bay.
That slit in the rock so often shrouded in fog got the first radar beacon in
North America. It was installed in mid-1941 in the Cabot Tower, the site of
Marconi’s first transatlantic radio station high above the harbour entrance. A
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modified aircraft transponder gave an accurate bearing when triggered by the

early ship’s radar. It got many ships safely within sight of the surf at the
entrance. From there the Captain had to zig around the net and Hne up with
the green leading hghts in the town. Then he was between the awesome chffs
with their fish houses and stages cHnging to the rocks, then just as suddenly
inside in the harbour’s pool.
The physical limitations at St. John’s were matched by ridiculously small
staffs. Murray, as Commodore Commanding Newfoundland Force, a vital
operational command, was charged as well with all naval administration in
Newfoundland. He began with his secretary and one commander.
Responsible to Murray for the escorts’ administration, training, efficiency,
and readiness was Captain (D) (for “Destroyers”). During all of 1941 Captain
(D) Newfoundland had one staff officer for gunnery and one for signals; he
had no torpedo officer, whose expertise included ships’ electrics and depth
charges, until 1942, and no speciaHsts in anti-submarine, radar, or engineer-
ing until 1943.
By any standard the suddenly burgeoning, vastly overstretched, under-
equipped, and largely untrained Canadian navy was ill-prepared to fight at
sea. It was up against the highly trained professionals of the U-boat fleet, who
had Admiral Donitz’s large, skilled shoreside staffs and sophisticated support
systems to back them up. And at sea the U-boats held tactical initiative. It is
not surprising that in the first three years of war defeats for the RCN out-
weighed the victories. It is quite astonishing, in fact, that they managed as well
as they did.
THE “PRINCES” AND THE WEST

How remarkably things had changed. Before the war the main threat to
Canadian waters was seen as the surface raiders, roving heavy warships or
armed merchant ships, and submarines that could lay mines. Hence the shape
of the Canadian fleet that was planned but not built. As emergency counters
to the merchant raiders the Royal Navy had earmarked a number of ocean
hners to fit as armed merchant cruisers (AMCs) and they deposited some guns
and equipment in Canada. At the start of the war they outfitted two such ships
in Montreal. The RCN followed suit, collared the three “Prince” Hners, and
got what was left of the RN’s stockpile. Each Canadian AMC got four single 6-
inch guns dating from 1896, with no fire-control equipment, and a couple of
3-inchers - hardly formidable opposition for German cruisers and pocket
battleships, but they would at least shoo an armed merchant ship away from a
convoy.
During their year in conversion the pre-war view was turned on its ear.
After the raiders’ first flush came Norway, Dunkirk. The demand was for
destroyers for the front Hne in the Channel, then for escorts and more escorts
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to counter the real threat, the U-boats. The mighty Bismarck wasn’t destroyed
until May, 1941, and big-gunned warships of the RN’s 3rd Battle Squadron -
battleships, cruisers, and some AMCs - still ran out of Halifax. But by the time
the “Princes” got to sea the real threat from armed merchant raiders that they
could handle was small. Compared to the U-boats it was nothing.
Prince Robert, fresh out of the shipyard in Vancouver in September, 1940,
rushed south oil operations. She was short on stores and, in the words of her
CO, Commander Charles T. Beard, “in a very unready state” - distressingly
similar to Commander Hose’s Rainbow in 1914. However, she nabbed a mer-
chant ship called Weser, which was the supply ship for a Pacific raider, sneak-
ing out of Manzanillo, Mexico, and sailed her with a prize crew triumphantly
to Esquimalt. Then she ranged the southwest Pacific under RN operational
command, escorted the doomed Canadian army contingent to Hong Kong in
November, 1941, and at year’s end was part of the Esquimalt force.
Prince Henry commissioned in Montreal in December, 1940, and made for
the Pacific, too. At the end of March, 1941, she intercepted a couple of German
merchant ships that scuttled themselves off Peru. In January, 1942, she spent a
short time as depot ship for the NEF in St. John’s - the closest any of the
“Princes” got to the heart of the navy’s war. Then she joined the Esquimalt
force.
Prince David commissioned in Halifax at the end of 1940 and had an
uneventful year on the east coast and in the Caribbean covering convoys.
Then she went to the west coast. By early 1942, then, with Japan and the U.S.
in the war, the three AMCs with their ancient armament were Canada’s
defence for the west coast in the fast-exploding Pacific.
In June, 1942, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was still reeling from Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamato mustered the whole power of the Japanese navy to
seize bases at Midway Island and in the western Aleutians. The Aleutians
were to be the northern anchors for the Japanese “ribbon defence” of the
Pacific. At the same time Yamamato intended to lure the far weaker Ameri-
can fleet to destruction. His light carriers bombed Dutch Harbour and
amphibious forces took unoccupied Attu and Kiska. To the south, though,
in the historic Battle of Midway, the U.S. fleet masterfully destroyed four
Japanese strike carriers and turned the course of the Pacific war. The
amazing American amphibious re-conquest of that vast ocean began.
Their submarines started the campaign that actually achieved what the U-
boats just failed to do in the Atlantic. They throttled Japan, destroying her
trade and her power to go on waging war. And they had done it well before
the huge carrier task forces heaved into view of the Japanese home islands.
By 1942, although the Canadian government and the armed forces
believed British Columbia very vulnerable to attack, the west coast was no
longer even remotely threatened.
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At the end of August the three “Princes,” with corvettes Dawson and
Vancouver, were assigned to U.S. Navy command for the brief campaign to
dislodge the Japanese from Attu and Kiska. Their sole opposition was filthy
weather, fog alternating with icy gales howling down from the Bering Sea
and the sudden tearing winds of the well-known Alaskan “williwaws.”
Apart from a single Japanese submarine lobbing some shells at remote
Estevan Point Lighthouse on Vancouver Island in the summer of 1942, there
was no other action on the west coast. The naval barracks, HMCS Naden in
Esquimalt, trained many sailors. HMCS Royal Roads, situated on a lovely estate
near Esquimalt, trained Volunteer Reserve sub-Heutenants. Then in 1942 it
became the Royal Canadian Naval College and graduated midshipmen for the
permanent force RCN and the RCNVR. West coast shipyards with their mild
weather efficiently delivered corvettes, Bangors, and then frigates. All the
corvettes went to the east coast in 1942, leaving some fifteen Bangor mine-
sweepers to hold the fort along with the “Princes.” Against the harshness of
wartime Halifax and St.John’s with their rough weather, grungy hving, lack
of decent recreation and entertainment, overstressed facihties, and reahty of
fighting a deadly enemy at the door, the west coast was lotus land.
In 1943 the three AMCs were converted in west coast yards for the new
phase of the war - re-conquest of Europe. Robert was in action by the end of
that year as an auxiliary anti-aircraft cruiser on West African and Mediterra-
nean convoys. Henry and David became infantry landing ships. Their landing
craft took first-wave assault troops to the beaches on D-Day, the 6th ofJune,
1944. Then they were in the landings on the south of France. In that rebirth
they made their contribution to the war.
By then there were men in plenty, but in September, 1940, the navy scraped
bottom to man six four-stackers. The 100 officers and 1,200 men slated for
the “Princes” could have easily manned eight. When those first ten RN
corvettes were landed in the navy’s lap with hapless skeleton crews, the
“Prince” crews could have fully manned fifteen with experienced officers and
men left over for training staffs, work-up teams, repair parties, and manning
pools to boot.
In the crucial, harrowing depths of the Battle of the Atlantic of 1941 and
1942, with the threat of surface raiders gone and the U-boats sinking, killing,
inexorably winning, those men would have been manna from heaven to
Leonard Murray, his embattled Newfoundland Escort Force, and the essential
hfeline they were desperately trying to defend.
Admiral Nelles, in the face of all this, clung tenaciously to his idea of the
“big ship” navy that he believed Canada should have. In that context, of
course, the “Princes” were a joke. They provided sea billets for a number of
senior officers and in Nelles’s view perhaps they brought some prestige and
credibility. As to the west coast, Nelles had always worried about it. But since
96
Ogdensburg in niid-1940, if Japan came in the Americans would be there.

Priority had to be the Atlantic. Harsh reahty had turned his navy into an
escort force and it was being wrenched apart by shortages. But the Chief of
Naval Staff looked on the embattled corvettes as stepping stones to his ideal
navy. Percy Nelles was too far from the sea.
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CHAPTER SIX
THE BATTLE OF
THE ATLANTIC:
THE TIDE TURNS
AT THE BEGINNING OF 1941 ADMIRALTY HAD TRIED TO CONJURE UP

more escorts from nothing. They lowered the nominal speed of fast convoys
so more ships sailed independently. That reduced the number of convoys and
so beefed up their escort. But sinkings soared, mainly of independents, then
dropped as sharply when the order was reversed. In the spring there were
some heartening successes. Four U-boats were sunk in ten days, including
Iron Cross aces Kretschmer, Shepke, and Prien. But the overall trend was as
fatal as in 1917 - three merchant ships were sunk for every one replaced by
new construction; eight new U-boats slipped into the sea for every one sunk.
In March, when Winston Churchill dedicated full force to what he named the
Battle of the Atlantic, it was being lost.
Then came an extraordinary stroke of luck. A U-boat was blown to the
surface by RN escorts and briskly boarded. The Captain, Fritz Lemp, had
mistakenly sunk Athenia on the first day of war. In his second blunder he failed
to scuttle his brand new boat. The boarding party grabbed his Enigma cypher
machine and all his code books and documents and shot him in the process.
Until then the Kriegsmarine’s Hydra cypher had defied penetration. Now
the shifting U-boat picture was available daily in Admiralty’s submarine
tracking room. Decrypted disposition signals combined with high-frequency
direction finding (HF/DF) from the shore network in Britain, Iceland, New-
foundland, and Canada. Knowing accurately where the U-boats were posi-
tioned meant that evasive routing and warnings to convoys were
exceptionally effective. Losses dropped sharply. This code-breaking opera-
tion, known only to a handful of people with “Ultra” clearance, remained
completely secret. Donitz’s experts, certain their code was unbreakable, made
no connection with the successful evasions and decreased sinkings. Only at
year-end, when the new Triton cypher for U-boat traffic came in, did this
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THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC: THE TIDE TURNS
great advantage disappear - until Triton, too, was penetrated at the end of
1942 through another U-boat capture and with the same happy result.
By the summer of 1941, thanks to the NEE, there was continuous surface
escort right across the Atlantic. With Hudsons and Sunderlands based in
Iceland, the convoys were routed far to the north to get under their air cover.
From Newfoundland the RCAF’s twelve Douglas Digbys, which could reach
out about 350 miles, and five Catalina flying boats, which could patrol to 500
miles or more in the right conditions, were only useful in daylight. Their
chances of sighting a U-boat, much less sinking one, were not great. But if a
U-boat looking for a convoy or running to gain attack position spotted an
aircraft it would have to dive. So air cover greatly increased the odds of a
convoy getting through. There were no practical airfields in Greenland. And
between the air cover radiating from Iceland and Newfoundland lay the awful
area of ocean where the surface escorts had to fight the U-boats on their own.
It was called the Black Pit.
Injune, 1941, just a week after Murray took command, the NEE fought its
first battle. HX 113, a fast convoy of fifty-eight ships, was escorted by HMCS
Ottawa, Rollo Mainguy in command, with corvettes Chambly, Collingwood,
and Orillia. From the first sinking Mainguy, a signals speciaHst himself,
couldn’t co-ordinate the defence because the ships at night could barely talk.
The corvettes lacked radio telephones, their wireless equipment wasn’t oper-
ating properly, and their visual signalling was terrible. The tiny blue flashing
hght, the only visual method allowed at night between escorts, was beyond
the skill of a seasick neophyte signalman on the wing of a wildly heaving
bridge. Ottawa had radar type 286 from her Western Approaches service. The
corvettes had none. A strong reinforcement of RN ships from Iceland finally
turned the scales in the battle. They sank two U-boats but not before HX 113
had lost six merchant ships.
That shaky start showed how badly training was needed. But facilities were
almost nil. There was one asdic attack simulator in St. John’s, no Hve subma-
rine for training until late fall, no mock-up to exercise depth-charge or gun
crews, and no sea training team to bring expertise to bear. By the end of
August nearly fifty new Canadian corvettes were with the NEE. Prentice
found they arrived from Halifax “inexperienced and almost completely
untrained. ” He did the best he could but Captain (D), Captain E.B.K. Stevens,
RN, wrote to Commodore Murray in the fall that “At present most escorts are
equipped with one weapon of approximate precision - the ram.”
When the Gulf of St. Lawrence was clear of ice the slow convoys out of
Sydney could be routed past Cape Race at the southeasterly tip of Newfound-
land, or up through the Gulf to reach the Atlantic through the Strait of Belle
Isle. Slow convoys were for ships capable of speeds from 7.5 to 8.9 knots,
mostly cranky old coal-burners who belched smoke and were far more
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April - December, 1941. From their French bases the U-boats reached beyond the
range of air coverfor wolf-pack attacks on the convoys. The Newfoundland Escort
Force made through anti-submarine escort possible. Breaking the U-boat code in May,
1941, saved even greater losses.
susceptible to breakdown and far less capable or amenable to convoy disci-

pline than their more modern sisters. They straggled badly. With their low
speed, effectively around six knots, they were a long time on passage. SCs
were extremely vulnerable, but during that summer, with the Enigma break-
through, evasive routing saved the day.
There were the fortunes of war, too, and the luck of the damned. SC 41, in
late August, had the odds against it. The escort of one four-stacker and three
corvettes was often down to one. Ships were scattered by icebergs, fog, and
gales, there were incessant breakdowns, and an escort collided with a mer-
chant ship that decided to leave the convoy. But with evasive routing, then
help of air cover from Iceland and more than its fair share of luck, SC 41
staggered safely through.
THE BATTLE FOR SC 42

Behind it came SC 42 in early September and the luck ran out. There were
sixty-four ships in the convoy when the 24th Escort Group took over south
of Newfoundland. The SOE, Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Hibbard, and
100
his destroyer Skeena were veterans of the Western Approaches. Corvettes

Orillia and Alberni had worked with him on two convoys; Kenogami was
completely new to the NEE That was it.
Off Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland, the convoy crept along at
under five knots, badly scattered by heavy gales. The escorts pounded into
heavy seas, pulling the ships back together, burning precious fuel. No air cover
from Newfoundland could reach them now. Days in the Black Pit stretched
ahead without hope of an aircraft out of Iceland. Weather almost stopped the
convoy cold. Hibbard had to break radio silence to report they’d be late at the
mid-ocean rendezvous. He didn’t hke doing that at all. His transmission could
be intercepted and his plot already showed an ominous picture.
On 1 September the U-boat disposition signals were broken by communi-
cations intelligence at Bletchley Park in England. Marked up in Admiralty’s
submarine tracking room, they showed that Donitz had placed fourteen U-
boats in a group called Markgraf in a vast mid-Atlantic chessboard right
across the path of SC 42. Out from Admiralty word flashed to Newfound-
land, then was relayed to senior officers of escorts. Admiralty diverted all the
mid-Atlantic convoys.
The feckless SC 41 was well to the east and out of trouble. SC 43, next
behind Hibbard, was routed south. A troop convoy for Iceland and a fast
convoy from Halifax were diverted south. Two westbound convoys made big
diversions. All escaped the Markgraf net. But SC 42 was too far on to get clear
to the south. On 8 September it was ordered due north to creep very close up
the east coast of Greenland. It was an agonizingly ponderous end run around
the wolf pack’s northern flank. It was the right move, indeed the only move
other than turning back, and the navy’s watchword was “the safe and timely
arrival of the convoy.” Turning back meant defeat and that was unthinkable.
The end run very nearly worked, but not far off Greenland a U-boat torpe-
doed a straggler. Then the convoy itself was spotted by the most north-
westerly U-boat in Donitz’s masterly disposition.
Back to Germany flashed the contact report, with position, course, and
speed. The shadower lay off, hull down, invisible in the heavy seas. Out went
his amplifying reports. This was a ripe target, big, slow-moving, with only
four escorts and no air cover. Donitz was no man for half-measures. He had
Hibbard cold and he hurled all fourteen U-boats of Markgraf at SC 42. His
personal order was typical of the man. “This convoy must not pass. At them -
Attack them - Sink them!”
Back in St. John’s a short while earlier Chummy Prentice had pulled a
training group of available corvettes together to try and work them up.
Planning to take them to sea, he dropped in to Commodore Murray’s opera-
tions room. There on the plot, plain to see, was Donitz’s giant convoy trap.
Prentice instantly saw the danger. He also saw opportunity. With Murray’s
101
permission he took his group to sea to continue working up and also to act as
a support group for SC 42 or the following SC 43, whichever became most
threatened. This was good thinking, and support groups became a real win-
ner later on when more forces were available.
With defects and other problems, Prentice’s training group was down to
his own Chambly and the corvette Moose Jaw, fresh from Hahfax. Moose Jaw's
Captain, Lieutenant Freddie Grubb, was, most unusually for a corvette, a
permanent force officer. He was somewhat withdrawn and RN-ishly incHned.
His long cigarette holder and Blackwood’s Magazine were rather out of place in
a knock-about corvette. But Grubb knew his business, one of the few aboard
who did. He reported later that most of his ship’s company were laid out
seasick for the better part of the operation.
It was lovely weather for U-boats - good visibility for spotting smoke and
ships with strong winds from the eastward, where most of them were sta-
tioned. They could run downwind quickly and hked to attack that way: the
same heavy sea that slowed the convoy helped the gathering pack into posi-
tion and concealed them. A U-boat watch lashed in the conning tower to save
being washed over by icy seas was no joke, and down below the crowding and
the stench and the jarring of the seas and hammering of diesels were endlessly
miserable, but they were superbly seaworthy, these U-boats. With no air
cover to force them down they used their surface speed and were able to keep
their batteries topped right up. They sent in their positions to Headquarters
hke clockwork. From their Admiral’s disposition signals they could plot their
friends’ positions, see their whole trap closing in.
SC 42 plodded north at a miserable five knots. Greenland’s mountains
reared up to leeward, sheathed in ice. At night the northern Hghts leaped high
and bright. The plot in Skeena's charthouse, and the pack’s transmissions
chattering in his telegraphists’ earphones, told Hibbard and his whole com-
pany they were in for real trouble. In the late afternoon of 9 September
Hibbard flashed his request for a new convoy course to the Commodore, in
the merchant ship at the head of the centre column. Near dusk the signal flags
snapped at the Commodore’s yardarm. They were repeated down every hne.
As night fell SC 42 wheeled to starboard, northeast toward Iceland. Ships
were darkened. The escorts roved the flanks to spot a tell-tale chink of hght,
then go in to berate the master through a megaphone. Over the side of each
ship went the day’s garbage. Ditching gash at random laid a trail like a paper
chase. The watch below in the escorts drew their evening meal from the
galleys, got it well doused with salt water on the way to the messdecks, clung
to a bench or a stanchion, and shovelled down what they could. There was a
stench here, too, of vomit and oil and unwashed bodies. The men didn’t
change their clothes. They didn’t get out of them at all because, almost
inevitably, that would be the time the action rattlers rang or the torpedo
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struck and there they would be, with their pants down. Pyjamas in the
hammock? No fear. Just the seaboots off and lying ready to jump into. Up on
the spray-lashed bridge there would be a mug of soup, corned beef sand-
wiches, and another mug of kye - that glutinous concoction fashioned of
shavings from a hard block of pusser’s cocoa, sugar, and condensed milk.
Soon after the moon rose, lighting the convoy from the south. The U-boats
were off the leash now, and the night exploded. The first came from the dark
side and torpedoed one ship. Kenogami, commanded by Lieutenant Com-
mander R. “Cowboy” Jackson, RCNVR, was on the port wing. She spotted a
surfaced U-boat but had no searchlight or starshell to illuminate. The 4-inch
gun was ready, but RCN corvettes still had no outfit of flashless charges. The
poorly drilled bridge crew was blinded by the flash and the enemy escaped.
Kenogami swept with asdic but made no contact. Skeena joined her for a short
sweep, then went ahead again, knowing there was plenty more to come.
The advantage was all with the enemy. They could pick their point of
attack and see their targets. With their low profiles and no radar that could
detect them, they could always spot the escorts first. They were faster on the
surface than any but the one destroyer and were very hard to hit with gunfire.
They had no need to attack in formation or worry about their consorts. Once
the signal came they raced in independently, firing at will. If they got right
into the grain of the convoy they were in prime position to strike and strike
again. If forced down by an escort they were shrouded by the confusion of
wakes. They could surface when the convoy had run over them and race up
the flanks with their ten-knot margin for another attack, reloading torpedo
tubes as they went.
Tracers lashed from the merchant ships. U-boats were right among them.
Skeena raced down between the lanes. Lights flashed at the Commodore’s
masthead, and Skeena was caught as the ships turned. Great black shapes
towered. Hibbard manoeuvred wildly to avoid being run down. He passed a
surfaced U-boat on the opposite course so close his guns couldn’t depress
enough to fire. The merchant ships blazed away bravely with such ancient
weapons as they had and sprayed tracers from machine guns. Two ships were
torpedoed. Then, after two hours of deathly quiet, two more went down.
These nightmare battles in the northern dark were fraught with tenuous
communications, garbled reports, no sensors but the naked eyes and ears,
sudden cries of disaster and plaintive calls for help, the shock of depth charges
and the sound and flash of gunfire, crisscrossing tracers, rockets flaring,
starshell burning in the sky, and the underwater thumps and searing blaze that
told of torpedoes striking home. No one had the whole picture.
Few had even a reasonably clear idea of what was going on. The SOE
might, if he was well served with reports from all his consorts; if, standing on
his spray-lashed bridge conning his own ship into an attack or avoiding
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collision with some looming merchant ship, he could develop enough of a

picture in his head to devise intelligent plans. And if he could then speak
reliably to the Commodore and to his group, who were spread over several
pitch-black miles and seriously embattled themselves, he could then execute
the proper action.
Depending on his knowledge, experience, and intelligence, an individual
ship’s Captain would more’ or less understand his own part in the overall
action. Those around him - his plotting officer in the charthouse, his Yeoman
of Signals beside him on the bridge - hopefully would as well. But otherwise
the hundred or so men who steered, ran the engines, spun the asdic’s
handwheel, peered into the dark with binoculars, stood by their loaded
weapons, tapped at a Morse key, or copied down code had only the sketchiest
notion of what was going on.
Below in the magazines waiting to pass up high explosives, in the boiler
rooms, at the switchboards, they could feel the ship responding to the sea and
the helm. They could feel and hear that sinister thump of a torpedo in the
convoy or the budding clang of their own depth charges exploding. They
could feel the engines race and slow down and - most ominous in a U-boat-
infested sea - they could sometimes feel them stop. Mostly, though, they could
only imagine what was out there. It was far better to concentrate on the job,
hsten for orders, and not let the mind run too wdd or dwell on the others who
were cindered already or struggHng hopeless in that dreaded ice-cold sea.
No tugs or properly equipped rescue vessels ran with the convoys then.
The last merchant ship in each column was simply detailed as rescue ship. But
they were more than reluctant to do the job on a night Hke this. After the first
attacks Orillia dropped astern to pick up survivors. Lieutenant Commander
Ted Briggs, RCNR, was an experienced seaman. He stood by the damaged
tanker Tahchee and when it was fairly certain she would stay afloat he got a hne
aboard, took her in tow, and set course for Iceland.
But Orillia's brave, instinctively humanitarian action and fine seamanship
had no place in the hard business of defending the rest of a convoy from U-
boat attack. Hibbard, who didn’t know for many hours, lost one of his
precious corvettes for the rest of the battle. The other corvettes stopped for
survivors, too, and were still astern when another U-boat got inside and
another ship was hit.
Seven ships had been torpedoed when the cold dawn broke. Another ship
went down in daylight. Skeena, ranging across the convoy’s six-mile front,
spotted a periscope, teamed with Kenogami, and dropped a ten-charge pattern
on a solid submarine contact. There was a huge air bubble and a quantity of
oil. Hibbard counted the U-boat sunk though in fact it wasn’t. A single
Catalina appeared briefly from Iceland during the afternoon and dropped
flares to port of the convoy, indicating a U-boat. The pack was getting in
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position on the dark northern side for more night killing. In early evening
they moved in. “U-boats on the surface,” reported the convoy. Two more
ships were sunk. Skeena pumped starshell out, illuminating an arc. The flares
ht up nothing but they were spotted by Chummy Prentice’s group, which was
about to join the battle.
Prentice had made the right move with his little two-corvette support
group, taking them ahead and to the dark side of the convoy where the pack
would gather. His reward was a solid asdic contact and it was classified
quickly by his asdic team as a positive submarine. Chambly was a well-trained
ship and Prentice was a quick-thinking, experienced man. He ran in for a fast
attack, planted a five-charge pattern. As he pulled away U-501 bobbed to the
surface.
MooseJaw was close by. Freddie Grubb ran in to ram and glanced along the
side of the damaged boat. As his stem ground past the U-boat’s conning tower
her Captain, quite extraordinarily, stepped dryshod onto MooseJaw's forecas-
tle. Grubb pulled back, not ready with his weakened crew, as he said later, to
stand off boarders! He rammed the U-boat once and raked her with machine-
gun fire. Then Prentice took Chambly alongside. His boarding party under
Lieutenant Ted Simmons, RCNVR, leaped aboard - no mean feat in the dark
with a heavy sea running. Everyone knew that code books and cypher
machines were the prize. But the U-boat crew had already opened the sea-
cocks and U-501 plunged to the bottom with eleven of her own and one
Canadian sailor aboard.
It was a triumph for any ship to sink a U-boat and for rookies it was
tremendous. This, as far as anyone knew at the time, was the RCN’s first kill of
the war and it was dead right that it should go to Prentice. As it turned out U-
501, like Moose Jaw, was on her first patrol. An experienced U-boat skipper
would never have submerged on spotting a corvette at night. He’d have
tiptoed away and if sighted would have outraced her on the surface. Too, he
was quite out of character for a U-boat man. He was a coward. His insistence
that he climbed aboard Moose Jaw to surrender and save his crew didn’t wash
with the survivors. They would have no part of him. But triumph it still was,
though the celebration was brief. The two newcomers were quickly added to
Hibbard’s screen. It now totalled five with Orillia off on her long tow, but
within a few hours five more ships were lost from SC 42.
While veterans Hibbard and Prentice stayed up with the convoy, investi-
gating contacts and trying to fend off attacks, the other three dropped astern
to rescue survivors. Hibbard actually thought they were maintaining their
screening stations, which speaks volumes on communications problems and
on the lack of experience of the junior captains. The terrible irony was that
their absence from the screen on rescue work was responsible for the loss of
the last three ships that night.
105
The decimated convoy with sixteen ships gone - one-quarter of those that
sailed - was met the next forenoon by RN reinforcements of five destroyers,
two corvettes, and two sloops. And now the Iceland air support was over-
head. Group Markgraf pulled away triumphant. The battle was over. Four-
teen U-boats on one slow convoy, which had no air cover and mostly only
three and at best five escorts, had overwhelmed it. An utterly exhausted
Hibbard led his escort group into Hvalôrd for fuel. Secured alongside the
tanker, he ordered “Finished with engines.” His Engineer Officer called up to
the bridge, “Finished with fuel.” He had used the last drop.
Even after sixty hours of constant action without sleep, Hibbard called his
key people into his cabin and spent the night putting together the narrative of
the battle. This was not to make excuses for defeat; there were vital lessons to
be learned. Then at 4 a.m. he led his group back out to sea to slog it out again if
they must, taking a westbound convoy back to Newfoundland.
It was certainly a defeat, in fact, an overwhelming defeat, eased only by
Chambly and Moose Jaw's kill. But Jimmy Hibbard with his inadequate little
force had done everything he possibly could. He had really fought a magnifi-
cent battle against overwhelming odds. Captain (D) wrote to Commodore
Murray, “This is an appalling tale of disaster, but I feel that it is impossible to
criticize any single action of the Senior Officer, Lieutenant Commander J.C.
Hibbard, RCN; on the contrary I consider that he handled what must have
appeared to be a hopeless situation with energy and initiative throughout,
probably thereby averting worse disaster.” The considered verdict of the
historians, backed by neatly tabulated information, stands the same today.
Orillia, with the tanker tied to her Hke a drowning man, got her safely in.
But Captain Stevens underHned Ted Briggs’s “fine and successful feat of
seamanship” as an “error of judgement,” observing that it “deprived the
surviving ships of the convoy of 25 per cent of their meagre escort.” Perhaps
Hibbard should have ordered him back. But not one man in the tanker Tahchee
would forget the consummate seaman’s skill and the dogged bravery of HMCS
Orillia and the men whose lives were on the fine with theirs. Whether he
steeled himself to steam right by or succumbed to the wrenching dilemma,
risking his own ship and others to stop to rescue feUow seamen, any Captain
had endless lonely agonizing to face.
Every surviving ship’s Master of convoy SC 42 signed a letter thanking
Hibbard and his group for the battle fought on their behalf, and they made
their appreciation known to Admiral Noble, the Commander-in-Chief,
Western Approaches. Forty-eight years later the long-retired Rear Admiral
Hibbard still treasures the letter and, even more, his men’s reaction. When he
received it a long time after the battle he cleared lower deck and read it to his
whole ship’s company. Then, among themselves they decided that the money
they had saved in the canteen fund for their Christmas dance would go instead
106
to decorating the ground-floor rooms of the Allied Merchant Seamen’s Club

in Hahfax. That, to Jimmy Hibbard, far outweighed what any Admiral might
have said about his battle. He was that kind of man.
The ten-ship escort that took SC 42 on the last leg to Britain was even
reinforced for a time by three USN destroyers. It had air cover all the way. One
U-boat was sighted by an aircraft fifteen miles ahead of the convoy and sunk
by two of the destroyers. The U-boats couldn’t press to get in, and only a
single straggler was sunk. The lessons were simple and abundantly clear.
First: air cover. That meant much longer-range aircraft - the first of the
Liberators, which had a radius of 800 miles, had just become operational in
the U.K., carrying the brand new air-dropped depth charge - or escort
aircraft carriers. The first of them, HMS Audacity, had fought a courageous
action off Spain. She was converted from the fast German merchant ship that
Assiniboine towed in to Jamaica in 1940. She sailed with a Gibraltar convoy on
her first operation in September, carrying Martlet fighters to fend off the
Kondor reconnaissance-bombers. The SOE had a big U-boat pack to deal
with and he used the Martlets for visual sweeps. Without any anti-submarine
weapons of their own, they kept the U-boats down and homed the escorts.
Audacity herself went down but only one merchant ship was sunk and the
escort killed four U-boats, and that was a victory. But the Black Pit had a long
time to wait for air cover.
The second lesson: stronger escorts. Admiralty immediately asked the RCN to
boost the size of each escort group to two destroyers and four corvettes, which
was easier said than done. Corvettes were coming along in numbers if not
quality, but there were no more destroyers and some of the old four-stackers
were quite unfit for mid-ocean passage. The answer was to reduce the number of
groups so that each one was a bit bigger. The ships just had to work harder.
But the convoys were being pushed further north for Iceland’s air cover
and fuel, which meant fouler weather, longer passages, more time at sea with
each convoy. The cycle was inexorable but the ships must get through. Each
NEF group was supposed to have twelve days in each cycle free for boiler
cleaning, maintenance, cleaning ship, training, and some rest. But they didn’t
get it. Typically, Chambly spent twenty-six of each thirty days at sea in the last
three months of the year. All of this took a terrible toll on ships and machines.
And, finally, on men.
Captain Stevens warned Commodore Murray in mid-October that “a grave
danger exists of breakdowns in health, morale and discipline.” The same month
Captain M.L. Deyo, a U.S. Navy destroyer squadron commander, warned Rear
Admiral Bristol, USN, at Argentia that with their over-demanding cycle the
RCN’s Newfoundland force was on the verge of breaking down. The British
acknowledged that the Canadians on their side of the ocean were working twice
as hard as the RN in the Western Approaches. The USN deemed that one-third of
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an escort force should always be standing down. To the Canadians that simply
could not apply . . . and there was a harsh winter to come.
No manning pool existed in St. John’s. If a man went sick a ship did
without and someone doubled up. Ships going to Halifax for maintenance
were being robbed by Jones’s Manning Commander to commission new
corvettes. Orillia, with her’hard-won skills, was stripped. Ted Briggs, her
Captain, was her only qualified watchkeeping officer. Yet in October she
slogged out twenty-eight days at sea. As Commodore Murray wrote in cold
fury to Commodore Jones, “We are asking a lot of the morale of an inexperi-
enced crew to expect them to be happy and remain in fighting trim and
aggressive, in a ship in which they know their safety from marine accident,
and not from any action of the enemy, depends upon the abihty of their
Captain to remain awake.” How rock-bottom could a navy be!
In a one-night battle around SC 44 in mid-September the last of Group
Markgraf sank four merchant ships and ripped the bow off HMCS Levis.
Mayflower took her in tow but she sank with eighteen men. Mayflower's Nova
Scotian captain. Lieutenant Commander George Stephen, RCNR, was an
especially ebulhent character who earned an Atlantic-wide reputation as a
fine, intrepid seaman.
Going back out to that icy, raging sea in those wretchedly uncomfortable
httle ships for yet another thrashing, if not to be sunk, was becoming a horror.
Commodore Murray, who tried defaulters for the more serious breaches of
discipline, sent the guilty back to sea. He couldn’t allow the blackhst to be the
route to safety behind bars ashore. It was a real temptation for senior men to
pad defect lists and get in for refit sooner, or worse, to create machinery
problems. Some did. Everyone prayed for the chance to ram a U-boat. It was
the honourable way to get a refit, some leave, a respite from the sea. Only
bright hghts of leadership - men hke Stephen, Hibbard, Briggs - and Leonard
Murray’s rock-steady hand ashore staved off breakdown.
Sinkings went on and on in the wild months of autumn, 1941. A patched
together Canadian/British/Free French group that hadn’t worked together
lost nine merchant ships from SC 48 and two RN escorts. Four U.S. Navy
destroyers joined for support and USS Kearney was torpedoed. The only
bonus in that debacle was that it brought the U.S. a long step toward the war.
It couldn’t happen soon enough. A huge new load had fallen on the RN. With
the dark months beginning in October the Russian convoys began, and they
had to have destroyers. So the Canadians on the North Atlantic had to carry
an even bigger share.
THE U.S. NAVY IN THE BATTLE

The United States Navy had been involved in an undeclared war for nearly
two years. First a U.S “neutrality patrol” warned belligerents away from
108
fighting in Western Hemisphere waters. The Canada-U.S. agreement signed

in August, 1940, at Ogdensburg, New York, by Mackenzie King and
Franklin Roosevelt authorized the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. After
the September, 1940, destroyers-for-bases deal, a major USN base and airfield
were quickly built at Argentia, Newfoundland. In March, 1941, the Lend
Lease Act was passed in Washington. Vital American cargoes had to be seen
safely across the sea and the USN was inevitably involved. In May, two
squadrons of destroyers were transferred from the Pacific along with three
battleships and a carrier. In July, U.S. forces moved into Iceland escorted by
their own ships and American destroyers began to work into the convoy
system.
The Atlantic Charter signed by Churchill and Roosevelt in August, 1941,
laid out the grand strategic plan for defeat of the Axis powers. The U.S. got
strategic control and protection of shipping west of a Hne running between
Iceland and Greenland and south through the Azores. With no reference to
Canada at all, Jones’s Atlantic Command and Murray’s Newfoundland force
came under strategic direction of the U.S. C-in-C Atlantic, Admiral Ernest J.
King. Escort operations west of the Mid-Ocean Meeting Point became the
responsibihty of the USN’s Support Force (later called Task Force 4, then 24).
USN destroyers began taking the fast convoys as far as Iceland in Septem-
ber. The RCN, with few destroyers and the slow corvettes, got the dirty end
of the stick. Statistics showed what sailors knew all too well. Ships in slow
convoys had a 30 per cent greater chance of being torpedoed. That month
USS Greer and U-652 exchanged depth charges and torpedoes. President
Roosevelt ordered the USN to attack anything interfering with American
shipping. American plans for actual war showed forty-eight destroyers
allocated to the convoy routes. The RCN would give them eight destroyers
and fifteen corvettes and provide local escorts. The rest of the Canadian
ships would go to UK. waters and the problem would be solved. Then, in
October, came the Kearney torpedoing; the following day USS Reuben James
was sunk with heavy loss. But the Americans weren’t yet in. The RN had just
pulled nearly all its destroyers east of Iceland while in the same breath
urging the RCN to beef up their escort groups with non-existent destroyers.
The NEF was on the ropes.
When Donitz spotted weakness he went for it. At the end of October he
threw twenty U-boats into Murray’s backyard. One of them spotted SC 52,
routed fifty miles off Cape Race. It had a large hodgepodge escort of two RN
destroyers and seven corvettes, five of them Canadian. But the U-boat dispo-
sitions in Admiralty’s tracking room showed all the portents of another SC 42.
They turned the convoy north and ordered it back to Canada through the
Strait of Belle Isle. Air cover was ineffective. Four ships were sunk by torpe-
does and two ran aground in fog in the strait. In the whole course of the war
109
this was the only Atlantic convoy turned back by U-boats alone. It was a bitter
concession of defeat.
As it was, Canada’s navy - locked in combat with the enemy day and night,
month in and month out as the other forces were not - was on the very edge of
collapse. Stripping experienced men from the salt-stained corvettes contin-
ued. Jones was carrying out the deliberate poHcy of Headquarters. NSHQ told
Murray in December that temporary inefficiency was acceptable to make
long-term gains in experienced, trained personnel. No policy was laid down
for working up. Ottawa staff decisions (or non-decisions) were paid out in
Hves, not only in Canadian warships but in the hundreds of merchant ships
that depended so utterly on them every day.
The destroyers stayed more stable around their initial soHd core of officers,
chiefs, and petty officers. They hung on to their experienced hands. The
destroyers were more complex. An SOE needed advanced equipment and the
destroyers got it first. Radar was one example. It was the technical innovation
that had by far the biggest impact on tactics during the war. Chronically, as
with all new equipment, Canada’s navy lagged behind the RN, and the cor-
vettes were astern of the destroyers. By the end of 1941 all RCN destroyers had
a somewhat improved British type 286 radar, which still would rarely detect a
submarine, and a quarter of the corvettes had a new Canadian set called SWIG
or'“Swick,” which in most respects was a full generation behind the latest
British radar, the type 271.
It was a sad tale. Canada’s National Research Council had sent representa-
tives to a British demonstration of radar, first devised to detect attacking
aircraft, in March, 1939. Because the RCN had no kind of scientific Haison no
one at NSHQ was more than dimly aware of radar until the destroyers were
fitted in the U.K. in late 1940. Only then was NRG made responsible for naval
research, development, and scientific haison. RN policy was to fit aU corvettes
with radar, but in early 1941 they could barely meet their own needs, and
Canada was on its own. A crash program got a prototype Swick to sea for
testing in Prentice’s Chambly in May, 1941. It was based on the same technol-
ogy as type 286 but was such a leap ahead of no radar at aU that it was rushed
into production development. At the very same time as the Chambly tests, the
RN was testing its new centimetric 271, which was a fine submarine detector.
By year’s end Canada was producing Swick and that is what the ships got.
Windflower, one of the first ten “Flowers” intended for the RN, had no radar
at all when, on 7 December, 1941, she was run under in thick fog by a
merchant ship. Icy sea water poured in, the boiler blew up, and the Httle ship
sank with twenty-three men. That was the day Murray at last had enough
ships to form one additional escort group so that everyone could rotate
through a training period. But that same day thejapanese struck Pearl Harbor.
The United States was in the war. In the long run it was the combination of
no
THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC; THE TIDE TURNS
Allies that brought success. In the short haul the U.S. Navy was fighting for
its life in the Pacific, and the American destroyers were pulled from escort
service in the Atlantic. An even greater load fell on the fledgling Canadian
escort force.
The fortunes and the tides of war aided the Allies in late 1941. In November
Hitler, dead against Donitz’s advice, had had every U-boat pulled from the
Atlantic to counter British moves in the Mediterranean. The sinkings
stopped. The little ships had just the winter seas and bitter gales to fight.
Murray’s Newfoundland Escort Force held, remarkably, tenaciously
together. Admiralty, until January, 1942, still had that priceless window into
Donitz’s operations room via the broken Hydra code. Take away one of these
twists of fate and defeat on the Atlantic could well have been total by the end
ofl941.
THE BATTLE MOVES WEST

The U.S. Secretary of the Navy actually ordered Jones’s and Murray’s com-
mands to go to war with Japan on the 7th of December. It was some days
before Canada’s cabinet made the decision. But things worked out in practice.
Murray and the senior USN officers got along well, with tact and mutual
professional respect. The USN was more than welcome aboard. They pro-
vided on request, up front, and with no red tape, just as they had in 1918.
But soon Commander Task Force 24 (Rear Admiral Arthur Bristol, then
Vice Admiral R.M. Brainard after April, 1942) had only token escort forces.
Just two groups of Coast Guard Treasury-class ships stayed on. They were
about equal to the corvettes. There were a few destroyers, too, but Americans
were very thin on the North Atlantic until May, 1943. They did give air
support, though. Right away, U.S. Army B-17s flew from Gander and three
squadrons of Catahnas from Argentia joined the patrols. They divided the
ocean pie equitably with the still slender RCAF.
The USN got help in return. Its trade control and submarine intelligence
networks were weak, so Eric Brand in NSHQ gave them a working link with
the whole British worldwide organization. Ottawa in fact ran the submarine
tracking and all the western Atlantic convoy routing for the first six months
the U.S. was in the war - a fact yet to be acknowledged by British and
American historians.
In the new year a new battle blazed. Admiral Donitz pulled his boats from
the Mediterranean, cut his force in the North Atlantic, and swung a scythe
down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. He called it Paukenschlag, Operation
DrumroU. There was no neutrality question now. There were no convoys
south of Halifax either. Why do battle against escorts on the northern route
when you could have a field day picking off independents? It was the old story
and Donitz was well rewarded. In the first month, from Newfoundland to
111
Cape Hatteras, fifty ships were sunk and not one of the thirteen U-boats on
patrol was even touched. The carnage went on and on. Ships blazed like
torches; men died in clear sight of the American shore.
Despite all the hideous lessons of the Great War and two and a half hard-
fought years while the United States maintained neutrality during World War
Two, the U.S. Navy was incredibly unready. Organization, forces, control of
shipping - even of such basic things as regulating coastal radio traffic, naviga-
tion aids, and shore lighting - just weren’t there. Three months went by with
Miami providing a back-lit shooting gallery before the hghts were doused. It
was the tourist season, after all. Admiral King had the mindset of another
Jellicoe and would not order convoy.
To the U-boat men this new kilHng orgy was their “Second Happy Time.”
All winter the small U-boat group in mid-ocean kept the pressure on. The
1941 year-end code change had blacked out communications intelhgence.
With only HF/DF for fixing U-boats, evasive routing didn’t work nearly as
well. In mid-February the convoy route was pulled straight to follow the
shorter great circle well south of Iceland. At the same time the numbering
system for groups changed to A, B, and C for American, British, Canadian. In
practice, there were few American ships and a lot of mixing between the
groups.
The mid-ocean groups of the Newfoundland force now picked up their
convoys at Western Ocean Meeting Place, WESTOMP, east of Newfoundland.
They went right across, turned over to the U.K. escort in sight of Ireland, and
headed into Londonderry. It became the eastern terminal for all mid-ocean
escorts and it was a wondrous change from Iceland. There were first-rate
British and American dockyard and repair facihties there. More, there was the
soft green of the countryside and warmth and welcome of the kind old town.
The storied “Newfy-Derry run” started with SC 47 and six Canadian
corvettes. Spikenard was SOE. They steamed unscathed through fog and heavy
weather until the night of 10 February. Then a tanker went up in flames and
Spikenard was torpedoed. The other escorts, caught up chasing contacts,
didn’t know the corvette had gone until there was no answer from repeated
calls by radio. A sweep astern in the morning found eight of her company,
clinging half-frozen to a single carley float. The Spikenard memorial is a six-
inch spike sunk in the ceiling of the Seagoing Officers Club, The Crowsnest,
in St. John’s. Her Captain, H.F. Shadforth, hammered it in there over a few
drinks before he sailed. He signed it “ ‘Spikenard’ his Spike.” It is there today.
Along the American coast Operation DrumroU boomed. It was not a
wolf-pack operation. There was no vast ocean area to “rake” for convoys, nor
were there escorts to be swamped by pack attack. The traffic was plain to see, a
stream of independents right along the coast. Cape Cod was a killing ground
112
as it was in 1812 for the Nova Scotian privateers and in the Great War for the
U-boats. As one area dried up they hit another.
To the Canadians and British it was unthinkable not to convoy, even with
few escorts. But Admiral King was slow to take up Admiral Pound’s offer in
early February of twenty-four British anti-submarine trawlers. King had over
160 patrol aircraft and the whole route was close inshore, so ships gathered in
convoy could have had full-time air cover. But as in the Great War, ships and
planes were wasted in futile searching and patrol. The merchant ships kept
going down.
Captain Brand went to New York in February to talk convoys with the
Commander, Eastern Sea Frontiers. The first Boston-Halifax convoy sailed in
mid-March. Its escort was Canadian. Losses on that leg stopped. The RN
trawlers were in action by April and a patchwork coastal convoy system from
Florida north started late that month. Ships sailed with escorts by day, shel-
tered in anchorages by night. They called it the Bucket Brigade. Sinkings
slowed.
This left the Caribbean naked. Donitz sent out “milch cow” submarines in
May with fuel and torpedoes. The attack boats ranged right across the Gulf of
Mexico and slaughtered tankers as far as Panama - 121 ships were lost in June,
and nearly 500 were gone already in six months of paralysis in the American
command.
And most of the ships going down now were tankers. It wasn’t just cargoes
going up in sheets of fiame, but entire crews were being lost. And the tankers
themselves were so terribly short. Canada’s war-geared industry had to have
Caribbean oil, so the navy pulled eight precious corvettes from mid-ocean
and started Trinidad-HaHfax tanker convoys in mid-May. Six more corvettes
went later. The Canadian convoys came through without a single loss. Britain
faced disaster without oil. They did the same, convoying their tankers from
Aruba to the U.K. clear of the carnage on the American coast.
Now Canada had a whole new battleground. The Western Local Escort
Force (WLEF) formed in Flalifax in March under G.C. Jones. WESTOMP was
now 700 miles from Halifax, so with the Boston leg Jones had a full third of
the North Atlantic route. Murray had to send him sixteen corvettes. The RN
sent twelve old short-range destroyers. Coastal traffic was under attack, too,
even fishing vessels. More ships - properly equipped, well-trained, and
worked-up ships - were needed. Things were stretched even more in Septem-
ber when New York replaced Halifax as the main western convoy terminus.
By mid-summer the USN finally had an interlocking convoy system. The
special Canadian tanker convoys got absorbed in it and so did the corvettes. In
the first three months of the convoys 1,400 ships sailed through the Carib-
bean and up the east coast; only eleven were lost.
113
January -July, 1942. With the U.S. in the war and no convoy organization the U-
boats moved west to slaughter 2 Vz million tons of unescorted shipping in independent
attacks for very light losses. Hundreds of valuable tankers were sunk and Canada and
Britain organized their own direct oil convoys.
Oakville was one of the corvettes. She started on the Triangle Run in March:
Halifax, Boston, out to WESTOMP, and back to Halifax. In April she turned
around in New York. Boston and New York were paradise to Canadian
sailors. It was not just the cities, wonderful places for a run ashore in any man’s
navy, but the stark comparison with the bleakness of little St. John’s and the
dinginess of Halifax with its gross overcrowding and shocking lack of decent
shore accommodation, recreation, and entertainment.
Americans may have been slow off the mark with convoys, but ashore they
looked after servicemen with almost aggressive hospitality. There were lavish
facilities, superb organization, and true generosity - girls, meals, Broadway
shows, drinks on the house, dancing at the famous Stage Door Canteen to the
big bands - Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey. Movie stars
dished up hamburgers. And here Canadian sailors were more than welcome.
As the sinkings moved south, Oakville sailed with the tankers from the
gale-wracked North Atlantic to heavenly blue skies, azure seas, blessed
warmth, and dolphins leaping and scuds of flying fish. Awnings spread over
the bridge for shade. Solar topees, white uniforms with shorts and sandals.
114
became shipboard wear, with dress whites for that rare run ashore. And there
were beaches, rum punches, palm trees, and more girls. It was hard to believe
war could visit such a charmed corner of the sea.
In August Oakville took her second tanker convoy back to Aruba and joined
an escort from Trinidad to Key West. By now, with convoys and air cover,
Donitz had shifted his main attack back to mid-Atlantic. But there was still
danger beneath the innocently beautiful seas. Twenty-nine ships northbound
through the Caribbean from Trinidad had the destroyer USS Lea with three
Canadian corvettes and one Dutch. South of Haiti, U-94 slipped into position
on the surface after dark. She was spotted by a U.S. aircraft. It attacked, put the
U-boat down, and dropped a flare. Oakville, quick on the draw, ran in and
dropped a five-charge pattern.
The boat surfaced. The corvette bore in, raked her with 0.5-inch machine
gun and 20mm fire to keep her guns silent, hit her once with the 4-inch gun,
rammed her twice in glancing blows. Then she dropped depth charges right
under the U-boat’s bow. One eyewitness swears that some of Oakville's
stokers bombarded the Germans at a range of twenty feet with the only
weapons they had at hand - the empty Coke bottles stowed behind the funnel
on the upper deck.
Lieutenant Commander Clarence King, DSC, RCNR, had won his Distin-
guished Service Cross in the Great War for sinking a U-boat, and he was no
man for half-measures. A third ramming rolled the enemy under. Then he
ordered a boarding party away and ran the ship alongside. Two figures leaped
across before the vessels drew apart. They were Sub-Lieutenant Hal
Lawrence, RCNVR, and Petty Officer A.J. Powell, each armed with a .45
pistol. They shot two aggressive Germans in their tracks. Powell controlled
the rest. Lawrence dived down the hatch to close the flooding valves. In the
dark and smoke he couldn’t find them, or the code books. The U-boat sank.
Both Canadians were picked up with the remnants of the U-boat’s crew.
Lawrence had been in MooseJaw when she rammed U-501 in September, 1941,
and he knew the drill. This time he won his DSC. King got the DSO and Petty
Officer Powell the Distinguished Service Medal.
Ramming and boarding smacked of an earlier swashbuckling age, but no
one could guarantee to hold a U-boat with asdic. The depth charge wasn’t
very accurate and U-boats were incredibly tough. Trimmed down on the
surface they were hard to hit with guns and they could outrun a corvette.
Ramming might be primitive and it always damaged the rammer. But it was a
sure thing.
Every escort had months and years of frustrating, exhausting, unglamor-
ous work under her keel. No one who had been sunk, seen ships ablaze, fished
oil-soaked survivors from the sea, or worse, been forced to leave them to die,
would ever give up a chance. Staff experts ashore reasoned that a damaged
115
escort was out of the battle. But what Captain would pass up a chance to ram?
It was ferociously satisfying: guns blazing running in; the bellow, “Stand by
the ram!”; the shuddering jolt; the grinding; the screech of rending steel. And,
medals aside, his men would never forgive him if he sheered off. To top it all
there was, most surely, that blessed, blessed refit.
Oakville’s bottom was ripped out. Her asdic was gone and the after boiler
room flooded. She was out of the battle and three ships were torpedoed that
night. But she got to the American base at Guantanamo, Cuba, for temporary
repairs. Then she steamed on her one boiler with a convoy to New York to be
put back in fighting shape. And a refit in New York in 1942 surpassed a
Canadian sailor’s most opulent dreams.
THE BATTLE OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

The Gulf of St. Lawrence for centuries has rung to the sounds of battle: the
privateers, the raiding squadrons, huge invasion armadas. It was the gateway
to the heartland. From Confederation, defence planners saw it as the place
where raiders, if unopposed, could cut the country’s Hfe, its main artery of
trade. It is a substantial stretch of water. Without icebreakers, and that was the
case in the war, navigation was stopped from December through to May.
Gaspe, where Jacques Cartier first claimed Canada for France, was the
natural naval base. The first Canadian troop convoy of the Great War formed in
its huge anchorage. Sombre British plans for a successful German invasion in
1940 marked Gaspe as an anchorage for the Royal Navy in exile. Re-conquest
would start from Canada. Plans for defence of Gaspe were drawn up.
There was no point running convoys in the Gulf until the threat was
actually there, and ships ran independently in steady stream between Mont-
real, Quebec City, and Sydney. In 1941 the basic needs of an escort base were
built at Gaspe. With DrumroU, full development of the Gaspe base moved
quickly - seaward defences, fuel tanks, jetties, magazine, maintenance shops,
marine railway, communications, hangar and apron for flying boats, barracks.
The new base commissioned on 1 May 1942. Escorts were so short every-
where there’d be none unless and until the enemy actually moved in.
In under two weeks he did. On 10 May an aircraft sighted a U-boat thirty
miles off the famous Perce Rock and dropped depth bombs. It was, in fact, U-
553. Two days later in the dark of the early morning the same boat - the only
one in the Gulf - torpedoed a 5,000-ton freighter eight miles off the Gaspe
Peninsula. Within hours it hit another. All the Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC)
had was the small examination vessel. There was nothing he could do but tend
to the survivors.
But the attack was on. Headlines across Canada screamed that U-boats
were in the Gulf. Suddenly the war at sea was right at home, in sight of shore.
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THE BATTLE OE THE ATLANTIC: THE TIDE TURNS
Questions were raised in the House of Commons. By the 1st of June five
Bangor minesweepers, three Fairmile motor launches, and an armed yacht
had been scraped into the Gulf Escort Force. It grew through the summer by
seven corvettes and three more MLs to make a September total of nineteen.
There were some aircraft. Three Catalinas moved to Gaspe from Sydney
and a detachment was set up at Mont Joli; 113 (BR) Squadron of Hudsons flew
out of Chatham, New Brunswick. Summerside, RE.I., had some operational
aircraft and Charlottetown had a flying training and air navigation school.
School aircraft, unarmed and with student crews, were deliberately flown
over threatened areas to thicken up the air cover, reminiscent of the “Scare-
crow” patrols flown by inexperienced pilots in British coastal areas during the
Great War. If nothing else, they made the U-boats dive and reduced their
mobihty. The U-boats carried no radar, right to the end. But by now they had
a radar search receiver. The airborne ASV radar and the shipborne Swick were
both poor submarine detectors, but the squawk they made on the U-boats’
search receivers kept their captains on guard and diving for cover a lot more
than they really needed.
They were an adventurous lot, these U-boat men. That first one in, U-553,
had found shm pickings outside around Newfoundland and Cape Breton. All
ships were in convoy there and they had good air cover. So he had nosed up
the Gulf. After scoring two off Gaspe he prowled about looking for targets in
the fog. He was a bit early for heavy shipping and he left for better hunting on
21 May. That same day convoys began. His radioed report of an unready,
unorganized area showed promise, though, so in mid-June Donitz sent U-132
straight in. His orders were to go after ships above Gaspe and scout the Belle
Isle exit.
Crossing the Bay of Biscay U-132 tangled with an RN ship, was damaged,
but pressed on. Her Captain had no problem navigating Canadian waters.
Lights and radio beacons were operating as in peace and he had his copy of the
regular Canadian sailing directions. On 6 July he spotted a Quebec-Sydney
convoy in bright moonlight a few miles off Cape Chat. He attacked on the
surface and sank three ships in an hour and a half. The Bangor minesweeper
Drummondville drove her under and shook her badly with depth charges. This
added to the earher damage, but Drummondville got no solid asdic contact.
U-132 was not too badly hit. He did his reconnaissance, then went back
above Gaspe and spotted a convoy off Cap de la Madeleine. In a daylight
periscope attack he sank one and got clear without being attacked. Back at
base after sixty-eight days at sea, U-132 had covered 10,000 nautical miles,
about one-tenth of it submerged. Her score was five ships sunk (total 21,350
tons) for her full complement of twelve torpedoes. The patrol was counted “a
fine success.”
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Now Commander Barry German became NOIC. He had been in the first
RCN cadet class in CGS Canada in 1910. He had lost an arm in 1914 at the
gunnery school in England but served through the Great War at sea and
ashore. He was retired as medically unfit in 1919, but came back in the navy as
soon as war began. The apocryphal tale that spread around Gaspe about his
arm - “a moose got him” - seems typically Canadian and curiously un-
nautical.
Donitz was now shifting his weight north from the Caribbean and two
well-commanded U-boats were already on the way from France. No sooner
were they in the Strait of Belle Isle early on 27th August than U-517 sank an
American trooper bound for Greenland. U-163 hit two more in a small
convoy right behind. The escorts were U.S. Coast Guard cutters, which,
according to the USN, were ill-fitted and ill-trained for the job.
Kapitanleutnant Paul Hartwig of U-517 was an audacious and skilful U-
boat commander and an inspiring leader. He was one of the best of the
professionals from Karl Donitz’s school, a tough customer for the raw begin-
ners in the Gulf Escort Force. Looking for something to torpedo, he crept
right into Forteau Bay on the Labrador shore after dark and got within twenty
metres of the jetty. He was chased out by what he took as a fast patrol craft,
dived for the bottom, and heard asdic transmissions scratching at his hull. No
depth charges were dropped, though Hartwig claimed that “the Canadian
could not have failed to recognize that he was holding a U-boat at bay.”
The next day he picked up a small convoy making for Goose Bay, Labrador.
He didn’t know it, but coming in the strait at the same time was a single ship
escorted by the corvette Weyhurn. Past midnight, as Hartwig fired on his first
target, Weyburn appeared from nowhere. It was as much a jolt to Lieutenant
Tom Golby on Weyburn's bridge as it was to Hartwig.
Golby spotted the U-boat himself and went full ahead to ram. At the same
time a ship in the convoy went up in flames. Hartwig went full ahead himself.
The U-boat boiled along awash, her conning tower in plain view from
Weyburn and very close ahead. One of the gun’s crew said, “You could have hit
her with a deck-scrubber.” But they missed with their 4-inch.
Hartwig turned and dived. Golby ran right through the swirl and got away
a couple of depth charges. Weyburn circled, but Leading Seaman Holloway at
the asdic got no contact. Down below Hartwig braced for the attack. He was
more than a Httle surprised when the corvette gave up the search. Weyburn had
been SOE off Cap de la Madeleine when U-132 got away with the dayHght
sinking.
Air sweeps from the following morning on were frequent. RCAF planes got
in several attacks as U-317 worked westward. Then a diversion came outside
the Gulf. U-313 crept silently into the Wabana iron mine anchorage at Bell
Island, Newfoundland. Amazingly for such a loading port, there were no net
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defences, and the shore batteries didn’t spot the surfaced submarine. At dawn
she submerged and coolly torpedoed two deep-laden ships. In three minutes
they plunged to the bottom with heavy loss of life and the U-boat slipped out
unscathed. So close to the major base at St.John’s, this brought more public
furore.
Five days after Hartwig’s brush with Weyburn his friend in U-165 spotted a
convoy off Father Point, the long-time river pilot station not far from
Rimouski. There were eight ships with five escorts. Two were Fairmile MLs,
one the httle armed yacht Raccoon. U-165 moved in before dawn and sank one
ship five miles off Cape Chat. Some three hours later Raccoon, which had been
screening on the convoy’s offshore quarter, literally disappeared. She wasn’t
missed for some time, but U-165 had torpedoed her and not a soul survived.
Much later a life-ring and one decomposed body made up the only evidence
of the death of one poor little vessel quite unsuited to this ferocious war.
Some ships by this time had broken ranks. With one reinforcement there
were five escorts plus close aircraft cover for four in the convoy. Hartwig
talked by wireless to FToffman in U-165 and waited in rain and mist. In late
afternoon, eighteen miles off Cape Gaspe, he was in nice position for a
periscope attack. The convoy moved toward him, right on track. One of the
escort approached within 200 yards. It turned away without detecting him as
he fired a salvo of four torpedoes. FTe got three ships. Half the convoy and one
of the escorts were gone.
A Hudson from Chatham spotted U-517, photographed and machine-
gunned her, then dropped a pattern after the boat submerged. Oil came up
and the RCAF assessment was “probably sunk.” In fact, there was no damage.
Radio Berlin poured scorn on Canada’s efforts that day:
. . . the Canadian navy, which is nine-tenths composed of requisitioned

fishing boats, coastal ships, and luxury yachts, is obliged to create an escort
system with these third-class ships. This service comprises a third of the
threatened maritime route between Canada and the British Isles.
There is a lot of waiting and watching in war. On these fine nights Hartwig
would lie on the surface with the hatches open to the clean autumn air. It
cleared the chronic U-boat stench a bit and gave his men a stretch of their legs
on deck. Often they were close enough to shore to hear cowbells and smell
woodsmoke from farmhouse stoves. Like the sailors in the corvettes, they
would talk of home.
Four days later the corvette Charlottetown and Bangor-class Clayoquot were
running on their own, a mile apart, not zigzagging. Charlottetown was struck
aft by two torpedoes. She sank in four minutes. All but three got clear of the
ship, but in the water many were killed or horribly ruptured by the ship’s own
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depth charges. People ashore had seen a U-boat on the surface a very short
time before. The marksman was Hartwig in U-517.
Next the U-boats spotted a convoy of twenty-one ships. The six escorts
included the RN destroyer Salisbury, sent urgently from the WEEK In periscope
attacks the U-boats sank three, damaged two, and got clean away. Handled
boldly as they were, these.two seemed to have charmed lives. Often the
escorts came within a few hundred yards but they weren’t detected; counter-
attacks thrown at them went wide; escorts couldn’t hold contact; hunts
weren’t pursued. Salisbury believed the enemy must know about the atrocious
asdic conditions west of Gaspe Passage because so many daylight sinkings
occurred there with the U-boats just slipping away.
In fact, the water conditions right through the Gulf were very odd. Fresh
water coming downriver caused tongues and layers of changing salt content
and varied temperature. The asdic beam got severely bent trying to get from
layer to layer, and consequently asdic most often got very poor results. The
same state of affairs also cut the range of a U-boat’s hydrophone and made it
hard to keep the boat stable at steady depth.
The Bangor Georgian spotted a conning tower at 1,000 yards, made to ram,
attacked the swirl, and continued deHberate attacks for two hours. As Geor-
gian saw it the U-boat surfaced, then rolled on her side and sank. She was
given a “probable” by Hahfax. But Hartwig had shpped away again.
In late September the Hudsons were getting very close - 113 was the first
RCAF squadron to use the new RAF Coastal Command tactics, flying higher
than before, around 5,000 feet, and attacking in a steep dive. One attacker
bracketed U-165 with four charges; another scored very close aboard U-517
on three separate strikes. Hartwig lay doggo. When he surfaced that night
there was a depth bomb, firmly lodged in the submarine’s foredeck.
Live or a dud? Hartwig went along himself to look, but there was no way
to tell. He and his engineer worked carefully at it with crowbars. Slowly they
pried it loose. Then he ordered full ahead and they flipped it over the side.
Down it went and exploded impressively at its set depth. If it hadn’t hit him in
the first place it would Hkely have exploded right below him. Then his
amazing luck had kept him from going below that depth when he dived to
escape. A charmed life indeed!
Before he made for home, victorious and out of torpedoes, Hartwig
reported a distinct change in the traffic. Very few ships were to be seen. In fact,
on the 9th of September the Canadian war cabinet had made a momentous
decision. They had closed the St. Lawrence to transatlantic traffic. Shipping in
the Gulf was winding down. They made the decision after the fourteenth of
the summer’s twenty-two Gulf sinkings. Outcries in the press, of course, and
questions in the Commons had scored the abihty of Canada’s forces to protect
home waters. And home shores. A torpedo had actually hit the beach.
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exploded, and blown the windows out of a church near Cape Chat. In fact,
the loss rate was not very high. One only need recall the hundreds of ships
sunk in sight of Britain over the last three years. And the American coast and
Caribbean had just seen thirty, forty times the sinkings. Canadians were
fighting a war. Could they not expect a knock or two? There were no
Churchills in Canada to bluntly put that kind of view.
But British shipping authorities faced losses overall that were terrible. If the
extra thousand miles to Montreal could be eHminated it would economize on
tonnage. They asked Canada to consider passing everything through east
coast ports year-round. And for Admiral Nelles there was another strong
compulsion. The First Sea Lord in August had asked him for escorts for a
huge and highly secret operation. It was Torch, the coming seaborne assault
on North Africa.
Admiral Pound had not talked numbers. Seventeen corvettes was NSHQ’s
target and they scratched around to find them. Nelles recommended support
for Torch to cabinet and closing the Gulf to release the escorts. It could never
be said that seventeen corvettes would make a significant difference to the
massive North African landings. Mackenzie King said so and he worried that
Canada might not get them back for home defence.
Seventeen corvettes, on the other hand, could have given NOIC Gaspe the
means to fight it out until the ice did the closing in December, for the Gulf
never had nearly that many all summer. Seventeen corvettes would have eased
the terrible strain from New York right through to Londonderry. They could
have eased training and refit and rotation problems. Donitz was back in mid-
ocean and the sinkings there were bad. Murray and Jones didn’t even know
where those seventeen ships were going. And they knew there was a very
ugly winter yet to come.
The naval decision was made ultimately by Nelles. There was the old
ingrained aye-aye to the RN; there was the urge to be a major player in a new
campaign with the senior AlHes; there was the immature show of “can-do”
without really counting the cost to the ships and the men who were at sea.
The quick cabinet decision to close the Gulf to through traffic suited NSHQ’s
book. It was a weak decision and, in naval and pohtical terms, a poor one.
It meant a massive extra load of freight by rail to HaHfax and Saint John;
even great expansion of rail terminus and port facilities couldn’t handle it all,
and huge amounts went south to U.S. ports. A lot of money was spent, money
going out of Canada, money for port facilities counter to the interests of
Quebec. And money was the total muscle to fight the war. These matters were
raised in the House of Commons and the press. They left real political sores.
There were more attacks to come. Coastal shipping still had to move. Off
Metis on 9 October U-69 slipped into a Labrador convoy to sink a steamship
in a night attack. That was a mere 173 miles from Quebec. On her way home.
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the same U-boat spotted the Sydney-Port aux Basques ferry SS Caribou in the
Cabot Strait. U-69 put a torpedo into the ferry at point-blank range. The
Bangor sweeper Grandmere was the lone escort. She had no radar. She saw the
surfaced boat and ran in to ram. With 150 yards to go the U-boat crash dived.
Grandmere dropped a pattern of six charges.
Underwater, the U-boat Captain heard only one explode. He also heard the
wracking sound of his target breaking up as she sank. He released an asdic
decoy and got under the survivors to foil the escort’s attack. Two hundred and
thirty-seven people were aboard the ferry, and over half were lost, including
fourteen out of fifteen children. It was a tragic blow. Cape Breton and New-
foundland famihes lost many of their kin, and the incident said something to
Canadians about the sinking and the dying that were the implacable daily diet
out at sea.
Wabana was still disgracefully vulnerable. U-518 ran in on the surface in
early November to sink two ore carriers and damage a third. That closed the
port until anti-torpedo nets were installed - in April, 1943.
U-518 was actually on her way to drop a secret agent near New CarHsle on
Chaleur Bay. The Captain took the boat so close to shore that his conning
tower was lit by headlights passing on the highway. The agent, Werner von
Janowski, was an ill-trained and poorly briefed bumbler. He lugged his
suitcase with a heavy radio transmitter to the local hotel. The proprietor first
caught his pervasive U-boat stench, then noted his Belgian cigarettes, and
finally his outdated, outsized two-doUar bills. He was nabbed by the RCMP
and “turned,” and his codes and call sign and radio sent a stream of misinfor-
mation to Germany. Another agent landed by a U-boat near Saint John had
deserted, spent his money on high hving, and finally turned himself in in
1944. These were high-risk operations for U-boats but hardly true to the
image of the diabohcally clever German spy.
Still, the U-boats had won the Battle of the St. Lawrence. Hartwig got his
Knight’s Grand Cross, a promotion, and a riotous leave; he was renowned as a
prodigious drinker when ashore. Heading out on his next patrol he was
caught on the surface and captured. He spent the rest of his war in prison
camp, ironically in Canada. And down the road to come was a distinguished
second naval career in the West German navy and key NATO posts as a Rear
Admiral. He had learned his naval business in a hard, efficient school with
remarkable esprit. Those few U-boat men had scored a signal strategic victory
for Germany. The Gulf of St. Lawrence stayed closed to transatlantic traffic
until the spring of 1944.
MID-OCEAN ESCORT, 1942

DrumroUjarred Halifax right into the front Hne. Forty-four ships went down
off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia from January to March. Most were
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stragglers or independents. In the Atlantic winter those who got clear of their
sinking ships had little chance. Too often when a lifeboat was found it held
only ice-sheathed corpses.
Out on mid-ocean, the Newfy-Derry run, there were eleven escort
groups: one was nominally American; six were comprised of British and
Alhed ships, such as Free French and Norwegian; four were Canadian. In fact,
there was a lot of mixing between groups. Whoever was the senior officer in
the navy Hst took charge as SOE. The aim was to have two or three destroyers
and five or six corvettes per group. Thus, with ships out for refits, repairs,
maintenance, and training, a convoy would get six escorts. With around
eighteen convoys sailing every month the escorts were on a treadmill.
Rolling everything together in mid-year - Mid-Ocean, Western Local, and
Gaspe escort forces and the oil convoys - the navy needed over 200 escorts. It
had 188 warships on paper but only thirteen destroyers, seventy corvettes,
and thirty-four Bangors. That was almost 100 short. Ship training, therefore,
nearly disappeared. Maintenance time dropped to near-suicide. To make it
worse there were still far fewer skilled and experienced Canadians at sea than
in either the British or American navies. And the Brits and Yanks got their
one-third layoff and had far stronger shore support.
As well, the equipment gap was showing. The improved high-frequency
direction finder was at sea in the RN. At least one destroyer in each British
escort group had one. It wasn’t complicated. The U-boats talked a lot on
high-frequency radio. With a huff-duff the escort could snap a bearing of a U-
boat’s transmissions and get a shrewd idea of near or far. Two HF/DF ships
spread a few miles apart could get a good fix. In addition, without having to
know their code, the ships could tell by some German procedure signals if the
U-boat had sighted them or was in contact.
The only RCN ship to get HF/DF before late 1942 was Restigouche, and she
only had it because her captain. Lieutenant Commander Debby Piers,
scrounged a set quite illegally from the U.S. Navy base in Londonderry. Staff
in Ottawa hadn’t understood what HF/DF was about. The Director of Com-
munications, Commander Sam Worth, said it wasn’t properly proven and put
it off. He should have listened to the men at sea. Piers’s intelhgent use of his
HF/DF was to save a convoy from heavy loss in June. His Petty Officer
Telegraphist “Snakey” Ellis intercepted U-boats sighting transmissions time
and again. The escorts ran out on the bearings, drove them off, and damaged
two for the loss of only one ship. Luckily, the rescue ships that now sailed
with most convoys had a set.
As for radar, RN ships had type 271, which could detect surfaced subma-
rines. The Canadians still suffered with type 286 or Swick, which rarely
could, and those sets could be heard by the U-boats; the 271s could not.
Britain said Canada must depend on North American supply, but the U.S.
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couldn’t provide and Canada was to take until 1944 to get a centimetric type
like 271 produced and out at sea. In August the RN rationed Canada to ten sets
per month and fitted the remaining old Flowers. The seventeen corvettes that
went to Torch got 271, too, but that was no help on the Atlantic.
There was a new weapon in the RN called Hedgehog. It fired a pattern of
explosive bombs ahead so the ship could strike at the submarine while still
holding asdic contact. This was a great advance, and Hedgehog got its first
kill in February, 1942, but the RCN was way behind the RN in getting it. As
well, only ten RCN corvettes had the extended forecastles. Virtually all RN
ships had them, plus gyro compasses, improved asdic, better bridge layout.
The RCN was always at the rear of the queue, and thus the Canadian ships
were the obsolete ones in the battle. Their officers and men knew it, and they
saw ships and friends die because of it.
History remembers the convoys that met action, the sinking and the kill-
ing. But the percentage attacked was small. Safe and timely arrival was what
counted. Each of the unsung convoys that got through by skilful evasion,
good convoy discipline, dogged seamanship, endless, wet, frozen days, and
plain sailors’ luck was a victory in itself. Win or lose, each passage got
rehashed from The Crowsnest in St.John’s to the pubs in Derry.
In spite of all the problems, that summer of 1942 had a good share of
Canadian success. St. Croix of the Second Canadian Escort Group, Lieutenant
Commander A.H. Dobson in command, cracked U-90 open in four solo
attacks. Then the third Canadian group, under Commander DC. Wallace in
Saguenay, fought a tremendous battle for westbound ONS 115 with no air
cover, no HF/DF, no efficient radar. Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Dyer in
Skeena directed closely co-ordinated attacks with Lieutenant Commander
Guy Windeyer’s Wetaskiwin on U-588 for five hours and finished her off. Later
Lieutenant Alan Easton’s Sackville flushed three U-boats on the surface in fog
and dark, blew one half out of the water with depth charges, and hit the next
point blank with 4-inch shells. Neither sank but both were out of the battle.
ONS 115 was a victory. Only two merchant ships were lost.
Assiniboine, running through fog patches off Newfoundland in August,
1942, used radar to keep station on convoy SC 94. But Lieutenant Com-
mander John Stubbs had no warning of the U-boat that popped suddenly out
of the fog. It turned away and Stubbs followed. A wildly weaving chase went
on for an hour, in and out of fog banks, catching a glimpse now, then losing
sight. The radar was no help - it was the old 286. At last Stubbs got close
enough to rake the enemy with 20mm and half-inch machine guns. He got so
close the big guns couldn’t depress to get in a shot. There was plenty of fight
in U-210 and she riddled Assiniboine's bridge with 20mm shells. One caught
the upper-deck gasoline stowage and a fire burst out right beside the bridge.
First Lieutenant Ralph Hennessy swung the firefighters into action. The
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Coxswain, CPO Max Bernays, coolly kept full control in the wheelhouse as
the fire raged. The U-boat could turn tighter than the destroyer, but Stubbs
was a master shiphandler. Up on the bridge with the flames and smoke, he
harried so closely the U-boat couldn’t dive. Still ablaze, the destroyer finally
rammed, pulled back, and rammed again. As U-210 went to the bottom the
joyful cry of “Refit! Refit!” rang through the ship. Her asdic was torn out. She
turned back to St. John’s with her prisoners, her wounds, and her wounded.
In January, 1943, she was back in action. With Assiniboine gone from SC 94, the
271 radars in the two RN corvettes in C1 group were a big factor in countering
the attacks. HMS Dianthus rammed another U-boat. Two killed for eleven
merchant ships sunk was a respectable rate of exchange.
The slow convoys had the rough times, and during the summer of 1942 by
pure chance the brunt of the action fell to the Canadian escort groups. They
had the losses but also the kills. Including Oakville's Caribbean victory, the
RCN had sunk four U-boats in a month to Dianthus's single for the RN. The
Canadian escorts’ tails were up. (They’d have been even higher had they
known that Morden had sunk U-756 with three smartly delivered depth-
charge attacks in early December while defending SC 97. It took till 1987, but
that singlehanded kill was definitely credited to the Canadian corvette.) But
now, with the eastern seaboard and Caribbean under convoy, Donitz’s ham-
mer fell back on the mid-Atlantic.
Thirteen U-boats lay across the path of ON 127 in the Black Pit in mid-
September. Ottawa made a second destroyer with St. Croix in C4 (the fourth
Canadian escort group), along with four corvettes. HMS Celandine again had
the only 271 radar but it was out of commission at some of the worst times.
No one had HF/DF.
One of Ottawa's seamen came down with acute appendicitis. There could
be no turning back, of course, so Surgeon Lieutenant George Hendry had to
operate. The First Lieutenant, Tom Pullen, had a strong stomach and helped.
In the heaving ship the job was neatly done. Then in the Black Pit came the U-
boats. Day and night they sank seven ships and damaged four. Ottawa picked
up survivors. One of them had a rivet blown deep into his gut and the doctor
set up surgery again on the Captain’s dining table. Pullen, with his experience,
helped. It took four hours and things looked good. But on 13 September the
poor man died. They buried him at'â at sunset with proper seaman’s
honours.
In a few hours Ottawa was ten miles ahead of the convoy to meet a relief
destroyer from St.John’s. Suddenly a torpedo tore her bow right off. Tommy
Pullen went down to inspect the damage in what was left of the fore lower
messdeck. “It was a scene of carnage and shambles. We were scrambling
around there in the wreckage and you could see the sea straight ahead where
the bow used to be and I had that awful feeling if there was one torpedo there
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could be another. When the second torpedo hit, the ship started to break up.
Larry Rutherford and I were the last two on the bridge and we walked down
the side of the ship and jumped in the sea. The extraordinary thing was to
observe men simply giving up and letting go of the carley floats and drifting
off into the night . . . they were uninjured . . . I think probably shock and not
being mentally geared to a catastrophe. We lost a hundred and thirteen officers
and men and about sixty-five survived. The survivors of the ship we had
picked up a few days earHer, we lost most of them.”
And they lost Doctor Hendry . . . and his appendicitis case . . . and Larry
Rutherford, the Captain, who gave his lifebelt to a rating and his own life
with it. Ottawa had run right into the U-boats gathering ahead to attack the
convoy. If she’d had a huff-duff or a 271 radar it could have been a very
different story.
Live or die. Win or lose. In every battle there were hard lessons, and reports
had to be made - part of the paper war. These were assessed up the Hne with
Admiralty printing final judgement in Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports.
Not all the staff officers’ vitriol reached the light of day, but more and more
the finger was pointed at the RCN. RN staffs, too, were very critical of the staffs
led by Rear Admiral Murray and Captain RoUo Mainguy, who was now
Captain (D) Newfoundland. In fact, they had hardly any staff officers and
were too harried putting out fires.
The strain was too great for some. A corvette Captain who took refuge in
drink had to be forcibly pulled right after one convoy. He was not the only
one. Admiral Brainard said bluntly that Canadian maintenance, “appreciably
below the standards demanded of experienced regulars,” cut the size of the
fleet to a “dangerous and unacceptable figure.” Always open-handed, he
offered USN engineering officers for the Canadian corvettes. By custom,
though, the engine room departments of corvettes were headed by CPOs and
the offer was declined.
The criticisms - and their sources - might be hard to take. But the facts
were there and the battle was now. Nearly forty U-boats were at sea - the
highest total ever deployed. Most were on the North Atlantic and the new
German Triton cypher still had not been cracked. Pushing the expansion
snowball up the steep hill for so long, Murray could see it was about to roll
right back. He warned Headquarters that heavy losses were in store for
convoys escorted by the weak Canadian groups. He remembered Jimmy
Hibbard’s SC 42.
Scouting U-boats near Newfoundland spotted convoy SC 107 before it
rounded Cape Race. They knew it was coming because the Germans had
broken its routing signal. The main patrol fine of seventeen boats - Group
Veilchen, it was called - had been carefully placed further east, right across the
convoy’s track. C4 had Debby Piers in Restigouche as SOE with a hastily
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scraped-together group of four corvettes. An RCAF Digby sank one shadower

but the air effort wasn’t enough to shake them all off.
The U-boats’ sighting reports cackled on Piers’s HF/DF. Stockport, the rescue
ship, had HF/DF, too. Piers’s plot showed where the U-boats were. But his was
the lone destroyer - he couldn’t chase them all off. And now they were in the
Black Pit with no aircraft for days. Just then HMS Celandine, C4’s most useful
corvette, lost her precious radar for four critical days.
That night the pack stormed in. Snowflake rockets from the merchant
ships Ht the sky. The escorts could only dash to each disaster, snap-shoot at
quick ghmpses of the enemy, and take brief swipes at asdic contacts. This was
the pack attack par excellence. It swamped the escort. Three got through and
sank eight ships. An ammunition ship went up with such a gigantic blast that
sailors in engine rooms miles away thought they’d been torpedoed them-
selves.
At first light Piers had to regroup. Stockport was crammed with survivors.
She was way astern and needed screening. Stragglers had to be rounded up
and the convoy shoved back into shape. All that thinned the tiny screen and a
dayhght attacker sank one ship. A bonus came that night, though, when an
RN destroyer joined from a nearby convoy, a fast one that was sHpping by
untouched.
The following morning Amherst chased a surfaced U-boat ahead of the
convoy. Her new Captain was Lieutenant “Uncle Louis” Audette. (You got to
be “Uncle” if you were over thirty; Piers was twenty-five.) Audette conned
the ship and spotted his gunfire from the crowsnest. As he put his target down
another stole past the screen and sank a ship. Later, two U-boats got in for
another night of carnage, of sinking ships and brushes with the escorts.
Next night Amherst closed on a torpedoed ship and asdic reported a solid
echo, classified submarine. Audette lined up to attack and turned toward,
closing the range. A depth-charge pattern was ready, and then, right ahead,
the sea was dotted with tiny lights - survivors, in the water and very close to
the U-boat. There was no question about it, the devil was right below those
blinking Hghts. Drop the charges and the men would die a ghastly death;
sheer off and a U-boat would live to sink again. Forty lives against the
embattled convoy. Only the Captain could decide.
The First Lieutenant: “Good God, sir, are you going to attack?”
Audette, his agonized decision made, answered “Yes.”
The range closed and the asdic pings came shorter and faster, like a quick-
ening heartbeat, nearing the moment to fire. Men’s shouts came faintly
through the dark, seeing rescue overcoming death. Then, the power to the
asdic failed. Precision gone, Audette ordered “No attack.” The wheel over, he
skirted the survivors, heard their cries of anger and despair from the icy water
as he drew away. The power came back but the U-boat was gone.
127
While the rescue vessel picked up the survivors, Amherst circled the blazing
hulk of SS Daleby, which they’d abandoned. Three men still on board
screamed for help and Audette broke his own and every standing order in the
book to stop his ship with U-boats near and send a boat. When he asked for
volunteers there was a rush to man it. Pitch dark and high seas; cold courage
and fine seamanship - and all three men were rescued. The Coxswain, Petty
Officer Taylor, won the British Empire Medal. Louis Audette had the most
wrenching night of his life.
The next day strong reinforcements arrived: ships and very-long-range
(VLR) Liberators that had begun to fly from Iceland, shrinking the air gap,
closing up the Black Pit. They got Restigouche’s HF/DF bearings from her by
radio, ran out, and forced the U-boats down. Donitz preferred odds in his
own favour and called off the pack.
The five-day battle bought him a stunning victory - fifteen ships out of
forty-two. The Germans lost one U-boat, though the Canadians didn’t know.
U-132, Hartwig’s fellow killer in the St. Lawrence, just disappeared. Likely he
was too close when he torpedoed the ammunition ship that exploded with
such gigantic force.
Piers had fought a tremendous battle against seventeen U-boats with a
wretchedly inferior escort. C-in-C Western Approaches couldn’t find much
to criticize but his youth and inexperience. He was young, yes - twenty-five
years old - but Piers was experienced for the North Atlantic. He’d been out
there for three years.
The devastation to SC 107 was a hard blow at a time of rising threat.
Operation Torch had a big bearing. The corvettes taken for Torch robbed the
Mid-Ocean Escort Force. The main assault convoy for Torch was in fact
crossing the Atlantic well to the south and quite unmolested at the very time
the U-boats were ripping up SC 107. The campaign caused a massive deflec-
tion of shipping and the materials of war and necessities of life away from
Britain. So every cargo on that North Atlantic route was even more critical to
her survival. Africa had to be supplied, but on the grand strategic scale the
North Atlantic was the key to Allied success or failure. It had to hold.
BITTER PILL
At Western Approaches Headquarters the tough new C-in-C was Admiral
Max Horton. Like Karl Donitz, he was a submariner. Escort groups couldn’t
be conjured from thin air. Horton focused on efficiency. He aimed to make
each ship and each group better and put the first team into the most crucial,
toughest areas. The British groups on the record were doing better. The
Canadian groups had the majority of the vulnerable slow convoys, and the
straight luck of the game had brought more of theirs under attack.
128
These survivors are among the lucky
ones, comfortable enough in well-
equipped lifeboats and spotted by a
destroyer that was able to stop.
Destroyers had medical officers;
smaller ships did not. In the near boat
the medical party lashes an injured
man into a stretcher to be hoisted
aboard. In some of the worst battles
smaller escorts became so loaded
with survivors they became danger-
ously unstable. {Maritime Command
Museum)
Ice, formed by freezing spray in the worst cold of winter, coated everything on the
upper deck. It was an endless chore with axes and steam hoses to keep guns, depth
charges, and vital equipment clear. As well, if it was allowed to build up, the weight
could affect the ship’s stability to the point of actually turning turtle. {Maritime Com-
mand Museum. Source: Parks Canada, Halifax)
In Halifax dockyard, 1940. Left to right: Commodore H.E. Rastus Reid, Navy Min-
ister Angus L. Macdonald, and Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Percy Nelles. Reid
was naval attache m Washington, Vice Chief of Naval Staff, then Flag Officer New-
foundland in September, 1942. Nelles, CNS from 1934 to 1944, was pushed upstairs
by Macdonald after the crisis of confidence m 1943. (Imperial War Museum)
U-94 leaves her French base. This U-boat, a Type VIIC, sank four ships m the spring
ot 1942, then was sunk that August by Oakville in the Caribbean. (Department of
National Defence. Source: Bihliothekfur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart)
U-boat killers on board Chambiy in August, 1942. Left to right: Rear Admiral
Leonard W. Murray; Vice Admiral Sir Humphrey Walwyn, RN, Governor of New-
foundland; Commander J.D. Prentice, DSO, who hasjust been decorated by Admiral
Walwyn for sinking lJ-301 during the battle for convoy SC 42, and Mrs. Prentice.
Behind, the officer with the beard is Lieutenant Commander Guy Windyer, who
earlier had sunk lJ-588 in Wetaskiww along with Skeeria. The tall officer is Captain
Rollo Mamguy, Captain (D) St. John’s. He actually scored the RCN’s first kill of the
war in Ottawa in 1940. (National Arch wes of Canada)
Fairmile motor launches in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Eighty of these 112-foot, 20-
knot craft were built in Canada. Each carried a fixed-beam asdic, depth charges, and
3-pounder or 20mm guns. Supported by mother ships Preserver and Provider, they
escorted convoys in the Gulf and in the Caribbean and patrolled from Bermuda and
St.John’s. They were no match for a U-boat but they did useful chores like harbour
approach patrols and coastal rescue that freed bigger escorts for ocean work.
(National Archives of Canada)
A Wren operates a high-frequency direction finder at HMCS Coverdale near Monc-
ton, N.B. The shore-based, Atlantic-wide radio direction-finding net was a major
player in the Battle. Bearings of U-boat transmissions, combined with “Ultra ”
communications intelligence (which was sporadically available), meant that convoys
could be evasively routed, reinforced, or at least warned of U-boat dispositions.
Restigouche, picking up survivors from a sunken U-boat in 1943. For their escort role
most of these River-class destroyers lost their after 4.7-inch gun and one set of
quadruple torpedo tubes to reduce topweight as equipment was added and to make
room for more depth charges. The first RUN ship to get HF/DF, Restigouche
“scrounged” hers in Londonderry in 1941. It is in the box behind the aft funnel.
(Imperial War Museum)
A VLR Liberator over an Atlantic convoy. This American bomber, converted for ASW
and with added endurance, was the best aircraft available for the job (once enough of
them were diverted from the bomber role). The convoy is four miles across. On the
far side two little escorts can be seen. The nearest ship is committing the worst con-
voy daylight crime, belching smoke. (National Archives of Canada)
Corvette Sackville after her forecastle was extended in May, 1944, in Galveston,
Texas. Her 271 radar antenna is in the plexiglass “tower ” above the bridge; her new
Hedgehog is hidden by the 4-inch gun mounting. Sackville fought many hard bat-
tles. After thirty years as a survey and acoustic research vessel she was faithfully
restored in 1985 by old navy hands and can be visited in Halifax today in her 1944
fighting trim. (National Archives of Canada)
Tribal-class destroyers Haida and Athabaskan, seen from sister ship Huron, in the
English Channel in the spring of 1944. They were designed for surface gun-fighting
- short-ranged, 2,000 tons, 377 feet long, 36 knots with three twin 4.7-inch gun
mounts plus a twin 4-inch for starshell and high-angle anti-aircralt fire, four tor-
pedo tubes, and a crew of 260. Haida, saved from the wrecker by naval veterans in
1964, is preserved at Ontario Place in Toronto with the lighter armament she carried
in the Korean War. (National Archives of Canada)
Swansea, one of the early frigates, commissioned at Yarrow’s shipyard in Esquimalt

in October, 1943, rides North Atlantic seas. British-designed, these were fine ships
and twice the corvette - twin screws, 1,445 tons, and 301 feet long, with a crew of
140, Hedgehog, and a twin 4-inch gun (or in the early ones, one 4-inch and one
twelve-pounder). Their range was double - 7,200 miles at 12 knots with 19 knots
top speed. Swansea sank four U-boats - all in 1944 - and was the RCN champion.
For three of them Commander Clarence King was her Captain. He had four per-
sonally (equalling Prentice), plus one in the Great War. Swansea was converted m
1957 as an ocean escort and served until 1966. (National Archives of Canada)
Prince Henry, seen here with some of her eight assault landing craft loaded with
troops heading for the beach. Prince Henry and Prince David were converted from
armed merchant cruisers to infantry landing ships and were in the first wave in the
D-Day assault. {National Archives of Canada)
Chaudiere alongside an oiler on 21 August 1944 after sinking U-678 and lJ-984 with
Ottawa and Kootenay {Kootenay is on the right). She had already taken part in sinking
U-744, so the painter is adding the second of three swastikas. In the euphoria of
success no one cares that he has them backwards. All the RCN’s escort destroyers
were RN-built in the thirties for fleet work at around 1,400 tons, 330 feet long, and
31 knots. {National Archives of Canada)
Algonquin comes alongside Nabob, well down by the stern and struggling to stay
afloat, to take off excess crew members. Nabob was torpedoed in August, 1944, dur-
ing operations against the battleship Tirpitz but was saved by intrepid damage con-
trol and courageous flying. Algonquin and Sioux weren’t Tribals. They were
wartime-construction RN fleet V-class destroyers - 1,700 tons, 362 feet, 36 knots,
with four 4.7-inch guns and eight torpedo tubes. (Imperial War Museum)
U-744 in her final throes, her conning tower riddled with shell-holes, boarded by
Canadian sailors in March, 1944. Chilliwack's boarding party, a few lengths ahead of
St. Catharines', draped a White Ensign over the conning tower, held the crew at gun-
point to prevent scuttling, and recovered the U-boat’s key cypher machines and code
books. In the heavy seas the boats overturned and the important capture was lost.
But equipment, training, experience, group stability, maintenance stand-

ards all came into the naked light. The RN’s jaded view of the Canadians as
enthusiastic amateurs surfaced. “Temporary inefficiency” for long-term gain
hadn’t worked. PubHc scorn over the Gulf of St. Lawrence defeat still echoed.
Just then Saguenay collided with a merchant ship. Her own depth charges blew
her stern off and she retired from the war to be a training ship. But the catalytic
disaster was SC 107. Something had to be done.
Vice Admiral Nelles appealed to old friends at Admiralty. The RN would
help with equipment, but it would take time. Winston Churchill right at that
point was deeply worried about a breakdown of merchant service morale.
Everywhere their losses were terrible, and their rewards were nil. Inner
collapse could finish what the U-boats had nearly achieved. The North
Atlantic must have - and must be seen by the merchant mariners to have - the
best escort force that could possibly be mustered. Mackenzie King received a
message:
A careful analysis of our transatlantic convoys has clearly shown that in

those cases where heavy losses have occurred, lack of training of the
escorts, both individually and as a team, has largely been responsible for
these disasters.
I appreciate the grand contribution of the Royal Canadian Navy to the
Battle of the Atlantic, but the expansion of the RCN has created a training
problem which must take time to resolve.
Winston Churchill, 17th December 1942
The proposal was not to strengthen the Canadian groups with more well-
equipped RN destroyers. It was to pull them right off the mid-ocean and put
them on the easier U.K.-Gibraltar route under good air cover. This was
deeply resented by NeUes and his staff. They said equipment was the differ-
ence. Commander Pelham Bliss, RN, agreed. He was the anti-submarine
specialist who had worked so hard in Newfoundland since the early days of
the NEF. But right on the heels of that came convoy ONS 154.
ONS 154 was the Christmas convoy of 1942. Lieutenant Commander Guy
Windeyer in St. Laurent was new to the ship and to Cl group. Like Chummy
Prentice, he was a retired RN officer living in Canada prior to the war. He was
not inexperienced in escort work - in Wetaskiwin he had shared a U-boat with
Skeena - but he was not a Prentice. There was a two-week layover in Ireland.
All five corvettes got 271 radar and “Sally” got her long-awaited HF/DE
However, C1 ’s second destroyer, HMS Burwell, was laid up with defects and
there was no relief; pre-sailing exercises were aborted; the priceless new huff-
duff was not calibrated prior to sailing; and for his own insufficient reasons,
the SOE didn’t call a pre-sailing conference of his captains.
129
They were routed south past the Azores since some ships had to detach
from the convoy and head for the South Atlantic. Besides, the weather would
be far better. It was much longer than the northern route but - something
quite new - a tanker went along to fuel the escorts. The longer route also
meant maximum time in the Black Pit. (Portugal didn’t let the Allies use
airfields in the Azores untiTOctober, 1943.) Another breakthrough had just
been made in the U-boat code but new positions hadn’t been plotted. Quite
unwittingly, ONS 154 was routed just to the south of two U-boat groups
containing twenty boats. One made contact and the pack closed in.
On the night of 26 December U-356 raced through the convoy twice and
hit four ships. St. Laurent caught him on the surface and put him down with a
hail of 20mm and 4.7-inch fire, followed by a shallow blast of depth charges,
then a deUberate ten-charge pattern. An eleventh explosion convinced Win-
deyer he had a kill, but there was no credit given until German records after
the war showed U-356 was lost that night.
The next day while Chilliwack was fueUing astern of the convoy the tanker
was torpedoed. It survived but had to make for home, so the escorts had no
filling station. HF/DF in the rescue vessel Toward and the fleet auxiHary HMS
Fidelity provided ample bearings to chase but Windeyer didn’t move out
boldly to put them down. His own set, remember, wasn’t caHbrated. His was
the only destroyer and he couldn’t get more fuel.
St. Laurenfs First Lieutenant, Fred Frewer, recounted the mounting horror:
“We could see submarines on both flanks of the convoy, on the surface, just
out of gun range, oh, six-seven miles away and perfectly visible, but haring at
full speed on the surface, reloading torpedoes and charging their batteries and
getting ready for the dusk attack again. This happened two days running and I
remember very vividly how unprotected the convoy must have felt and we
felt inadequate watching these bloody submarines. ... It was a terrible
nightmare that one.”
Chilliwack that night had a fierce fight with a U-boat but with no score.
Fidelity carried two seaplanes and lowered one to put down the lurking U-
boats. It crashed on take-off. As “Sally” was fishing the pilot out, Battleford
was fighting off four U-boats on the other flank. But Windeyer had failed to
tell Battleford he was going to alter convoy course after dark. So the corvette
was agonizingly out of the battle for the second night’s melee. The long-
coveted 271 radars were new and teething. Battleford's went blank with the
first 4-inch round she fired at her four attacking U-boats.
Five U-boats got through. In two chaotic hours nine ships went down. It
was “a holocaust” to Napanee's Captain, Lieutenant Stuart Henderson, RCNR.
“All ships appeared to be firing snowflakes, and tracers crisscrossed in all
directions, escorts firing starshells. The sea v.âs dotted with Hghts from boats
130
and rafts and two burning wrecks which had hauled out to starboard helped
the illumination.”
That night the battle was out of hand. Windeyer had quite clearly broken
down. He was put under the doctor’s care and Frewer took command. Next
day the U-boats picked off the derelicts astern and sank Fidelity. She had
dropped back with engine trouble and no escort. She lost over 300 men. Two
RN destroyers joined for a while and chased off shadowers. The grim reckon-
ing was fourteen sunk for one U-boat damaged, though in fact it was on the
bottom.
Back in St.John’s Windeyer was taken to hospital, not to return to sea. He
had done well before and he killed two U-boats, which few other men can say.
But the constant, grinding strain of command, physical pounding from the
sea, days on end with hundreds of Hves hanging on those snap decisions, the
barest of sleep, and the dead hand of utter fatigue had all taken their toll. It
took far more than an ordinary man to be an escort group commander - and a
near superman to be a good one.
Shorebound and peacetime tacticians with their easy hindsight notwith-
standing, leadership had failed. ONS 154 took the steam out of NSHQ’s
resistance. Nelles gave in. The Canadian groups would be yanked. They were
pulled off their own North Atlantic battleground and watched from the
bench while the great issue was decided in those wild months of winter and
spring 1943. It was resolved in the main by reorganizing RN escort groups,
with reinforcements from the battle fleet, to form “support groups.” They
could move to help the most threatened convoy. Also, air cover improved. A
few RAF Liberators at last patrolled the Black Pit gap, and in March the first
escort carrier, USS Bogue, was in action in mid-Atlantic.
It was a fact that 80 per cent of all ships torpedoed in transatlantic convoys
in the last two months of 1942 were hit while being escorted by Canadian
groups. They were the ones Max Horton’s new broom reached first. It was
also a fact pointed out in the January Monthly Anti-Submarine Report that
“The Canadians have had to bear the brunt of the U-boat attack in the North
Atlantic for the last six months, that is to say of about half the German U-
boats operating at sea.”
The RCN’S time had yet to come.
COMBINED OPERATIONS
Good men step up when there’s a chance of some special adventure. The call
for navy volunteers for “specially hazardous duty” in late 1941 was oversub-
scribed. It was for Combined Operations. Since 1940, when Britain still
feared invasion, small Commando units had been running vicious throat-
slitting raids along the French coast. They were great for morale but were
131
really only pinpricks. Sooner or later Britain and her Commonwealth alHes
would have to storm Europe, and that would mean amphibious assault on a
huge scale.
Raids and landings had been the navy’s business for centuries. Special
training and first-rate co-ordination spelled success at Louisbourg and Que-
bec. The Gallipoli landings in the Great War were disastrous. Throwing men
on a beach in the face of a determined, entrenched enemy with machine guns
was suicidal. Now there was airpower and a whole new range of weapons.
Combined Operations had to develop the equipment, the know-how, and the
special forces for the job. And try them out. By late 1941 Admiral Lord Louis
Mountbatten was in command. He added his special touch and Combined
Ops had the aura of a rather glamorous game.
Three hundred and fifty RCNVR volunteers arrived for training in January,
1942, raw crews for six landing craft flotillas. Some of them were quickly into
a night raid onBruneval that captured radar equipment. Next, at St. Nazaire, a
destroyer filled with explosives was rammed into a drydock gate and blown
up. In August sixty of them manned craft for the doomed landing at Dieppe.
Some were killed and wounded. Some were captured with the Canadian
soldiers who suffered such a terrible defeat.
Whatever the reasoning for Dieppe, it re-taught old lessons that never
should have been unlearned and raised some new ones. No major landing
could be made without heavy advance air bombardment; heavy gunfire
support from ships was vital during and after the landing; special craft and
equipment were needed to breach defences; a defended port was too tough a
nut to crack by direct seaborne assault. That last point led to the great
Mulberry prefabricated harbours that were towed to the Normandy beaches.
They filled the bill amazingly well until seaports like Le Havre and Cher-
bourg were taken.
The lessons came at a high price. Around 5,000 Canadians sailed for
Dieppe. Close to 1,000 were killed, another 2,000 taken prisoner, for the men
in Combined Ops, Dieppe stood as a very sobering first lesson. By October
the Canadians were formed in their own flotillas of small landing craft,
trained up, and ready for a major show. They didn’t know the destination but
it was Operation Torch.
OPERATION TORCH
The seventeen Canadian corvettes that left Canada in the fall of 1942 didn’t
know where they were going either. The first of them left about the time
Ottawa was sunk. In her group there wasn’t a single operating 271 radar. Yet
the Torch corvettes got theirs in the U.K. right away, plus their first 20mm
guns. Then off they went to join in the North African assault.
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The landings caught the Germans off balance. U-boats were disposed
elsewhere. South off Africa, which had been stripped of escorts for Torch,
they had a field day. In the North Atlantic they ripped into Restigouche's SC 107.
One Torch armada sailed from the U.S. aimed straight at Casablanca in French
Morocco. The other from the U.K., with the first of the Canadian corvettes,
made for Oran and Algiers inside the Mediterranean. For these two greatest
armadas of the war to date not a U-boat pack was in place.
Near Algiers on 8 November the Canadian assault craft took in first-wave
troops. Vichy French shore batteries and warships were there, but after a
sputter of fire the massive landing went in unopposed. It was the same on all
the beaches. Now, for the navies, it was just a matter of resupply, and a huge
task it was. The Canadian landing craft ferried mountains of stores ashore.
The corvettes got on with the business of escort.
Donitz had told the German High Command that the North Atlantic was
the crucial win-or-lose area for his U-boats, but Hitler, who took his advice
on naval strategy from Grosadmiral Erich Raeder, a surface navy man,
ordered him into the Mediterranean anyway. It was too late and the convoys
were far too well defended. Seven U-boats were sunk in a single week.
This was a very different game for the Canadian corvettes. It was a small sea
and the enemy was close. The RN had been fighting air attack here for years
and it was part of the scene. The Med was far softer than the brutal North
Atlantic. The U-boats operated singly rather than in packs. The hauls were
short and the escorts much stronger, and air cover was first rate. Easier
weather gave full range to the 271 radars. Asdic operating conditions were
much better. Also, some of the submarines were Italian and they lacked the
Donitz brand of iron.
There was plenty of action. In mid-January Ville de Quebec, Lieutenant
Commander A.R.E. Coleman, RCNR, killed a U-boat in ten minutes from
first asdic contact to ramming her under - something of a record. Port Arthur
got an Italian. Ted Simmons was Captain and it was his second submarine. He
had jumped aboard U-501 when Chambly and Moose Jaw sank her in the battle
for SC 42 back in 1941.
In early February Louisburg was with a big escort of fifteen corvettes when
in swept Italian aircraft. A torpedo caught her. She sank in four minutes and
half her company died, including most of the engine-room crew. The depth
charges exploded at depth and added to the toll. Then, within six days, Regina
got a night contact on radar. It disappeared: a “sinker.” After asdic sweep,
depth charges, and a fierce point-blank gunbattle another Italian went down.
The pendulum swung back late in the month. Since Weyburn first met the
enemy in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the previous summer she had become a
taut, efficient ship. Four months in the Med had brought plenty of action with
133
U-boats, aircraft, and fast torpedo boats. The RN group they were with had
downed two Heinkels.
Leaving Gibraltar for a U.K.-bound convoy, Weyburn struck a mine. The
engine room filled with a lethal rush and the ship settled low in the water. The
RN destroyer Wivern came alongside to take off wounded. Remembering their
friends who died in Charlottetown, the depth-charge crew quickly pulled the
primers. Two charges buckled by the explosion defied disarming. Suddenly
the bow reared high and Weyburn sank in seconds, taking her Captain, Tom
Golby, and others with her. Able Seaman Tom Clark, suffering a head wound,
had swum clear. Clinging to a spHnter mat 200 yards off, he watched the ship
sink. Then came two huge, crushing explosions. Two friends with him were
terribly ruptured inside and one died later. Clark was half on the mat with his
stomach out of the water and that saved him.
Wivern, with her load of survivors, was hit heavily by the explosion and her
own wounded added to Weyburn's. The destroyer’s medical officer. Surgeon
Lieutenant RR. Evans, had both ankles broken. In intense pain himself, he
directed operations in the blood-drenched wardroom. It was akin to the
battles of 1812. Weyburn's First Lieutenant, “Hip” Garrard, had a mangled
ankle but refused treatment until all the others were looked after. Then, with a
cheerful “Hack away, boys,” he endured the agony of amputation. As in those
bygone battles his only anaesthetic was a generous tot of rum.
SICILY
The landing craft flotillas had meantime returned to England to regroup. The
glamour was off Combined Operations. It was too Hke the army they served,
with not much of the derring-do and a great deal of marking time. A major
landing took a long time to get in gear. In mid-March they loaded their assault
craft into transports and sailed as the 55th and 61st EGA flotillas. In a later
convoy came the 80th and 81st LCM flotillas with larger craft for landing
vehicles.
They had no idea of their target but they steamed due south and got plenty
of sun. The convoys sailed clear around Cape Horn and came north through
the Suez Canal to Port Said. They trained and rehearsed in the eastern Medi-
terranean and at last, on 5 July, they hoisted their craft at the landing ships’
davits and sailed west. Sixteen convoys of transports from Africa, the U.K.,
and the U.S. gathered at the rendezvous south of Malta. Add a heavy covering
force of carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and minesweepers and it was
a massive armada. Over 2,700 vessels sorted and regrouped in two great
forces and made for Sicily.
The climactic battles of the North Atlantic had taken place in the spring of
1943 while the landing craft men had been journeying around Africa. The U-
boats in the Mediterranean had been beaten. Now Africa was firmly held. The
134
unsinkable Malta airfields, fifty miles from Sicily, and the carriers gave air
cover.
The American Seventh Army landed along the southwest coast of Sicily.
The British Eighth Army beaches were around the corner of Cape Passero on
the southeast coast. The First Canadian Division and First Canadian Army
Tank Brigade were part of it. Other than the foray to France in 1940 and the
tragedies of Hong Kong and Dieppe, this was the Canadian Army’s first
action. The Canadian flotillas, though, were in a different sector.
In the pre-dawn hours of 10 July the sea was rough as the LCAs dropped
down from their davits. Assault troops swarmed down the nettings and each
craft embarked its one platoon. It was a seven-mile run to shore in pitch black
and sharp sea, which reduced the soldiers to heaps of seasick misery. Other-
wise, opposition ran from nil to light. Most craft beached safely. The beach-
heads were quickly secured. By dawn the heavy transport ships moved in.
Unloading them was the job of the LCMs. The vehicles and the tanks moved
ashore.
At that point the Luftwaffe intervened. Breaking through the fighter cover,
they strafed and bombed the beaches. Two British craft were destroyed right
beside the Canadian LCMs. Enemy airfields were by no means out of action.
Over the next two days there were twenty-three raids. In the anchorage five
merchantmen and a hospital ship went down.
Every vehicle, every shell and gallon of gasoline, every ration box had to go
over the beaches. The LCMs stayed on the job, moving up the east coast as the
army advanced. There were no parent ships. With an open LCM as home, the
crews lived off the land, scrounging as resourceful sailors will. TTen, on the 5th
of August, they pulled out for Malta. In less than a month the twenty-four LCMs
had landed close to 9,000 vehicles, 40,000 men, and 40,000 tons of stores.
In September, repaired and in top shape again, the 80th LCM Flotilla was
back in Sicily near Messina, looking across the six-mile strait at the ItaHan
mainland. Their cargo this time was all Canadian - the Royal 22nd from
Quebec, the West Nova Scotians, and the Carleton and Yorks - and this was
the assault wave. At dawn on 3 September they headed out under an enor-
mous barrage. Shells howled overhead from artillery on the Sicilian side. The
15-inch guns of the RN battleships Warspite and Valiant thundered; their shells
sounded like express trains. Opposition along the beach was light, casualties
in the flotilla and their assault troops nil.
On 8 September Italy surrendered, then in mid-month declared war on
Germany. The LCMs grinding jobs were done. The two LCA flotillas had gone
back to the U.K. directly after the first assault. By fall all the Canadian
Combined Ops units were back in the U.K. to regroup, re-equip, train, and
fret and wait for the next assault. It was to be in seven months, 6 June 1944, on
the beaches of Normandy.
135
THE WORST OF WINTERS

Weather on the North Atlantic through the winter of 1942-43 was the worst
for thirty years. A third of the escorts were knocked out with weather
damage. In one month eight merchant ships were sunk by monstrous seas. A
rescue vessel turned turtle from the weight of ice and sank. A convoy commo-
dore’s ship opened up in a gale and went down with every soul on board. The
Captain and First Lieutenant of an RN destroyer were killed when the bridge
was smashed by a monstrous wave.
Sailors in the Httle ships Uved in physical misery. Wet and cold, in the same
clothes for weeks, they got what rest they could between watches in leaking,
reeking messdecks. They subsisted on scratch meals. And always, day and
night, they had to cling physically to a heaving, pitching, pounding ship,
hammered by the waves in an eternal sea of noise. Foul weather scattered the
convoys, put vital equipment out of action, cloaked the movements of the
enemy, badly cut the air cover. The mounting number of U-boats faced the
same abominable blinding, debiHtating weather, but overall it worked in their
favour.
Admiral Donitz now had 382 U-boats - more than he had first told Hitler
he needed to win the war. Their losses had climbed: thirty-four in the last
three months of 1942. But 1942 was the worst year yet for the merchant ships
and their indomitable crews. Over 6 million tons, 1,000 ships, went down.
The serious shortage was long-range aircraft. Stripped of its armour, with
the heavy self-seaHng tanks replaced, the VLR version of the American Libera-
tor bomber was the answer. Only in late 1942, though, did Admiralty and
Coastal Command modify more than a handful of their small allocation to
VLR. They hoped to reap an easy harvest close to home by patroUing the Bay
of Biscay, but the return was very small. The place to kill U-boats was around
the convoys, but in November the RCAF pleaded in vain for VLRs to fly from
Newfoundland. The Black Pit was as black as ever. The Hght at the end of the
tunnel was North American shipbuilding. The net loss in merchant ships was
halved from the year before. But statistics were cold comfort on the convoy
lanes. In this most monumental of battles, ships and sailors were dying as
never before in the history of war.
Now, as the crisis grew, the Canadian groups were cycled out of the MOEF.
Cl with Dobson in St. Croix was in the U.K. and the eastern Atlantic from
January until April and got in top shape - mind, body, and soul. In spite of
Nelles’s resistance it was a badly needed break. In the U.K. they had all the
support that fighting ships needed, which barely existed in Canada. Dock-
yard repairs, new equipment, alterations and additions brought them up to
date. They got their tired ships back in shape and took leave in England in
turns. Then they plunged into team training - gunnery, signals, asdic, depth-
charge crews, damage control, and firefighting. The equipment was there
136
with expert instructors. Captains and officers and signalmen learned to out-
smart U-boats at the Western Approaches Tactical Unit in Liverpool.
In mid-February the whole group went through the fire and brimstone of a
week at Western Isles, the work-up base in Tobermory, Scotland. Commodore
G. Stephenson, RN, “the Terror of Tobermory,” and his staff had a fearsome
reputation for diabolic cunning and superhuman demands. They brewed up
battle problems and special manoeuvres and harried the crew to do them
better, faster, in the pitch dark. When things started going right they’d knock
the power off, fill the ship with smoke and thunderflashes, cause a steering
breakdown, kill off the Captain and the senior hands. Anchored at night for a
few hours’ rest, the unwary ship would be mined by frogmen, boarded by
saboteurs.
On his first inspection of one Canadian corvette the Commodore stepped
aboard, flung his cap on deck, and snapped, “That’s an incendiary bomb. Get
on with it.” The young bosun’s mate coolly kicked it over the side. Then he
piped, “Away sea boat’s crew. Recover the Commodore’s cap.” It is said to be
the only time Commodore Stephenson was ever seen nonplussed. His cap
sank, the corvette had a double working-over from his staff, and the bosun’s
mate was marked by the Captain for early promotion. In short order, though,
the Tobermory team culled out the worst and brought out the best in a ship’s
company from top to bottom.
In late February, with its ships and people in top shape and morale high, C1
sailed with a Torch convoy. Off Portugal German aircraft spotted them.
Three U-boats closed in. One penetrated the screen for a sinking but another
was caught and held by Shediac. In came St. Croix and between them they sent
U-87 to the bottom. It was the second U-boat for Dobson and St. Croix, the
first for Shediac. Next Prescott chased a contact on her new 271 radar, put a U-
boat down, and pounded her hard. Another late reassessment awarded her the
destruction of U-163.
It put a rousing cap on the weeks of hard work by all hands in escort group
Cl. C2 and C4 followed the same route but didn’t graduate with a U-boat.
At this point Hitler grasped that only the U-boats could win. He swept
Raeder aside and gave Donitz command of the entire Kriegsmarine. The U-
boat fleet got top priority and it mounted its most gigantic offensive of the
war. On the mid-ocean the Canadians didn’t completely disappear. C3, with
RN additions, stayed flogging it out. So did the American group with its
majority of RCN corvettes. But the British groups took the brunt and in the
first months they did no better on the score sheet than the Canadians.
Admiral Horton, however, instead of flaying the escorts for their failures,
used their poor results as ammunition to form support groups. In March,
Horton cut into the sixteen Western Approaches escort groups, begged four
destroyers from the Home Fleet, and formed five support groups.
137
But none was yet on task when ON 166 sailed from Britain in mid-
February. Trillium was one of four Canadian corvettes in the American
group under Commander Paul Heineman in USS Campbell. Sixty-three
ships hammered westward into fierce gales and a patrol line of U-boats.
Thirteen ships turned back to the U.K. crippled by the weather. Twelve were
torpedoed. Between weather and U-boats, less than half of that convoy got
to its destination.
As for the escorts, Campbell rammed and sank a U-boat, then had to make
for port. Trillium picked up 160 survivors. She was one of the first seventy
Canadian corvettes still without her extended forecastle, and now she was
loaded with three times her regular complement. Sick and wounded
crammed every sheltered corner. Men huddled on the upper deck in sodden
blankets. Down to the nub in food and fuel, she fought three U-boat actions
through ghastly weather. In St.John’s at last, Trillium and her mates, brutally
mangled as they were, had forty-eight hours to turn around before heading
east into yet another vicious battle.
This, too, was fought in heavy gales. Twenty-seven U-boats sank thirteen
merchant ships without a single loss. They had the momentum now. In mid-
March two convoys with British groups lost twenty-one ships to a pack of
thirty-three. If these huge packs made contact out in the Black Pit it was
certain death for ships and men. In three weeks in March, ninety-seven ships
went down in mid-Atlantic. One in five that sailed in convoy was sunk. The
code-cracking war had a major hand in this. The German cryptographers had
broken the British convoy code in February, so until early summer they could
lay their patrol hnes right on target. Then in late March, with slaughter at its
height, the British broke into Triton again and ended the blackout.
The facts shouted out. These disasters couldn’t be put down to the Canadi-
ans. Even the best-trained ships, powerful groups with the latest equipment,
couldn’t beat the U-boats out there in the air gap with close escort alone.
Without support groups to send to threatened convoys, extended land-based
air cover, and carrier aircraft out with the convoys, the Battle of the Atlantic
would be lost.
EMERALD ISLE
For RCN ships, Londonderry’s American and British dockyards were sav-
iours. For sailors coming in off the mid-ocean this blessed corner of Ireland
was heaven indeed. The lasting recollection of Lieutenant Jack Pickford,
Captain of the corvette Rimouski, was of “how tired everybody became
because of this constant hanging on and constant pounding. And of course
the ship was wet. Very often these passages would take three weeks and the
euphoria that we all felt when we arrived at our destination, I think, had to be
experienced to be understood.
138
“At the Londonderry end we would first go to the tankers at Moville to top
up with fuel. And suddenly the ship was still and quiet for the first time in
weeks, and it was a remarkable feeHng. Mail would come aboard and there
would be a tremendously happy atmosphere reigning in the ship. On comple-
tion of fueUing we would go up the River Foyle to Londonderry and it was a
lovely passage ^d you would pass between the fields that were so green and
you could smell the land. Everything was so quiet and you could hear the
cowbells on the cattle in the fields. Then as we approached Londonderry . . .
every ship - or many ships in those days - had theme songs and Rimouski's was
“Paper Doll” and just a few miles downriver from Londonderry was a large
country house called Broome Hall, the residence of the Wrens working in
Londonderry. So we would always have “Paper Doll” blaring merrily on our
upper-deck speakers as we passed Broome Hall and it was kind of fun to see
the windows being thrown open and everything waved from handkerchiefs
to bedsheets in welcome . . . . ”
And Londonderry, cramped little town that it was, had cheerful pubs and
Guinness on draft and dances with the pretty Irish girls. And with the Wrens.
They, as well, were so good at their jobs and fresh and cheerful and they
warmed a sailor’s heart. There was the lovely green countryside and you
could hide your cap, stay wrapped in a burberry, and go quite illegally across
the border to Eire and lush Httle inns with unlimited Irish whisky and fabu-
lous food. It’s what a sailor needed to survive.
TURNING POINT
In late March, five support groups deployed in the North Atlantic. One of
them formed around the escort carrier HMS Biter. The Biscay air offensive still
burned up thousands of aircraft hours for sHght result (in April: ninety-four
U-boats sighted, sixty-four attacked, one sunk). But now forty Liberators
swung into the mid-ocean battle. By May, Liberators the RCAF had been
pleading for since November were flying out of Newfoundland. On the other
side, the U-boats had lost heavily. They were going to sea with less experi-
enced captains and crews. With the escorts it was the reverse. A final factor -
the one that must always be counted in sea warfare - was the weather. As it got
better, so the advantage swung to the surface and air.
With the support groups at sea, the April convoys fared well. The Ameri-
cans had left MOEF and the Canadian groups were back. But they were all on
close escort and the support groups of RN ships got the action. They kept the
U-boats away and harried them. With no convoy of their own to worry about
they stuck with their contacts till they killed them.
In May the convoy cycle stepped up. The battle was finally starting to work
as it should for the AlHes. Ultra intelligence gave safer routes. Escort carriers
HMS Biter and USS Bogue were out in the air gap. The support groups had the
139
August, 1942 - May, 1943. As soon as the American convoy system was in place the
U-boats moved closer to homefor wolf-pack attacks in mid-Atlantic. The St. Lawrence
was closed in September. Losses were very heavy but stronger escorts, support groups,
extended air cover, and escort carriers finally turned the tide.
offensive. At the beginning of the month came the climactic convoy battle of
the war - ONS 5 (the series was renumbered after ONS 171) ~ and it was as
close as any battle can be. It was fought by B7, led by Commander Peter
Gretton, RN, one of the top anti-submarine warfare professionals of the war.
His strong, finely honed group was backed up by the Third support group
and, later in the battle, by the First. Against him were two packs totalhng no
less than forty U-boats.
The convoy of slow ships crawled westward in ballast into heavy gales. It
was badly scattered. Few escorts were able to fuel. The SO was running so low
he had to leave for St.John’s before the main action was joined. Bad weather
meant spotty air cover, though an RCAF Canso from Newfoundland caught
U-630 on the surface and sank her. The escort was down to three destroyers
and four corvettes. Heavy weather helped shroud the German movements
and the U-boats overran the close escort and in two days torpedoed eleven
ships.
Another disastrous defeat was in prospect. But in every battle there is an
element of luck; this time it was the weather. On the 6th of May came a
140
dramatic change - calm seas and heavy fog. The U-boats were now gathered
for the kill. But they had no radar or search receivers that could detect the
escorts. They groped blindly for the convoy and talked on their radios. The
escorts, with modern radar and HF/DF, could hear and see the U-boats, and
suddenly they were in control. That night alone they attacked fifteen con-
firmed submarine contacts, chased four off on the surface, rammed two with
damage, and sank four. Only one more merchant ship was sunk. At battle’s
end it was twelve merchant ships for six U-boats. For once it was a slaughter
in the enemy’s camp.
British and Canadian groups took their next convoys through a heavy
concentration untouched. There were three escort carriers now. The support
groups in the area sank eight U-boats. C2’s convoy lost three ships but sank
three U-boats. Drumheller shzved U-89 with two RN ships. February’s total had
been nineteen U-boat kills, March’s fifteen, April’s eighteen. In May, 1943,
forty-seven U-boats were sunk and Grosadmiral Donitz’s own son was lost
among them.
Now the statistics highlighted not merchant ships sunk but U-boats killed.
In summer the VLR Liberators closed the North Atlantic gap. The U-boats
tried to get at the American-Mediterranean convoys further south but were
crushed by the four USN carrier support groups that had finally been formed.
North America could move the outpourings of her mighty arsenal across the
Atlantic unassailed. The Battle of the Atlantic was turned. Fortress Europe
would yet fall.
141
CHAPTER SEVEN
POLITICS
AND WAR
IN THE WARDROOMS AND THE MESSDECKS OF THE CANADIAN ESCORTS IN

Derry, Halifax, and St. John’s it was a hollow celebration. Only Drumheller
with her one-third of a kill had a sniff of the enemy in the smashing cHmax.
These young seamen, for better or for worse, in success and failure, Hfe and
death, had doggedly fought the toughest battle of the war for three and a half
years. For months on end they had carried it on their own. Without the
Canadians and their ill-equipped httle ships the battle would certainly have
long since been lost. And now their glasses were raised to their RN colleagues,
not themselves.
Where were the faciUties and the shore support, the pools of trained people
so the ships could get efficient and stay there? Where were the right kind of
radar, the huff-duffs, the gyro compasses, the improved corvettes? With the
same equipment as the RN they could have been in the van instead of on the
sidehnes. There had indeed been failure at the top. Agonizing changes and
upheavals were to come. But the steel was there and there was a great navy
being forged. In 1943 the Royal Canadian Navy came of age. This was the rite
of passage.
THE NORTH ATLANTIC COMMAND

While the struggle at sea moved to a chmax, a different sort of battle was being
fought between Ottawa, Washington, and Whitehall over command in the
North Atlantic. It was hght years from the day-to-day slogging on the
convoy lanes but it profoundly changed the basic military relationship
between Canada and her Allies and it has lasted to this day.
There were a lot of players in the control and defence of shipping in the
northwest Atlantic. The American Commander Task Force 24, Vice Admiral
Brainard in Argentia, was in charge. He reported to the C-in-C U.S. Atlantic
142
POLITICS AND WAR
Fleet. He had his substantial operating base, few escorts, but a strong air
element. Sea operations were run by his two Canadian sub-commanders.
Flag Officer Newfoundland Force - now Commodore H.E. “Rastus” Reid -
and the Commanding Officer Atlantic Coast, Rear Admiral Leonard Murray
in Halifax. On the Canadian air side. Eastern Air Command answered to Air
Force HQ in Ottawa. So did Number 1 Group RCAF, which had the maritime
aircraft. It was pretty hard to tell who had the ball.
Admiralty in their turn didn’t like handing a convoy over in mid-ocean and
mid-battle and they felt there were too many American blunders. In January,
1942, they had pushed for Western Approaches to control all the convoys all
the way. Admiral King said no. The U.S. Navy had strategic control of the
western Atlantic and that included the trade routes. NSHQ wasn’t even asked.
After the eastern seaboard shambles of 1942, however, two RCN staff
officers began to stir the pot. Acting Captains Horatio Nelson Lay (Director
of Operations) and Harry DeWolf (Director of Plans), with destroyer com-
mands under their belts, knew what went on at sea. Lay began to pile up
ammunition for the RCN to take charge.
In the meantime, in July, 1942, the Canadian Joint Staff set up shop in
Washington under the Canada-U.S. Permanent Joint Board on Defence. The
Americans didn’t want smaller Allies to clutter the stage with mihtary mis-
sions. The USN viewed the RCN rather as an auxihary to the Royal Navy and
chose to deal with the British Admiralty delegation and have them deal with
NSHQ. That was fine by the British. But the first naval member of the Joint
Staff would have none of it.
He was Rear Admiral Victor G. Brodeur, a prickly character, a fierce
nationalist, and a thoroughly dedicated naval officer. Brodeur admired Brit-
ain’s navy but, urdike most of the older RCN, he heartily mistrusted RN senior
officers. He was no diplomat, but for a tough task at a hard time he was the
right man for the RCN and Canada. Writing to Nelles, he reached back into
the history he learned so weU from his father: “. . . regardless of all decisions
reached at previous Colonial and Imperial Conferences, the Admiralty still
looks upon the RCN as the naval child to be seen and heard when no outsider
is looking in or Ustening in.”
Then the USN, with RN support, wanted to issue all the U-boat disposi-
tions. The RCN had good shore HF/DF and very efficient U-boat tracking.
Information was always fed to the USN anyway. But the extra link would
mean delay. Such vital stuff had to get to the escorts at sea while it was hot.
Admiral Nelles fired back at Admiral King. Canada provided 48 per cent of
the escorts on the Atlantic, the USN 2 per cent; Canada was doing her best for
the Allies, pitching in on the eastern seaboard and Torch, for example. But
Canada was her own boss and her navy wouldn’t be pushed around. Nelson
Lay was the driving force at NSHQ on this. He drafted Nelles’s letter to
143
Admiral King and urged that Canada take over all convoys and escorts in the
western Atlantic. He pushed for a three-way conference to resolve it.
Percy Nelles was not a great leader. He’d not had much sea time, and it was
far in the past. He had inherited a tiny RCN in 1936. A competent bureaucrat
running a small show in Ottawa, he was out of touch with the events at sea.
Originality was not his forte.-He was a small terrier, though, and he got this
particular bone between his teeth and worried it until finally Admiral King
agreed.
The Atlantic Convoy Conference opened in Washington on 1 March. The
redoubtable Victor Brodeur said loud and clear that all Canadian armed forces
were under control of the Canadian government and if everyone “will
remember that important factor, a great deal of time will be saved and many
misunderstandings avoided.”
These were the darkest days of the bloodletting on the Atlantic. The
Conference made immediate major decisions: U.S. escort carriers to support
the battle; VLR Liberators in strength, including the RCAF in Newfoundland;
and the matter of command. The RCN won it because its share of the battle
was there to see. Now, north of latitude 40, ocean convoys and the U-boat
battle came under the British and Canadians. The pie was divided at longitude
47 west. Admiralty and C-in-C Western Approaches took the eastern half.
The new C-in-C Canadian North Atlantic under NSHQ had direction of all
anti-submarine surface and air forces to the west. Admiral Brainard hauled
down his flag. On the 30th of April Rear Admiral Leonard Murray became
the new Commander-in-Chief.
Murray was the only Canadian officer to command an AUied theatre in the
war. It was won for him and for Canada by the escort fleet that he had been
forced to drive beyond the reasonable Hmits of endeavour. That fleet may, in
its own eyes, have failed at the crux of the battle, but it had held the Hne against
defeat and in fact won a victory of long-term consequence for Canada.
yVngus L. Macdonald, Minister of National Defence, the Prime Minister,
and his war cabinet watched all this from the sideHnes. It was a milestone in
Canada’s history - the clear assertion of the country’s authority over its own
military affairs. It was a remarkable achievement. Without a yea or nay from
the highest levels of the land, the navy did it on its own.
HARD FACTS
High command was one thing, fighting at sea another. The young veteran
Captain of Restigouche, Acting Lieutenant Commander Debby Piers, knew
that junior officers, even very experienced ones, got no thanks for criticizing
their seniors. Still, he put the bitterness of the mid-ocean Canadians on paper
and sent it up the line in June. His points: RCN ships were twelve to eighteen
months astern of the RN in anti-submarine equipment; Admiral Horton’s staff
144
POLITICS AND WAR
weren’t happy with Canadian performance; Commodore (D) Londonderry,

the helpful and friendly “Shrimp” Simpson, agreed they were poorly
equipped; flogging between St. John’s and Londonderry the C groups were
the worst off for support facihties, home leave, and regular mail; work-up
periods were too short; pulling people from ships destroyed efficiency; there
were too many gaps in reserve officers’ training.
From Newfoundland, Commodore Reid hit out again, especially on
equipment. Admiral Murray had been fighting the same kind of problems
there eighteen months before. On the plus side four refurbished RN destroy-
ers had just commissioned into the RCN. Two more were due later. The first of
seventy new frigates building in Canadian yards was delivered in June. These
were real ocean escorts, much more effective than corvettes. The Mid-Ocean
Escort Force was much better for the refurbishing and training that had taken
place that winter. Training in Halifax was much improved under Murray’s
Captain (D), Chummy Prentice.
As well. Commander Jimmy Hibbard, in from sea knowing all about the
shocks and alarms of night action on the convoy lanes, had made an important
contribution. He had built an action trainer in Hahfax. It was a mock-up of a
ship’s bridge and key compartments and it gave a ship’s team a very realistic
workout, right to buckets of salt water in the face at crucial times. With asdic,
communications, radar, and plotting added, it was the first realistic ship-
action simulator in anyone’s navy. Wrens made up most of the operating crew.
It worked well, trained thousands in ships’ fighting teams, and was copied by
other navies. A huge training base, HMCS Cornwallis, was growing fast at
Deep Brook, Nova Scotia. The signal school at St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, was
getting into gear. The RN had lent some fine speciaHsts to these facihties, and
trained, skilled sailors were coming out in big numbers at last.
Regarding seagoing equipment, Murray agreed with Debby Piers - the
ships were just getting in decent shape to fight the battles of a year before. By
this time, though, the call was for support groups, escort carriers, advanced
detection and weapon systems, electronics - controlled precision rather than
valiant blundering. His report arrived in a Headquarters that was as poorly
equipped for the battles of 1943 as were the ships at sea.
Planning - or the lack of it - was the problem. The Staff had built helter-
skelter from a tiny professional core. It coped with emergencies, put out fires.
But now the fire on the North Atlantic was under control. Other eyes,
professional and poHtical, were cast over the state of the RCN. The Atlantic
Convoy Conference had set up the Allied Anti-Submarine Survey Board. It
was a tight professional team topped by Rear Admirals Kauffman and Mans-
field, American and British, respectively, with Canadian navy and air force
observers. They moved quickly, looking hard at operations, training, and
maintenance.
145
Among the Board’s conclusions were that the RCN and RCAF must work
more closely and that the worst training snag was lack of practice submarines.
The biggest issue, though, was that of maintaining and modernizing the fleet:
dockyards in Halifax and St. John’s were vastly overloaded; the small Mari-
time shipyards needed 6,000 men; new construction and merchant ship
repairs took up too much effort; the number of escorts overdue for refit was
unacceptable. New construction, the Board said, should be cut to get the fleet
in shape. U.K. dockyards should fit RCN ships with the latest equipment.
Engineer Rear Admiral George Stephens, the RCN’s Chief of Naval Engi-
neering and Construction, agreed with the Survey Board. But operations had
had top priority. As he said, “while we have been keeping our ships running
and providing escorts. Admiralty have kept their ships home and modified
them.” Also, the RCN depended on U.K. for plans, drawings, and specifica-
tions and a lot of equipment. Admiralty was slow to deHver and looked to
their own needs first. Likely the result of naive faith, until mid-1943 only one
rather junior RCN technical Haison officer was in London.
The U.K. was still building Tribal-class destroyers for Canada. Back in
1941 naval staff had discussed building more in Canada. They were short-
range, heavy-gunned ships for a big-ship permanent navy of the future; they
had nothing to do with winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Admiral Stephens
was against the expense, the tooHng, and the special steel needed for such a
short run. Worse, he said it would drain too much strength from the main
battle. But Navy Minister Angus Macdonald saw his own Nova Scotia short-
changed in war material contracts.^ The Tribals were an industrial plum.
Nelles seized the chance to fulfil his post-war dream and four of them were
laid down in Hahfax in September, 1942. The result was just as Stephens
predicted. They were the wrong ships for the wrong reasons and not one of
them was finished until after the war.
Peacetime poUcy had given Canada’s navy no base on which to build. Now
it was near collapse from the weight of its own enormous wartime expansion.
In this atmosphere of unease and pending crisis, chance, personaHties, and
unorthodox means come to play.
THE QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP

Captain William Strange, Director of Naval Information in Naval Headquar-
ters, made a trip to the U.K. in July, 1943, and crossed in HMS Duncan with
Commander Peter Gretton, RN. Gretton knew anti-submarine warfare as
well as anyone afloat. He admired the Canadians and deplored their crippHng
^That was certainly true. The policies of C.D. Howe, Minister of Munitions and Supply, had
concentrated industrial development in central Canada. Most shipbuilding was up the river
and in the Great Lakes and little had been done to strengthen Maritime yards.
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POLITICS AND WAR
lack of equipment. Strange wasn’t a seagoing or technical naval officer; his job
was dealing with the news media. But he kept his ears open and Gretton’s
words matched the growls he’d heard in Canadian wardrooms. Then, in
Londonderry, he called on Shrimp Simpson, who treated him to his searing
views.
Heading home in Assiniboine, Strange got Commander Kenneth Adams to
help him write a memorandum. Adams, just back at sea in command, pitched
in and sent his own report to Captain (D) Newfoundland. He made the
chnching point that in his own group he had to use the RN ships as his striking
arm. Strange sent his memo, not to the Chief of Naval Staff - as properly he
should have - but privately and directly to the Minister of the Navy.
The timing was dramatic. It arrived in Macdonald’s hands at the Quebec
Conference in early August where Mackenzie King was hosting Churchill
and Roosevelt. Admiral Pound, the First Sea Lord, was there with the Anti-
Submarine Survey Board’s report fresh in mind. Mackenzie King was look-
ing for some recognition of Canada’s war effort. All politicians needed
victories. Canada had had none. Other than the First Division’s foray in
France in 1940 and Hong Kong and Dieppe, the army had spent three years
training in England until Sicily in July. And they landed there as part of a
British formation. The navy had made a tremendous contribution but Chur-
chill didn’t seem aware of it.
Macdonald pondered. The previous fall the Gulf had closed down. At the
turn of the year, when Churchill had underscored lack of training, Nelles
asserted it was mainly equipment. When the slaughter of the U-boats came,
the Canadians had been out of sight. Now, according to men at sea, that was
because of equipment that still wasn’t there. Why not?
Macdonald kept Strange’s memo in his drawer but used it to ask Nelles
some tough questions. Why, for instance, were only two Canadian corvettes
fitted with gyro compasses and Hedgehog when only five RN corvettes
lacked them? What equipment did RCN escorts actually have on the North
Atlantic, compared to that carried by escorts of the Royal Navy? And what
about other matters, such as RCN representation in Londonderry? And disci-
pline (the reflection of morale) in Britain? NeUes didn’t give the hard answers.
In fact, in NSHQ there was no systematic record of which ship had what
equipment.
Macdonald had never taken the high ground of leadership. He had heard all
the problems at Naval Board meetings but never took much of a hand. His
abiding concern was his political flanks. He suspected a cover-up and went
right behind Nelles’s back. He sent his executive assistant, John J. Connolly,
to the U.K. Simpson and Horton filled Connolly in and he brought back an
anonymous memo, including a lot of the Survey Board’s points and a basket-
ful of criticism of NSHQ’s staff work, planning, and decisions.
147
The confidence that must exist between Minister and Chief of Staff had gone.
In December, Macdonald concluded what anyone at sea could have told him:
“Our ships were putting to sea inadequately equipped as compared to British
ships . . . over an unduly long period of time.” Macdonald’s deviousness had
taken over four months to resolve a critical matter of leadership at a crucial point
in the war. Nelles was finished. In January, 1944, he went to England as Senior
RCN Officer. Vice Admiral G.C. Jones became CNS. A year later Percy Nelles
retired, promoted to fuU Admiral, the first in Canada’s history.
Certainly under Nelles the navy didn’t have modern, capable ships in the
Battle of the Atlantic at the crucial time. They didn’t have the right equipment,
proper support, or enough trained people. Because there was no proper
training base, hundreds of early volunteers were sent to the U.K., and they
gave fine service to the RN as radar specialists, in aviation, coastal forces,
submarines, combined operations - in every corner of the fleet. Most were
lost to Canada’s navy. Nelles certainly failed to say “no” to excessive demands
from across the Atlantic, but in the early days Britain and the Commonwealth
stood alone and faced imminent defeat.
Perhaps his greatest blunder was to agree to close the Gulf in 1942 while
giving ships to Torch for the sake of prestige. Nelles, Hke most of his naval
generation, looked on the ragtag Httle escorts as the stepping stones to the
big-ship navy that Canada should one day have. He clung to the three armed
merchant cruisers. He started the Tribals in Canada. With its naive good faith
in the RN, the Royal Canadian Navy didn’t look out for itself with technical
staffs in London and Londonderry. Poor early decisions on modifying cor-
vettes, on radar and HF/DF, let the fleet down. As head of the most highly
technical of services, Nelles was, as the navy’s first scientific adviser said, “a
most untechnical man.”
Probably even a brilfiant, experienced, and dynamic leader could not have
pulled it off, and Nelles was not of that caHbre. He had next to nothing to
work with at the outbreak of war, and that was the product of Canada’s lack
of naval policy. So it is fair to say that Percy Nelles fell too far short in his
failure to achieve the unachievable.
On the other hand, under Nelles - dedicated and hard-working as he was -
the RCN multiphed by fifty and put a large escort fleet to sea in an incredibly
short time. Ill-trained, ill-equipped, and terribly overstretched as it was,
through the desperate battles of 1940-42 it hung on and held the line. And
that was decisive. Without Canada’s navy the Battle of the Atlantic - and so
the war - would very likely have been lost. The men out at sea who were
given so little and gave so much achieved the unbelievable.
THE CANADIAN ATLANTIC

Through the summer of 1943 the U-boats were harassed and sunk in the Bay
148
POLITICS AND WAR
of Biscay by support groups and Coastal Command. Across the southern

routes and east of the Azores the USN’s escort carrier groups killed sixteen U-
boats, including most of their valuable “milch cows. ” The Americans con-
centrated on the U.S.-Mediterranean route but their carrier groups quite often
backed the northern convoys.
While Nelles and the Minister were fencing in Ottawa, Canada’s navy got
truly in its stride. Ottawa (the second of the name) headed a new escort group,
C5. The Canadian Support Group (later the 6th Support Group) formed with
five corvettes and two RN frigates. Calgary, Snowberry, and HMS Nene got the
group’s first kill in November while supporting a convoy some 500 miles
west of Cape Finisterre.
By August, 1943, with the air gap closed, the convoys sailed the shorter
great circle route. They got much bigger and so got fewer, which sprung
escorts for more support groups. A four-ship support group of four-stackers
formed with the Western Escort Force out of HaHfax. The gaUing word
“Local” had been dropped from the WEF. Another group, EG 9 {St. Croix, St.
Francis, Chambly, Morden, and Sackville and the RN frigate Itchen), went to work
in the eastern Atlantic.
In late September they were setting out for a Biscay offensive patrol when
they were sent racing off to support two west-bound convoys. It was a tricky
situation. The fast convoy, ON 202, was overtaking the slow ONS 18, and they
were heading straight into a big U-boat concentration. As the submarines
moved in the convoys joined and the close escorts, C2 and an RN group,
combined. In the convoy was a MAC ship - a merchant ship with a regular
cargo and a rudimentary flight deck - carrying three Swordfish. It was a
powerful defence.
But the U-boats were in force. Thirty were back on the Atlantic with their
steel-hard morale intact and new equipment. They had search receivers to
detect airborne 10cm radar, and new radar decoy balloons. They also carried a
dangerous new weapon in their tubes. The U-boats swarmed in and punched
through the escorts to the convoy. HMS Lagan was hit aft and knocked out of
the battle. Then EG 9 raced in through the shifting fog banks. In a series of
wild encounters, attacks, and counterattacks, they fought the U-boats off.
Battle-hardened St. Croix was just short of three years in commission with
two U-boats to her credit. She was hit by two torpedoes and went down with
heavy loss. Lieutenant Commander Dobson, DSC, went with her. In the surge
of the battle it was thirteen hours before the RN frigate Itchen and corvette
Polyanthus went back for survivors. Polyanthus was torpedoed on the way.
Itchen picked up one survivor and called for help. Sackville, Lieutenant Gus
Rankin commanding, went back to join.
They reached St. Croix's survivors after dark. As Sackville stopped for the
rescue Itchen signalled: “My asdic’s broken down. You screen. I’ll pick up. ”
149
Sackville had to turn away from old friends shouting weakly from the water.
Itchen picked up eighty-one. It was a fateful switch.
Back near the convoy at midnight they joined Morden in chasing a surfaced
U-boat. The three ships were quite close together when Rankin, on Sackville's
bridge, saw Itchen go up in a bHnding explosion. In no more than a minute she
disappeared. Nothing was left but some chunks of metal that fell on the two
Canadian ships. And there were three survivors - one from Itchen, one from
Polyanthus, one from St. Croix. Three escort ships torpedoed and sunk, plus
Lagan hit, all in a matter of hours. Something new and very dangerous was
going on.
These were, in fact, the first sinkings with the U-boats’ new acoustic
homing torpedo. Once launched it zeroed in on the ship’s propellers. Before,
the U-boats always tried to dodge the escorts and sink the merchant ships.
Now they were setting out to sink the escorts to cut the defences, then go for
the fat targets. It was a whole new game.
The next morning Sackville went back through the fog to search again. She
found no survivors but got a U-boat on radar. Running in close she hammered
away with the 4-inch. The U-boat dived and Rankin got in a depth-charge
attack. He turned and ran in again. As the first of his pattern exploded there was a
colossal underwater blast. It heaved the ship bodily upward, started rivets in the
hull, and cracked a boiler. Rankin was sure it was a torpedo, very close to striking,
detonated by his depth charges. Sackville's U-boat slipped away.
In the rage of the whole battle six merchant ships sank, three escorts were
gone with only three survivors. Another was finished. The price was high,
but three U-boats were destroyed. The defence had held Hke iron against a
formidable new and unknown weapon, and against new U-boat tactics. Now
the fighting was toe-to-toe.
The reports from sea and intelligence sources put things together. The new
torpedo was quickly dubbed the “Gnat.” Amazingly, it was only weeks
before counters were devised, built, and out at sea. They were noisemakers
towed behind the ship to attract the torpedo away from the propellers. The
RN’s was called “Foxer.” A simpler gadget called “Cat” (for Canadian Anti-
Torpedo) was produced in Halifax. Nothing in war is infalfible, though. With
the Gnat in the U-boats, fife in the escorts was a much more perilous proposi-
tion.
THE ATLANTIC SECURED

The battle of ONS 18 and ON 202 saw the last great pack attack of the North
Atlantic war. In October, Portugal allowed Britain to fly from the Azores and
another big slice of the Atlantic was covered. Convoy after convoy steamed
across in safety. New escorts came in service; by the end of 1943, for example.
150
POLITICS AND WAR
sixteen Canadian frigates were in commission. Statistics for 1943 told the
drama in hard figures. Losses to U-boats were down to 800,000 tons, some
160 ships for the year. The cost to the enemy was 237 boats. The U-boat men
were lucky to Hve for three patrols. As well, this was the peak year for building
merchant ships - new construction topped losses from all causes by 10 million
gross tons.
Donitz was beaten but he wouldn’t quit. He puUed his forces back in a great
semi-circle from the Faeroes to Brest to catch the convoys on their last legs in.
He was holding on, taking what toll he could till his new high-performance
boats. Types 21 and 23, came off the hne. And all his existing boats in turn got
the revolutionary air-breathing device, the “Schnorkel.” The snorkel or
snort, as it was called, went to sea in February, 1944. The boat could now run
on its diesels at periscope depth keeping batteries charged. Speed was lower
than on the surface but the snort really cut the chances of being spotted by
radar or eye. Life below was pretty uncomfortable. The engines stank out the
boats. They gulped air, too, and when the snort dipped in a wave there was an
agonizing vacuum. With a stroke, however, the U-boat was far more mobile
and elusive, far more dangerous.
There were no more big battles, but determined forays that winter would
have seen plenty of sinkings without the better-equipped and professionally
handled Canadian escorts. And they had steady success. Camrose shared a kill
with HMS Bayntun. Then Waskesiu, the first Canadian-built frigate, sank one
solo on one of the last slow convoys.
The next Canadian action, on 5-6 March, was a classic of its kind. Convoy
HX 280 had C2, a very strong escort group of three destroyers, Gatineau,
Chaudiere, and HMS Icarus, a frigate, St. Catharines, and corvettes Chilliwack and
Fennel. Also, there was an RN support group nearby for back-up.
It started when Gatineau caught a U-boat in mid-morning well ahead of the
convoy. It went very deep. St. Catharines, with the Senior Officer of C2, joined
and called in Chaudiere, Chilliwack, and Fennel. The five ships ran a series of co-
ordinated, creeping attacks. Soon, however, Gatineau had to leave for Lon-
donderry with engine trouble, and U-boat transmissions ahead warned of a
threat to the convoy. The other two destroyers rushed back to defend while
the frigate and corvettes held contact. A new RN Castle-class, the big
improved corvette, joined from the support group for eighteen hours.
Watches changed. The hands went quietly to supper. But soon, inevitably,
someone was going to die.
As night fell, the ships burned dimmed running Hghts to guard against
collision. Radar men were glued even tighter to their scans; asdics pinged
endlessly. Six more deHberate, precise attacks were made, and by early the
next morning, with the convoy out of danger, the destroyers came back.
151
GATINEAU Contacts
U-744,1000/5
ST. CATHARINES 1028
^ CHILLIWACK
GATINEAU GATINEAU & OPERATION OBSERVANT:

CHILLIWACK 1236-44 GATINEAU, ST. CATHARINES,
Convoy
CHILLIWACK, CHAUDIERE &
HX 280 CHILLIWACK GATINEAU 1305
FENNEL
ICARUS 1357
ST. CATHARINES
■■I \ GATINEAU 1316

1250/5 KENILWORTH CASTLE
FENNEL KENILWORTH ^CHILLIWACK 1350
joins operation
-a- CASTLE 1538 -^ \A KENILWORTH CASTLE 1458
ICARUS \
1400 GATINEAU Leaves With Defects

FENNEL 1642_
CHAUDIERE CHAUDIERE & ICARUS Rejoin Convoy
ST. CATHARINES 1656—^
KENILWORTH CASTLE 1920^^^(g)^
FENNEL 2018
ST. CATHARINES 2029
THE DESTRUCTION
OF U-744
BY ESCORT GROUP C2
5-6 March 1944
\
I
I
MIDNIGHT MARCH 5 1944
/
\
\
ST. CATHARINES 0023/6
ST. CATHARINES 004
m
FENNEL 0109
FENNEL 0751- 0300 ICARUS
. & CHAUDIERE
ICARUS 0829-
\ ^ Rejoin
ICARUS 1100
CHAUDIERE 1050
ST. CATHARINES 1013 0730 KENILWORTH CASTLE
Leaves with Defects
FENNEL, ST. CATHARINES
CHAUDIERE
CHILLIWACK ICARUS
LEGEND
—Track of U-744
NAUTICAL MILES
Depth charge attacks 5
There is no dashing about. This is calm, steady, dogged killers’ work with a
deadly enemy below. Down at 200 metres the crewmen of U-744 he flat on the
cold plates, not talking, saving every precious breath of oxygen, moving only
for a whispered order. Everything is by feel, or the quick gHmmer of a
flashhght. Every hght bulb has long since gone - 200 depth charges have
smashed them all. And jarred and crashed and started leaks and cracked pipes
152
POLITICS AND WAR
and broken gauges and shattered glands . . . and brought men to the edge.
But still the engines, on waning batteries, turn dead slow. It has been over
twenty-four nerve-snapping hours since that first attack, and the reek of feces
and urine and vomit adds to the sickening stench of every U-boat on patrol.
Sounds: the scratch of the asdics, like gravel flung along the U-boat’s
length; the whisper of the hydrophone operator to the Captain; an escort
moves steadily closer, closer; it can be heard overhead; the Captain’s murmur
to the hydroplanes; the sudden horrifying creak of the hull squeezed in the
ocean’s giant hand. The Captain has gone deeper. He guesses charges are
coming down. He’s clever and experienced and he’s got no nerves.
A tremendous hammer on the hull . . . another and another. The subma-
rine shakes and shudders, again and again, as yet another ten-charge pattern
comes down, yet somehow the men are still alive and counting. The engines
pick up, draining the battery for a burst of speed, trying to break contact
behind the massive boils of those underwater blasts.
Up top contact is lost. Did the charges get him this time? No wreckage. No
contact. The Senior Officer re-orders ships, combs the area. Perimeter patrols
move quietly, probing with asdic. They keep the U-boat in a box. The black
pennant flutters close up at a yardarm - contact regained.
After six more creep attacks the group just holds. Both sides learned long
since there is no quarter in this deadly game. But even this incredibly tough,
brave one will have to surface soon or die with no oxygen or battery power.
Lose him now, though, and he could surface after dark and tiptoe off. But in
late afternoon the asdic operators get a new sound in their headphones. He’s
blowing tanks. He’s coming up. Word sweeps through each ship like an
electric current. He’s coming up! All eyes sweep the surface. All guns at the
ready.
The U-boat bursts for the surface. With just enough compressed air to
blow, his men three parts dead and his battery gone, the Captain has no choice
but one last fight. His boat leaps and settles and he’s up the ladder and out the
hatch. His men scramble to their guns. He’s ringed in by four Canadians, one
British. He smells the clean air, feels salt spray, and sees the light of day one
brief last time. Then 4-inch shells and 20mm tracers arc in and he dies a
fighting man on his own conning tower.
St. Catharines and Chilliwack have whalers away with boarding parties in
double time. Chilliwack wins. They hoist the White Ensign, plunge into the
foul, gas-filled, pitch-black boat, grabbing a precious haul of code and signal
books and the cypher machine. But in the heavy sea both ships’ boats capsize.
The equipment is lost. Canadians and Germans are fished from the sea and
finally Icarus fires the coup de grace, a torpedo into the guts of a tough, tenacious
foe. It took the second longest hunt to exhaustion of the war - thirty-two
hours, seven ships, twenty-three attacks, 291 depth charges, a rain of shells.
153
and a torpedo - to dispose of U-744. The spirit of Grosadmiral Donitz’s U-

boat men still burned with an incredible flame.
In a few days St. Laurent, now under Lieutenant Commander George
Stephen, RCNR, teamed with Owen Sound, Swansea, and HMS Forester to blow
U-845 to the surface, then smashed her with point-blank gunfire. Two days
after “Sally’s” kill, Canadian frigate Prince Rupert, with two U.S. destroyers
and U.S. and British aircraft, sank U-575. All the right elements were out on
the Atlantic now. People knew the game and they were playing it right. The
new era in anti-submarine warfare had begun. In April Swansea, screening an
escort carrier, scored again, then teamed with Matane for another kill. That
made a lifetime five for Commander Clarence King. On top of his Great War
kill he had scored with Oakville in the Caribbean in 1942 and got an assist with
St. Laurent.
In May, 1944, only one Allied ship was sunk in the North Atlantic, the
Canadian frigate Valleyfield. Cl, Hke many groups, now carried a Senior
Officer in one of the ships over and above the Captain. ASW tactics were
complex. Like a mini-admiral, he could make the big decisions for the group
while the Captain handled the ship itself. Valleyfield, with the Senior Officer,
had five corvettes in line abreast two miles apart. They’d left their convoy and
were heading in for St.John’s eager for a run ashore.
Lieutenant Ian Tate on Valleyfield's bridge found the Canadian-built 10cm
RX/C radar “unrehable as ever.” Luckily, there was a bright moon to help him
dodge the icebergs and growlers. The ice also cluttered the operating radars
and let U-548 get in undetected. He was running on the surface when he
spotted the group from ahead. He slipped into good position, submerged, let
them close, and fired a Gnat at 1,500 yards. It took Valleyfield in the boiler
room and literally tore her in half. Less than a third of the ship’s company got
clear and into the choking oil and ice-cold water. Reaction from the other
ships was slow. Asdic sweeps caught nothing.
Forty-three oil-soaked wretches were pulled from the water. They had
been in as much as ninety minutes and five were already dead. Lieutenant Jake
Warren remembers being dumped on deck and moving just enough to be
spotted as alive. Someone got some rum into him, which confirmed it. Once
ashore he spent days in hospital packed in ice-cubes having his body tempera-
ture and circulation gradually restored. One hundred and twenty-five died.
The build-up for the great assault on Normandy rolled on. The MOEF
destroyers formed EG 11 with Captain Prentice in command and EG 12 under
Commander A.M. McKillop, RN. At last, with the invasion in sight, the RCN
escort fleet had a real striking arm out to kill U-boats. New frigates commis-
sioned with plenty of experience among their crews. By the spring of 1944
the whole of the North Atlantic route from New York to the north of Ireland
was in the hands of escorts of the RCN.
154
POLITICS AND WAR
Convoys got bigger and bigger. The largest of the war, HXS 300, sailed
from New York on 17 July. There were 167 ships, including four MAC ships,
and it covered thirty square miles of ocean. Close escort was one frigate and
six corvettes of the RCN. After a seventeen-day passage it delivered over a
milhon tons of cargo. Only one ship straggled and there was not a single loss.
People had the hang of things, all right.
THE SOMERS ISLES

During the winter of 1943 work-up training had moved to Bermuda. The
weather and the water conditions for asdic, in fact for all training, were
immeasurably better than Hahfax. In mid-summer a fully staffed work-up
base was commissioned at St. George’s called HMCS Somers Isles, the historic
name for Bermuda. Captain Ken Adams set up a kind of all-Canadian Tober-
mory in more salubrious cHme. It was what the RCN should have had from the
start. By war’s end Chummy Prentice was in command of Somers Isles. It was
fitting that he should be there. The role for Somers Isles by then was preparing
frigates for the Pacific war.
Things run full cycle. In 1944 Louis Audette was bringing his new frigate
Coaticook in through the coral-Hned channel when he spotted a submarine
coming out on opposite course. As they drew abreast he recognized her and
barely controlled the urge to put the wheel hard over to ram. It was the Itahan
Argo. Audette had last seen her from the torpedoed, blazing Saguenay in 1940.
But by this time, of course, the ItaUans had long since left the Axis, and their
submarines were finding good use as asdic targets.
NEW DIRECTION
By mid-1943 Allied escort-building was being cut back. The USN had built
over 400 destroyer escorts that year and there were now enough. Nelles and
his contemporaries had viewed escorts aU along as stepping stones to the
balanced fleet; they had met the emergency but a navy’s first purpose, after all,
was defence of the nation. War was the great chance to build the kind of fleet
they had dreamed of since 1910 and still to serve the Allied cause.
The RCN had already raised its sights from 50,000 to 100,000 to man more
escorts. The government’s motive for building ships from the start was to
have Canada profit from the war - and it did. Yet, Canadian yards (except
Hahfax, where the Tribals were on the ways) could build nothing more
complex than escorts and men were pouring through a well-organized train-
ing stream with no ships coming on. Britain, on the other hand, was produc-
ing cruisers, carriers, and destroyers its navy couldn’t man, precisely the sorts
of ships RCN senior officers looked to for their balanced fleet.
155
CHAPTER EIGHT
BIG SHIPS
AND LITTLE SHIPS
THE ESCORT FLEET WAS WITHOUT DOUBT CANADAS MOST IMPORTANT

contribution to the war, despite being beset with crippling shortages of
resources and key manpower until mid-1943. During this time, as we have
seen, four Tribal-class destroyers were built in Britain for Canada. These were
commissioned between November, 1942, and summer, 1943. Well over 1,000
officers and men were involved and they were the pick of the navy in long
service and experience. They would have been a godsend to the escort fleet
but the Naval Board’s vision of the future blurred its view of the hard vital job
the navy was struggling to get in hand.
To sailors locked in the tedious, comfortless, and mostly unrewarding
work on the convoy lanes, fighting in destroyers with the RN looked glam-
orous and exciting, and by comparison it certainly was. Men selected for the
Tribals got away from dreary cheerless Halifax and limited St. John’s. Brit-
ain, wartime shortages or no, was exciting. People were hospitable. Doors
opened. There were girls to be met. The pubs were filled with laughter and
song and the fellowship of dangers shared. London was a mecca for a
weekend or leave during refit. And at sea you were running with the
big boys.
There were disadvantages, to be sure. The bigger the ship the more formal
the routine, and more eagle-eyed senior officers looked on. They were stick-
lers for routine and appearance and exact ceremonial. Canadians were far less
amenable than RN sailors when the fine fine between justifiable smartness and
irksome petty restriction was crossed. They’d get on with the job with the
best, if they understood why and if it made sense. Moulding Canadian sailors
into a first-class destroyer’s company took informed, alert leadership. When
the combination was right they were the best anywhere. But sometimes
leadership failed.
156
BIG SHIPS AND LITTLE SHIPS
THE DESTROYER WAR

Iroquois, with Commander W.B. Holms, commissioned in November, 1942,
and did trials and a winter work-up at bleak, gale-swept Scapa Flow. Hull
problems and weather damage kept her pretty well out of action until sum-
mer. Recreational facilities at Scapa for the gigantic Home Fleet consisted of a
cinema and a cheerless canteen with harsh lights and a concrete floor. On a
short winter afternoon, if it wasn’t blowing too hard, it was just possible for a
soccer or rugger team to get ashore in the duty Kghter and let off steam on one
of the stony, undulating playing fields. There were no changing rooms or
showers. The two squash courts and a golf course, per British social structure,
were used only by officers. A small officers’ club was a two-mile walk from
the squash courts. It was a dreary time in a dismal place.
That summer Iroquois got into action. On a Gibraltar convoy two heavy-
laden troopships were sunk by German bombers and she picked up over 600
survivors. On the way back to Plymouth she picked up three survivors of a
sunken U-boat from an RN ship. While their oily clothes were being scrubbed
some unknown person filched the U-boat badge from one of the jackets. The
owner demanded it back. The Captain saw an infraction of the Geneva
Convention in this and a reflection on his own ship’s disciphne. When the
badge didn’t show up he stopped the leave of the whole ship’s company.
Holms was a rigid type, autocratic and harsh. His heavy-handed methods
hadn’t gone down well from the start and he didn’t have the confidence of his
officers, CPOs, and petty officers. Unhappiness had been brewing for some
time and this capped it. The ship simmered in Plymouth, then, on the morn-
ing she was due to sail on operations, all the men below leading hand shut
themselves in the messdecks and refused to fall in. It was mutiny, nothing less,
and in time of war. When Holms heard the news he had a heart attack and was
taken straight to hospital and the First Lieutenant was put in command. The
men got on with their duties without a murmur and the ship sailed that
evening to cover support groups in the Bay of Biscay. Ten days later Com-
mander Jimmy Hibbard, DSC, arrived to take over. Iroquois went on to play her
full role with spirit and elan.
The ship’s company had taken aim at one man alone - their Captain. His
leadership had failed and he never had another sea command. No one, in fact,
was brought to task. The solution at the time, with Holms’s heart attack, had
been fortuitous and quick, and the whole disgraceful matter was downplayed
as an “incident.” This wasn’t an isolated case, though the circumstances gave
it special prominence. The RN, the USN, and other Canadian ships had similar
incidents. But Iroquois's was an altogether bad precedent and it was not to be
forgotten.
Athahaskan was next to commission. In August she was covering the Cana-
dian 6th Escort Group in an anti-U-boat sweep off northwest Spain when
157
twenty-one Dormers and Junkers 88s roared in to attack. The guns blazed
away. The sky puffed with shell bursts. Down plunged the Junkers’ bombs,
throwing up towering columns of water. The ships dodged, weaved, and
bucked through the splashes. Then the Dorniers circled curiously and
launched something quite new. Missiles with wings glided down and actually
changed course to zero in on their targets. In fact, they were radio-controlled,
visually guided “gHder bombs.” As with the Gnat a few months later, the
Canadians were in on the launching of a new and ugly weapon.
“Chase-me-Charlie” didn’t draw blood that day but it was clear enough
what it was. The way to handle it was to fire at the mother plane with the
heavy guns and try to hit the bomb with close-range fire. But the Tribals’
three twin 4.7-inch mounts wouldn’t elevate enough to hit a high target.
Their only fully effective long-range anti-aircraft gun was the twin 4-inch.
As at Dunkirk, British gunnery was still far behind the air threat. The
gunnery control computers in these most modern of destroyers were
designed to hit aircraft flying straight and level - something they rarely did
when attacking ships. Radar helped, but the Royal Navy hadn’t caught up to
either enemies or AlHes. If Canada had taken Winston Churchill’s advice early
on and bought Fletcher-class destroyers from the U.S. instead of Tribals, far
better gunnery systems would have come with them.
For close-range weapons the British pom-pom wasn’t a patch on the
Swedish 40mm Bofors. The Swiss 20mm OerHkon was better than anything
the British or Americans had developed in that class. Both were built in
Britain and the United States under Hcence. In 1943, though, aiming the
close-range guns was just changing over from open sights, by-guess-and-
good-luck to a U.S.-developed gyro gunsight.
Two days after the gHder bomb’s debut the Dorniers were back, and they
had sharpened their technique. One completely destroyed the RN sloop Egret.
Another hit Athabaskan up forward. A tremendous explosion racked her and
set her ablaze. But Captain Gus Miles had seen this before. He’d brought
Saguenay safely in after her torpedoing in 1940. Ail hands worked round the
clock batthng fires, shoring bulkheads, restoring power. She was a sitting
duck for air attack and U-boats, but she Hmped the long haul back to Ply-
mouth under her own steam.
By December Athabaskan was repaired and up to Scapa Flow to join her
three sisters. Lieutenant Commander John Stubbs, who had dueUed his U-
boat in Assiniboine, was her new Captain. Sweeps in northern waters and
fighting Russian convoys through were the hard business of that winter, but
aU the captains were top hands. Huron, with Lieutenant Commander Herbie
Rayner in command, did three round trips to Murmansk; Haida, with Com-
mander Harry DeWolf, the senior of the four, did two; Jimmy Hibbard’s
Iroquois and Stubbs’s Athabaskan one each.
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In these far northern latitudes they laboured through pitch black, bitter
cold, howhng gales. Harry DeWolf would have preferred it otherwise. He
was seasick all his career and carried his own bucket with him in heavy
weather. It was not much consolation that Admiral Nelson had had the same
affliction. Air attack was less of a worry in the winter dark but U-boats were
on the attack. The biggest threat, though, lay hidden in the Norwegian ôrds.
Over Christmas, 1943, Haida, Iroquois, and Huron were hammering their
way northward with convoy JW 55B when the powerful German battleship
Scharnhorst sHpped out and made straight for them. The Tribals, with only
four torpedoes each, were ordered to stay as close escort. The big, soHd echo
on their radars bored steadily in. They got set for a last-ditch defence while
the cruisers made spirited thrusts at the menacing giant. Twice Scharnhorst
turned away. Then, fought off by the terriers, she ran south. The Tribals stayed
with the convoy as they were told. The cruisers shadowed Scharnhorst, Mean-
time, the battleship Duke of York, with more cruisers and destroyers, was
neatly positioned to intercept and closed the trap. She detected the lone enemy
on radar at thirty-three miles. Her ten 14-inch guns and her consorts’ torpe-
does hammered Scharnhorst to death. There were thirty-six survivors.
Tirpitz still lay in hiding along the Norwegian coast, but with Scharnhorst
sunk the Tribals were released from the Russian run and joined the 10th
Destroyer Flotilla in Plymouth. The job: to secure the western flank of the
invasion against the German surface ships based in the French ports. To do it
the RN pulled together the heaviest destroyers they could find.
THE FIGHTING TENTH

Royal Navy Tribals had been in the thick of the action since war began. Losses
had been heavy. The war-toughened survivors were Tartar (the leader),
Eskimo, Ashanti, and Nubian. Now came Haida, Huron, and Athabaskan. Iroquois
joined from refit in June. Meanwhile Javelin, a Hghter version with one less
gun mounting, joined, plus two PoHsh ships, Blyskawika and Piorun. The
destroyers were backed by the 5.25-inch-gunned cruisers Bellona and Black
Prince. It was a powerful small-ship fighting force, under command of Admi-
ral Leatham, C-in-C Plymouth.
The first objective was to clear the Channel of German destroyers. There
were two basic plans, always carried out at night. Operation Tunnel meant
offensive patrol along the French coast to disrupt the German convoys;
Operation Hostile covered the fast minelayers that raced across to enemy
harbour approaches and focal points. Either one gave a good chance of
meeting enemy destroyers, probably under the guns of their own shore
batteries and in close waters laced with minefields.
The Channel coast of France conjures up centuries of blockade and battle.
The coast runs its weather-lashed way west from Cherbourg, past the
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Channel Islands, ancient St. Malo, and He de Bas, then around the northwest-
ern extremity of France, with He de Vierge and Ushant laying off, then down
past Brest. It is rock-bound and tide swept, a constant chaUenge to the
seaman. There are countless islets, rocks, shoals, and inlets. Brest itself is
tucked well back, guarded to the north by Ushant and a ring of saw-toothed
islets called the Black Stones. To the south Ues a rocky shoal. The Saints.
Further south is another deep gash, Audierne Bay, then the stretch to Lorient
and down past He d’Yeu to La PaUice. To the natural hazards and hiding-holes
for E-boats - the fast motor torpedo boats - add the minefields, the shore
radar and the coastal batteries, and the enemy on his own home ground. This
was no place for the faint-hearted.
The flotilla ran its first operation in January. Harry DeWolf, the senior
Canadian, said it was lucky they didn’t meet the enemy. The ships needed a lot
more training together in night encounters. In early March they missed the
enemy twice. Admiral Leatham was a man for brisk action, and he put in a new
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Flotilla Captain (D), Commander Basil Jones, RN. Jones was an experienced
destroyer man and he got on well with his COs. In his view the Canadian ships
and their captains were “highly efficient and full of aggressive spirit.”
The enemy forces hidden in the French ports were powerful Narvik-class
destroyers mounting five 5.9-inch guns and eight torpedoes and smaller
Elbings with four 4.1-inch and eight torpedoes. As well, high-speed E-boats
could be expected to dart out with their dangerous armament of four torpe-
does. The close escorts for the German convoys were small but heavily
gunned flack-ships, trawlers, and minesweepers. Shore batteries had radar.
The break of dawn would bring the air strikes unless fighter cover was at
hand. From Ushant back to Plymouth is 120 miles - four hours as the Tribals
steamed.
Plotting the tactical situation had come a long way with radar and HF/DF
and better radio. The ships had efficient Httle action information centres. But
all the sensors were “aids.” Human eyes and ears were basic, and the Captain
fought his ship from the open bridge. His razor-edged decisions and the zip of
a finely trained ship’s company were the margin between win and lose, Hfe
and death. And cold, clear decisions must come as the ship shuddered, the
guns roared, the tracers came arcing in, and the white-hot metal flew.
It was a strange interlude. The core of Plymouth, levelled in the blitz, was
acres of rubble crisscrossed by tidily bulldozed streets. The pubs, the dance
halls, the hostels, the hotels, the grassy Hoe where Drake played bowls - that
was always a place for lovers. And that sunny spring, with its lovely green and
peaceful fields, sunken lanes, and rolling hills, its country inns and hideaways,
Devon was a place for life, not death. All of this just hours from the crash of
gunfire.
The flotilla fought in divisions, usually four ships. By late April Haida had
completed nineteen night missions. Clear of the swept channel, they ran
across at speed and turned along the French coast, radar sweeping to pick up
the enemy, then out of it by dayhght because of German aircraft. As Harry
DeWolf said: “If you were unlucky ten times, on the eleventh time you might
meet them.” On 25 April they did. Tartar was in refit. Haida, Huron, Atha-
baskan, and Ashanti were backed by Black Prince. At two in the morning they
ran head on into three Elbing-class destroyers. According to plan Black Prince
lay back and Ht with starshell. The Germans turned away through their own
smoke screens, hit by the Tribals and hit again. One turned back, fired torpe-
does at Black Prince, and escaped. Another, T29, was stopped by Haida and
Athabaskan's gunfire. They blasted her to a blazing wreck and down she went.
In the melee all four Tribals fired torpedoes without one hit. The flotilla had
more confidence in their guns than their torpedoes from then on. On the way
back to Plymouth Ashanti collided with Huron, lightly but enough to put
them both out of action for a while.
161
The next two nights Haida and Athabaskan covered a large pre-invasion
exercise called Operation Tiger. After the Tribals were called away, E-boats
swarmed in among the landing craft, lashing out with their torpedoes and
guns; 400 American soldiers drowned. On the 29th of April the same pair
were in mid-Channel when coastal radar in Britain got a very-long-range
contact near the French coast. In they went. Likely it was T24 and T27, which
they had hit four nights before running from St. Malo to Brest for repairs.
Action crews closed up; doors and hatches were dogged down; damage
control crews settled in position. The “Y” operators scanned radio frequen-
cies, strained on their headsets for German voices. Eyes glued to radar scans.
Lookouts swept the black line of the horizon, focusing a Httle above it because
at night the eye picks up off-centre objects better. Every man wore his Hfe
jacket, clean clothes in case of wounds, anti-flash hoods and gloves for burns;
all on deck wore steel helmets.
A final test of gun circuits, ammunition at the ready. The Captain takes the ’
mike. “Captain speaking. Plymouth radar’s got two contacts and ...” Every
man hangs on the words. Guns’ crews coil down, sheltered from the spray.
Four a.m. Radar contact. Two ships, running south for Brest. All hands
alert. Gunnery radar has them now. Starshell ready. All guns load, load, load.
DeWolf sends a quick message on voice radio. The wheels go over, the ships
lean sharply, turn toward, increase speed.
“Illuminate.” Up go the 4-inch starshell. They burst in clear white, faUing
Hght. There they are. Two Elbings, all right. The director tower has them,
selects one, reports: “Director, target.”
“Engage” - crisply from the Captain. Six 4.7s thunder. Gun-blasts sweep
the bridge again and again and stun the ears. Athabaskan is firing, too. The
Germans turn away. “Hard a-starboard.” The Canadians alter 30 degrees to
sidestep torpedoes. They’re still turning and Athabaskan reports: “I’m hit and
losing power.”
DeWolf goes hard over and lays smoke to cover his consort. It’s one on two
now. He drives Haida full speed after them, guns blazing. Astern there’s fire in
Athabaskan, the flash of an explosion. Ahead the enemy spHts. They’re firing
back with after guns, their tracers curving in. If they turn on him
together. . . . Haida concentrates on T27, the hits making small, bright
orange flashes. The enemy’s afire now, weaving, runs hard ashore, a blazing,
battered wreck. The other has a big lead now. DeWolf looks at the sky. It’s
getting on for dawn. He turns Haida back to the rescue.
Athabaskan, hit by a torpedo, had quickly settled aft. Fires broke out and in
minutes there was another explosion. Some thought it was shore batteries,
others were certain an E-boat got them. Reports reached the bridge that the
main engines were finished. She was setthng quickly, and Stubbs knew she
was done. He passed the wrenching words: “Abandon ship.”
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Haida got back in the breaking dawn. Lifejacket lights bhnked and bobbed.
Haida stopped among them, slipped all her boats and floats. Scramble nets
dropped down her side. Men climbed down and pulled up forty-two oil-
soaked men. Haida lay just five miles from the enemy coast, in easy range of
shore batteries. Aircraft could be overhead any time. The tide was setting,
moving the ship, and there were mines.
John Stubbs called up to DeWolf from the water: “Get away. Get clear.” It
was DeWolf s decision. He had to give priority to the safety of his own ship. It
was 5:15 a.m. Twenty minutes more. Then there was no choice. He had to
leave good friends in the water.
Haida's motor cutter was left behind. Leading Stoker Bill MacLure had
picked up Able Seaman Jack Hannam and Ordnance Artificer Fraser Murray,
who had been swept off the scramble nets while fishing men from the water.
They rescued eight Athabaskans who weren’t in the carley floats, then headed
north. Just in time. German minesweepers were on their way to collect
prisoners. They made it all the way to England in their twenty-seven-foot
boat. Eighty-three officers and men ended up in prison camp; one hundred
and twenty-eight of Athabaskan's company were lost, including Lieutenant
Commander John Hamilton Stubbs, DSO.
Three Narviks and two Elbings remained in the French ports. The sweeps
went on through the nights of May but they didn’t show their noses. Then on
D-Day, 6 June 1944, the whole 10th Flotilla was waiting for them on the
western flank as the mighty assault armada sailed for the Normandy beaches.
At dusk on 8 June air reconnaissance spotted four destroyers leaving Brest.
They were making north toward Cherbourg. Eight ships of the flotilla raced
across the Channel and met the four straight on.
It was a blazing, close-in melee. The experienced ships did the scoring.
Tartar and Ashanti sank a powerful ex-Dutch destroyer, then damaged a
Narvik, but Tartar took four shells in her bridge. Boiler room damage slowed
her. Haida and Huron chased old adversary T24 and Narvik Z24. They hit
both hard but had to skirt a minefield and the two got back to Brest. Back to
the fight, they nailed Narvik Z32, hit before by Tartar. For three hours they
chased her, hitting again and again, and drove her ashore on Isle de Bas, a
flaming wreck. Two destroyed and two heavily damaged. That finished the
German destroyers as a threat to Operation Neptune. The Fighting 10th had
done its job.
Nor did the U-boats get at the invasion fleet. Only two actually penetrated
the area and one landing ship was sunk. In two weeks in June, Coastal
Command aircraft sank six and damaged seven in the Channel. Ships sank
four, one of these shared by Eskimo and Haida under Harry DeWolf. “Hard-
over Harry,” Commander Basil Jones said, “was an outstanding officer, not
only in skill but in aggressive spirit. Furthermore, he had that priceless gift of
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fortune ... of there always being a target in whatever area he was told to
operate.”
Three nights later Huron and Eskimo caught a minesweeper and three
trawlers. Huron, with the quiet, imperturbable Herbie Rayner in command,
sank the sweeper and a trawler. In the enemy’s smoke screen Eskimo got very
close to another trawler. It bravely fired back with everything it had - 20mm
shells bursting in the engine room knocked out power to her guns and radar.
Huron ran interference while Eskimo recovered her faculties and her dignity,
and the incident pointed out some sharp lessons: destroyers had very thin
skins; the more sophisticated a ship, the more vulnerable it became to a minor
blow; and the Kriegsmarine hadn’t lost its fighting spirit. It didn’t pay to get
too close.
On the 1st of July Harry DeWolf was promoted to Captain. If he’d been an
RN officer he’d have had command of the flotilla, and Basil Jones would have
been the last to say he didn’t deserve it. Admiral Leatham, though, underhned
to both of them that Jones was in command. DeWolf never said a word, but
other Canadians, with justification, took it as a slap in the face and another
piece of that old RN superiority. Still, the mutual regard of men who fought so
hard together made things work. Later, Jones was made an Acting Captain,
which didn’t answer the basic question but it did look better.
On the night of 12 July, Haida, Tartar, and Blyskawika steamed close under
the shore batteries near Lorient. In an hour they sank two merchant ships and
a trawler. Haida hammered away at another darkened vessel, which stopped
but wouldn’t sink. She moved in for the kill. Hilariously, it turned out to be a
gunnery practice target.
The U-boats had left the French ports for Norway by August but the
garrisons stayed. The countryside swarmed with Maquis guerrillas, who hit
road and rail transport so hard that German coastal convoys were stepped up.
On 5 August, Haida, Iroquois, Tartar, and Ashanti, with the cruiser Bellona as
back-up, had a busy night. They caught a formation off lie d’Yeu and in
twelve minutes sank seven vessels. Haida sank her first in four minutes but a
charge at the after gun mount exploded, kihing two, wounding eight, and
knocking the gun out of action. But she didn’t miss a beat, and they hit a
second convoy right under the noses of the shore batteries.
Iroquois had come back from refit too late for the invasion, but she caught
up. With RN cruiser Mauritius and destroyer Ursa she hit three convoys in a
week, two in Audierne Bay. They sank seven ships and drove five ashore in
flames, including an Elbing. Jimmy Hibbard marked some up for the ships
he’d seen go down in convoy SC 42 three years back.
In late September Operation Neptune ended. The Channel coast was
quiet, the war in Europe on the way to being won. The 10th Flotilla had
piled up a remarkable record: thirty-three enemy ships and one U-boat sunk
164
in three months of furious fighting, to a loss of one of their own. These

blistering, brilliant actions proved an important point in a way that the
shrouded, groping battles on the convoy lanes could not. They showed the
RN, the public, and the navy itself that Canadian sailors could fight with the
very best.
There was another message, too. Canadians reacted strongly against rou-
tine and rote they didn’t understand. But, given common sense and strong
leadership of the kind that understood them, they would rise to the heights. In
the Tribals in that spring and summer of 1944 it was all there.
Of all the farewell signals they received on leaving Plymouth, the top of the
hst was flashed to them by the Wrens in the Signal Station who had seen them
so often come and go. It’s final verse:
We hope we’ll always see you thus with ensignsJlying free

For the Fighting Tenth’s a lovely sight when coming in from sea.
DESTROYERS WITH THE FLEET

In February, 1944, two RN V-class fleet destroyers commissioned into the
RCN as HMCS Algonquin and Sioux and joined the Home Fleet’s 26th Flotilla.
Their captains. Lieutenant Commanders Debby Piers and Eric Boak, and
most of their companies had a lot of North Atlantic experience. But it was a far
cry from Senior Officer of Escort on slow convoys to small cog in a huge,
high-speed striking fleet.
At the end of March they joined a massive Tirpitz strike with two fleet
carriers and four escort carriers. More strikes followed along the Norwegian
coast, then they joined the great Neptune armada, two of the seventy-eight
fleet destroyers that pounded special targets on D-Day. Then it was back to
Scapa Flow, screening carriers - mostly dull business.
In early November, Algonquin joined cruisers Kent and Bellona and three
other destroyers on a Norwegian coastal sweep. Near Egersund, through a
gap in the screen of inshore islands, they caught an eleven-ship convoy. The
cruisers pumped out starshell. The destroyers raced in with guns and torpe-
does. Algonquin hit an escort with her first broadside and in minutes six of the
enemy were ablaze. Shore batteries lit the attackers with starshell and big
shells plunged close aboard, but the destroyers chased their quarries right in,
sank eight, and drove one aground.
On a bitterly cold New Year’s 1944-45 they both fought mountainous seas
and U-boats on their way to Russia. Their only casualty was Canadian pride.
In their layover in Murmansk Algonquin’s hockey team trounced Sioux’s but
then lost to the Murmansk all-stars. The tournament, played “with Russian
equipment and Russian rules,” was a foretaste of international hockey to
come. There were more Russian convoys, then both ships went back to
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Halifax to get set for the Pacific war. Algonquin had reached Alexandria,
heading east, when Japan surrendered.
LITTLE SHIPS IN NARROW SEAS

Many of the new Reserve officers who went to England for training in 1940
found their way to Coastal Forces. The high-speed motor torpedo boats and
motor gun boats fought in the narrow seas and they were night birds. Run-
ning out of Channel and east coast ports, they snapped constantly at the
enemy. They hit his convoys, defended their own from German E-boats; they
landed and backed up raiding parties, attacked transiting U-boats and surface
ships. There were countless fierce hghtning-fast engagements. Casualties
were high; succession to command was often very quick.
Some went to the Mediterranean. One of them was Lieutenant Tom Fuller,
RCNVR, a profane, colourful, two-fisted character from the construction
business. Close along the African shore as the desert battle seesawed, then
with the Sicilian landings, the Italian operations, in the Aegean and the
Adriatic, Fuller had a charmed Hfe. He counted 105 gun and torpedo actions,
plus another thirty operations without a fight. He wrote off thirteen boats
along the way. When he was working with Tito’s Yugoslavian partisans, a
journahst dubbed him “the Pirate of the Adriatic.”
MTBs called for quick thinking, innovation, and a special individual leader-
ship. It took all kinds. Lieutenant Tony Law, RCNVR, was dead opposite of
Fuller. He was a small, soft-spoken, and thoughtful man, an established artist
before the war. He commanded an RN boat that went in to attack Scharnhorst
and Gneisenau when they broke through the EngHsh Channel in February,
1942. Later, while waiting for the Canadian flotillas to form, he went off as an
official war artist and put some fine naval canvases into Canada’s national
collection. He was also an artist in running MTBs.
In late 1943 the RN had offered to provide boats if the RCN would man
them. Law was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and given command of
the 29th Canadian MTB Flotilla. There were eight of the G-type Short
boats - seventy-two feet long, forty-knot speed, two 18-inch torpedoes, a
6-pounder, and twin 20mm guns. They carried three officers and fourteen
men. Lieutenant Commander J.R.H. Kirkpatrick, RCNVR, another shoot-
from-the-hip type like Fuller, commanded the 65th Flotilla. He had ten 115-
foot D-type boats with a speed of thirty knots and twice the armament - four
torpedoes, two 6-pounders, and two twin 20mm -and twice the number of
men.
The German E-boats were much better vessels. They were more heavily
armed and made forty-eight knots on supercharged diesel engines. British
craft ran on 100-octane gasoline and it caused some terrible casualties. How-
ever, the RN boats had much better radar. They were directed into battle rather
166
like fighter aircraft by a skilfully run radar system from their headquarters
ashore.
For D-Day Kirkpatrick’s 65th was in the armada’s western flank. The
Tribals had done such a thorough job there that the MTBs quickly turned to
striking coastal convoys inside the Channel Islands. They were wild shoot-
outs - destroyer battles in miniature but at twice the speed, one-tenth the
range, and a far. higher rate of killed and wounded.
Le Havre, just a few miles east of the beachhead, harboured a nest of E-
boats, some slower, more powerful R-boats, and two Elbing destroyers. They
were the business of Tony Law’s 29th. The open, storm-tossed invasion
anchorage was busy around the clock. At night starshell Ht the sky and MTB
tracers crisscrossed with the enemy’s in fierce actions along the flank. At
dayhght the little boats off-loaded casualties, got reliefs if they could, fuelled,
and repaired. In the time left they snatched some rest tethered to a frigate’s
stern.
In early July, Lieutenant David Killam’s MTB 460 was demohshed by a
mine. The only survivors were the gunners in their fife jackets and bulletproof
vests. Law’s 459 was hit by a shore battery off Cap La Havre, and 463
(Lieutenant DG. Creba, RCNVR) was blown up by a pressure mine. The
constant close-range gunfights pushed casualties for the flotilla close to 30 per
cent.
The action moved west with the land battle as the First Canadian Army
drove through Belgium and Holland during the summer and fall. Convoys
ran from the Thames to Antwerp, and MTB bases were set up in liberated
ports. On 14 February 1945 the 29th was tucked into the inner basin in
Ostend along with several RN flotillas. There had been trouble with water in
the fuel. Tanks had to be pumped and 100-octane gasoline fingered on the
surface. Suddenly, in mid-afternoon, the gasoline went up in a tremendous
sheet of flame. It was a holocaust - boats blew up; men were thrown like
blazing dolls into the fiery water. Five of the 29th and seven RN boats were
destroyed. Twenty-six Canadian and thirty-five British sailors died in the
searing flames.
Tony Law was in Felixstowe with his second boat for radar repairs when he
heard of his flotilla’s tragic fate and the loss of so many hard-fighting friends.
Death in battle was the luck of the game. MTB sailors lived with it every night.
But now accident had done what the enemy could not. The 29th flotilla was
finished. The 65th fought on to the end of the European war. Then they
turned their boats back to the RN in June, 1945, and went home.
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CHAPTER NINE
THE END OF
THE U-BOAT WAR
OPERATION NEPTUNE
IN AMONG THE MAMMOTH ALLIED FORCES INVADING THE NORMANDY
coast on 6 June 1944, the U-boats could have dealt out havoc on a grand scale.
They were much tougher to handle by then, with their Gnats and snorkels.
That they did not impede the invasion was testimony to the ultimate success
of earher Allied actions - along the North American coast, on the Atlantic
convoy routes, in the Channel and around the coasts of Europe. Now they
could deploy huge, efficient anti-submarine forces. But Grosadmiral Donitz’s
U-boat fleet remained a lurking, dangerous presence to the end.
Overlord, the invasion of fortress Europe, mounted the greatest seaborne
assault of all time. Operation Neptune, the naval side, mustered a vast armada
of 5,300 ships and landing craft. They had to land 150,000 men and 1,500
tanks over a fifty-mile span of Normandy beaches in the vital first forty-eight
hours. Then, over a million men and milhons of tons of material must move
in. They would land over the beaches and the portable Mulberry harbours
until regular ports were taken by the armies. The Mulberries were a stroke of
genius and, remarkably, were kept completely secret. So convinced was the
German General Staff that the Allies must take major harbours right away
that their army was caught off balance. It was a key factor in the failure of their
plan of defence.
Channels through the minefields had to be cleared and the whole armada
protected from surface, submarine, and air incursion. Shore defences,
beaches, and batteries had to be neutraHzed by air and warship bombardment
during the critical run-in and landing when the army had little firepower of its
own. Units fighting their way inland had to have naval gunfire on call until
their own artillery arms were fully deployed.
168
THE END OF THE U-BOAT WAR
To Operation Neptune, Canada sent sixty-one ships, sixteen MTBs, and

thirty LCI(L) - landing craft infantry (large). The Tribals and the 29th and 65th
MTB flotillas were closely engaged before and during the invasion, as we have
seen. Nine escort destroyers of the 11th and 12th escort groups and eleven
frigates of the 6th and 9th escort groups joined the anti-submarine campaign.
The two fleet destroyers were in the bombardment force. Nineteen corvettes
assigned to Western Approaches ran close escort to the endless stream of
shipping heading to and from the beachhead.
THE MINESWEEPERS
Mostly, minesweeping was an unglamorous, unsung, and dreary job. In an
assault, though, the battleships, destroyers, and landing ships stood back and
gave the humble sweepers pride of place. They were essential. They were
expendable. They led the way. Slow and steady, close along a hostile shore
with mines below and the barrels of the shore batteries looking down - this
was a job for steadiness, precision, and iron nerve.
Sixteen Bangor minesweepers were pulled from their Canadian east coast
convoy escort duties and sent to the U.K. in late February, 1944. They had to
be re-equipped and trained from scratch because this was a role they had
virtually never filled. Ten of them formed the 31st Canadian Minesweeping
Flotilla under Commander A.H.G. Storrs, RCNR, in HMCS Caraquet. The
other six joined the RN’s 4th, Nth, and 16th flotillas. Ten flotillas in aU were
assigned and each had one channel to sweep.
The great day approached. The troop convoys and tanks rumbled through
the choked-up English roads. Invasion ports right across southern England
were chock-a-block with landing ships and craft. Troops, tanks, vehicles
streamed endlessly aboard. Then the weather went sour.
Surf along the beaches could kill an assault that guns couldn’t. Landing
craft skippers sniffed the wind, peered anxiously at the sky. They were the
ones, the sub-lieutenants and the leading seamen, who had to put those first
platoons safely on the beach. They were expendable, hke the sweepers. In fact,
the cold-blooded planners had already written off the whole first wave of
assault craft. Delay D-Day? The juggernaut was rolling. Flow long before the
Germans knew, and more, guessed where it was headed? Weather, time, and
tide . . . the Admiral could advise, but only the Supreme Commander could
make the decision. A one-day delay and General Eisenhower said, “Go.”
On D minus One, 5 June, at 5:30 p.m., the sweepers headed south for the
French coast. Each flotilla was in staggered sweep formation. Seven swept.
Three stayed in their wake ready to take over if one blew up. Trawlers
followed close behind, stacked with dan-buoys. They marked the safe chan-
nel for the main force following behind. All of this required pin-point naviga-
169
don. The sweepers had the most advanced radio fixing system akin to later
Decca and Loran. Running right to the minute and down to the last few yards
was crucial to success. Night fell. Tides shifted. Courses were adjusted. There
could be no Hght but the dim glow of the compass repeaters on the sweepers’
bridges leading in.
The coast loomed, dark,' forbidding. Lookouts strained for E-boats,
destroyers, flak ships. Could they get away with this? Knocking right on
Europe’s door? At three a.m., right on schedule, the 31st had cleared channel
number 3. They stood nakedly alone, one and a half miles off the Hne of surf
on Omaha Beach where the Americans would land at dawn. The moon broke
from the clouds. Tony Storrs turned his flotilla and methodically combed his
transport anchorage, then the fire support lane the bombarding ships would
use. Efficiently, precisely, the sweepers had earned their front-row seats.
At 5:15 a.m. they saw the first of the assault ships come in through their
swept waters, heard the anchor cables roar and rattle. Out of the pre-dawn
loomed the big-gunned battleships, USS Texas and Arkansas, cruisers, and
destroyers. Overhead the drone of aircraft gathered volume. Planeloads of
paratroops, transports towing troop ghders, headed for their targets. Right
across the front through all ten swept channels the armada was moving in.
The sweepers’ plodding work - widening channels, clearing new areas,
sweeping for fresh-sown mines - would go on for weeks, scarcely noticed. But
100 minesweepers had quietly and efficiently led the way to the fortress door.
THE ASSAULT
Ten lines of ships streamed in. Well to the east of the 31st, in the British-
Canadian sector. Prince Henry followed Algonquin through Lane 7, Prince David
followed Sioux through Lane 8. They anchored seven miles offshore. On
board each were over 400 first-wave troops, mostly of the Third Canadian
Division. Prince David's were Le Regiment de la Chaudiere and a Royal
Marine assault party. Prince Henry's were Canadian Scottish Regiment.
Now it was all by the clock. Out swung the davits. Down went the
scramble nets. Eight forty-one foot EGAs in each ship sHpped smoothly down
into the choppy sea. Engines, finely tuned, barked alive. Each craft, its thirty-
man platoon embarked, slipped and headed in. The first wave was away.
Toward the beach and whatever lay in store the assault wave crawled in a great
wrinkled Hne across the entire massive front. Right on time the bigger craft
came in behind them straight from the U.K. They carried tanks, special
breaching vehicles, and guns. In the assault craft that rough hour-long,
seasick-making, heart-in-mouth run to the beach was for the soldiers the
most miserable D-Day memory of them all.
With daylight to see their targets, the ships’ big guns opened up. Shells by
the thousands roared over the heads of the landing craft. Ahead of them.
170
bucking and pitching, could be seen the flashes and the bursts all along the
shore. Algonquin and Sioux's targets were gun batteries that could rake the
beaches. They knocked them out, shifted to other buildings that could hide
defenders. The amphibious tanks - marginally seaworthy with collapsible
canvas bulwarks - were delayed because of rough seas. But the Hghter
destroyers close inshore and the gun-carrying and rocket-firing landing craft
blasted the beaches with their fire.
Just before touch-down the thunderous bombardment stopped. Except for
the sounds of engines and the sea there was an awesome silence. Then,
suddenly, the hush was broken. The enemy, battered and stunned but not out,
fired back with everything he had.
It was rough along the beaches - the surf was heavy; jagged obstacles were
as thick as a picket fence; mines were everywhere. Two of Prince Henry's EGAs
charging in to Red Mike beach struck obstacles and broached sideways in the
surf, but all her craft made it in. Within five minutes their soldiers were racing
for the sand dunes. To the east Prince David's craft had trouble. Machine-gun
bullets laced the beaches. Mortar bombs plunged down among the craft and
the attacking troops. Only one craft reached the beach undamaged but they
all got their soldiers ashore. All along the beaches lay stranded and broken
craft, overturned tanks. Bodies mixed with swimmers struggling in the surf.
In many places casualties were heavy. Surviving craft brought wounded out
to the anchorages. But the assault troops were ashore. They were fighting
their way in, making their objectives.
Over Algonquin's radio came a call for fire. Three German 88s two miles
inland were holding up Le Regiment de la Chaudiere. Piers and his men
couldn’t see them but the Forward Observation Officer - the artilleryman
ashore with the infantry - could and he passed the map co-ordinates. After
quick position plotting, measured range, and bearing, the ship fired two
single guns for ranging. The observation officer radioed corrections. The
third salvo was dead on. Then the ship shook to three full broadsides of four
guns each. They were right on target, the enemy was silenced, and the
Chaudieres moved on.
Whatever the planners had said, one craft returned to Prince David and all
save one of Prince Henry's survived. Follow-up troops went in on tank landing
craft that had unloaded and hauled themselves off the beach on the rising tide.
That afternoon both “Princes” sailed for England with their loads of
wounded. Then they brought reinforcements to the beaches for the steady
massive build-up to break out of the hard-won bridgehead.
Meantime, the second wave had moved in directly from the U.K. in the
larger landing craft, along with tanks, vehicles, and guns. The 260th and
262nd Canadian flotillas were hit heavily by mine explosions, mortar, and
machine-gun fire. The lucky 264th had a clear run in. They beached in heavy
171
surf on beach Jig Red in perfect formation. All their troops ran ashore intact.
The three Canadian flotillas put 4,600 men ashore on D-Day. Only a few
Canadian sailors were wounded in the operation and not a single one was
killed. Most damaged craft were salvaged from the beach to fight another day.
The Canadian corvettes brought in all sorts of vessels. They navigated for
landing craft, escorted transports, herded barges. They brought in blockships
- tired old vessels to be sunk as breakwaters. They trudged back and forth for
days on end, brought in the great concrete Mulberries with their heavy cranes
and cargo-handling gear to be flooded down on the beach at Arromanches.
Operation Neptune was superbly planned and near-flawlessly carried out.
Canadian sailors in 107 varied vessels played their parts and played them well.
No small part of the honours went to the anti-submarine forces that had so
badly mauled the U-boats and at the crucial time kept them well and truly at
bay.
THE CANADIAN SUPPORT GROUPS

The Royal Canadian Navy’s MOEF destroyers, formed into two support
groups, had trained at Londonderry and then joined the great pre-invasion U-
boat hunt. In Neptune they were part of the blanket of anti-submarine force
that virtually smothered U-boat opposition.
Escort Group 12 had Qu’Appelle, commissioned in February, Saskatchewan,
and hoary North Atlantic veterans Skeena and Restigouche. In one go at a U-
boat they battered away for twenty hours, drew no less than seven Gnats,
raised tons of fish with their Hedgehogs and depth charges, but got no kill.
The foe was still wily and tough. Then in early July they had their turn at the
classic destroyer role - surface action.
Fitted as escorts, they had long since traded guns and torpedoes for more
depth charges and Hedgehogs. Saskatchewan had three of her 4.7-inch guns
left, the others had only two. All were down to four torpedoes. Their com-
panies had seen many a scrambling fight with U-boats, but for most of them
tangling with a surface foe was something new.
Operation Dredger was, in fact, a special anti-submarine operation. U-
boats were being heavily escorted in and out of Brest and the idea was for a
strike force to knock out the escorts so an anti-submarine group could have a
clear run. On the night of 5-6 July EG 12 had its turn. They ran well to
seaward off Ushant to avoid radar detection, then headed in toward The
Saints, the rocky cluster a little south of Brest. The rock-girt coast painted on
the radar scans as they closed. At about midnight, new echoes appeared, just
outside the harbour minefield. Ships, but what kind? Destroyers? U-boats?
Minesweepers? The M-class sweepers were slow but they carried two 5-inch
guns, a match for two 4.7s, and they had plenty of close-range firepower.
172
Commander A.M. McKillop, RN, the Senior Officer in Qu'Appelle, led the
group right inshore, then turned north, curving toward the targets. The plots
in the ops rooms developed fast: to the northwest, the harbour of Brest; the
channel buoys could be seen on radar. Four ships were running out in line
ahead, and the notorious Black Stones were just beyond. With a burst of
speed, QuAppelle swung westward parallel to the enemy’s line. The others
followed tight in the wake of the next ahead. It was a beautiful manoeuvre.
They’d come up right behind the enemy, cut him off from harbour, and
trapped him against the Black Stones. At 4,000 yards up went the starshell:
four M-class heading to sea, and two U-boats. The destroyers stormed past,
blazing away at the sweepers one-on-one, loosing torpedoes as they went by.
The enemy fought back with everything he had.
Alan Easton, Saskatchewan's Captain, had fought U-boats in Sackville. But
now he saw the tracers lacing both ways “like streams of liquid fire,” felt the
hammering of shellfire and the waves of heat and gunsmoke, saw his own
shells hit home and the enemy’s fire coming straight back. The leader turned
to reverse course and Easton followed around as they drove straight in the
enemy’s teeth once more.
QuAppelle and Saskatchewan cut right through the enemy Hne. Standing a
mere half-mile off the Black Stones, they blazed away at four hundred yards
range. The rear destroyers were hard at it, too. Three of the enemy were wiped
out in a few short minutes. The fourth, and possibly the two submarines,
turned back into Brest.
But as in Huron and Eskimo's party ten days before, EG 12 paid the price of
close action. Qu’Appelle's steering was knocked out, her bridge was riddled
with 20mm, her Captain and several others badly wounded. Pat Russell in
Skeena also had some wounded. He took over as SO. David Groos’s Restigouche
got off lightly. Easton’s Saskatchewan, radar knocked out, had one dead and
seven wounded. The medical officer had to amputate a man’s arm as the ship
sped back to Plymouth.
A month later EG 12 had a turn at the Tribals’ game. Commander J.D.
Birch, RNR, had replaced the wounded McKillop in QuAppelle. Assinihoine,
with Lieutenant Commander Bob Welland, had joined the group, as had HMS
Alhrighton. They found no convoy but between Brest and Lorient they caught
three trawlers and drove them ashore in flames. To Alan Easton this kind of
crashing action was far preferable to the gnawing, drawn-out anxiety with
the convoys in the U-boat war. And if you were hurt here you could get home
in a few hours. There was hardly a man who didn’t feel the same.
Escort Group 11, on the other hand, got no run at the gunfighting but fared
much better with the U-boats. Chummy Prentice had left his acting rank as
Captain (D) Halifax to go back to sea as Senior Officer in Ottawa. Just as EG 12
173
was coming in from its first night of action, Ottawa and Kootenay joined the RN
frigate Statice, which was holding a contact in the Channel.
This area had all the anti-submarine snags and pitfalls: poor asdic condi-
tions, shoals offish, strong and changeable currents, continuous heavy traffic,
a bottom strewn with the wrecks of centuries. To sort U-boats from the
wrecks the navigational echo’sounder was a very useful gadget. If a ship
steered right over something on the bottom the paper trace would show a neat
graphic outhne. This particular object had, distinctly, a hull and conning
tower.
Prentice had a team of top hands. His Staff Officer Anti-Submarine, Lieu-
tenant Bob Timbrell (DSC from Dunkirk, sunk in Margaree), was one of the
three fully qualified “Long A/S” specialists in the navy. Bob Welland and Pat
Russell, both driving destroyers in EG 12, were the others.
This U-boat, however,^had all the tricks in the book. They’d caught her
with their first Hedgehog attack and confirmed her with the echo sounder.
But with the tide running the charges and Hedgehog bombs were swept aside
and they couldn’t open her up. Then came some sailors’ resourcefulness. They
armed a depth charge with an electric detonator and lowered it over the side
on a wire with a grappling hook attached, then steamed slowly over the
bottomed U-boat, dragging the charge along the bottom. The grapnel caught
the U-boat. The gunner on deck saw the wire tighten, triggered the charge,
and it cracked her open like an egg. The grisly evidence bubbUng to the
surface showed it was U-678. In mid-August on a Biscay patrol, Ottawa,
Kootenay, and Chaudiere methodically destroyed two more. That made a war-
time four U-boats for Chummy Prentice and three each for Lieutenant Com-
mander Pat Nixon of Chaudiere and Lieutenant Commander Bill Willson of
Kootenay.
The frigates of EG 6 and EG 9 had some hard luck on Neptune. Teme was
rammed and cut nearly in half by an escort carrier. She was repaired and back
with the group by February. But in a few weeks she was torpedoed. With
sixty feet of stern gone, her career was over. Matane was hit by a glider bomb
but lived to fight again. Corvettes Regina and Alberni went down like stones to
torpedoes with heavy losses. Success came to EG 9 at last on 31 August. Saint
John and Swansea caught a U-boat off Land’s End. It took them twenty-four
hours but finally up came the wreckage. Among it was a certificate marking
the ten-milhonth engine revolution of U-257. On the record at the time, this
was Swansea's third kill. In fact, it was her fourth.
In September, Operation Neptune wound to an end. There was hard
fighting to come before Europe was liberated. The Russian convoys still must
be fought through and there could be no let up on the Atlantic convoy lanes.
But the weight of the Royal Navy was shifting to the support of the U.S.
Pacific Fleet. Plans were afoot for the RCN to join them.
174
THE MEDITERRANEAN
After Neptune the big landing craft were turned back to the USN for the
Pacific war, and the three flotillas disbanded. But the landing ships Prince
David and Prince Henry were off in late July for Naples. This time it was
Operation Dragoon, General Patton’s invasion of the south of France,
planned for the 15th of August east of Toulon.
Shore batteries on three islands and one shore flank commanded the land-
ing area. In the pitch dark, hours before the landings, the two Canadian ships
moved close inshore to send in Commandoes. All of them reached their
targets. There was some sharp fighting and every battery was knocked out.
But this was no Normandy. The main landings met little opposition and
Patton’s tanks swept north.
In September the German occupation of Greece was being challenged by
guerrillas of differing poKtical stripes. Yugoslavia, too, was on the boil. The
“Princes” ran troops about the Adriatic and Aegean, then Hfted the Greek
Prime Minister-designate, M. Papandreou, and supporting troops to Piraeus,
the port of Athens. The reception was very uncertain. The ships anchored off
while Canadian landing craft made a cautious advance probe into the har-
bour. But they were met with wild enthusiasm as liberators. The ships then
pitched in, repatriating prisoners of war and refugees. Henry moved 4,400 of
these poor unfortunates, plus all their baggage and uncounted sheep, goats,
and chickens.
Admiralty wanted both ships in Southeast Asia, but the Canadian govern-
ment didn’t want to be identified with restoring colonial regimes so both
ships were transferred to the RN. Prince Robert, in the meantime, had put in
solid service as an anti-aircraft cruiser with convoys from the U.K. into the
Mediterranean - seventeen in all. By now she was back in Esquimalt refitting
for the Pacific.
THE LAST OF THE U-BOATS

Losing their French bases put the U-boats off their stride but it didn’t knock
them out. North Germany and Norway served as bases and Donitz sent his
boats far and wide. It was a long-standing principle of his to stretch and dilute
his enemy’s force. Hit and run by lone roving boats scored no great tonnage
but it made the Allies stick to convoys. Even if the U-boats were beaten -
which Donitz would never admit to his men even though he did to himself-
they still tied down a huge effort. His staff estimated over half a million Allied
personnel were tied up in escorting, supporting, patrolHng, organizing, and
maintaining the whole convoy effort.
The U-boats had made real technical advances: snorkels were better and
more widely fitted; Gnats had improved; radar search detectors covered the
10cm band; radar itself was being fitted for the first time; improved batteries
175
June, 1943 - May, 1945. The U-boats were beaten on the Atlantic but they fought
back with new weapons and equipment. After D-Day they concentrated around
Britain, though some still ranged far afield to stretch Allied resources. With the loss of
their French bases theyfought to the end from Norway and the Baltic.
boosted submerged endurance. Now there was the prospect of the high-
performance Type XXL Offsetting all that, their shattering losses meant expe-
rienced hands were critically short.
They tried mining again, that cheap and potent way for an inferior navy to tie
up its enemy. U-119 had laid sixty-six moored mines off Halifax harbour in June,
1943, and a similar field was planted off St.John’s that October. Their toll then
was small - one ship sunk and one damaged - but they delayed sailings and drew
a big effort away from anti-submarine work. Another try in July, 1944, was
nipped when two boats were sunk by the groups of USN carriers Card and Bogue.
By faU, however, there were five U-boats in Canadian waters.
Since the disastrous summer of 1942 the Gulf of St. Lawrence had been
closed except for local traffic. The only incursions had been two bizarre and
very risky tries at snatching escaped U-boat POWs from shore. One didn’t
come off. The other was a real thriller. It showed to what lengths Admiral
Donitz would go to bolster the U-boat man’s morale.
Prisoners in a camp near Belleville, Ontario, included the legendary ace
Otto Kretschmer, captured in 1942. They talked to U-boat headquarters by
mail passed through the Red Cross using a memorized code. It took a year, but
finally a rendezvous was set in Baie des Chaleurs. A mass escape from the
176
camp via a tunnel was foiled but Kapitanleutnant Wolfgang Heyda slipped
away and made it to the rendezvous by train. However, the plan had been
uncovered by searching mail and a party under the ubiquitous Lieutenant
Commander Debby Piers was waiting on the spot, complete with radio,
portable radar, and a cordon of ten ships flung across the bay. The aim was to
capture the rescue boat.
U-536 slipped in and quietly waited off the appointed spot right on time.
Heyda was hauled in by Piers’s party from the beach but the U-boat twigged
to the ship activity and crept away. Had Donitz got one of his men back to
Germany, Kretschmer especially, it would have been a remarkable coup.
From spring, 1944, joiners for ocean convoys ran to and from Quebec
again. All was peaceful in the Gulf until September. Then the corvette Norsyd
put a U-boat down off Anticosti and drew a Gnat in return. It missed. The
frigate with a convoy well up the river mouth was hit and lost sixty feet
of her stern. In early November, when traffic had dwindled, a grain ship was
torpedoed in the same area. The Gulf asdic conditions still had the escorts
baffled.
At the end of November the corvette Shawinigan, with USCG Sassafrass,
escorted the routine run by the ferry Burgeo from Sydney to Port aux Basques.
The Caribou tragedy of 1942 was a very live memory and U-boats were
certainly about. But NOIC Sydney detached the U.S. ship without relief,
leaving the lone corvette for the ferry’s return run. Then Shawinigan went off
on an independent patrol, planning to meet the ferry in the morning. That
was the second mistake. If she did run into a U-boat singlehanded she’d be no
match.
In the morning Burgeo left Port aux Basques on schedule, but in the fog
outside she found no escort waiting. Mistake three, by the Master: he ignored
standing instructions and headed for Sydney unescorted. Mistake four, by the
Master again: he kept radio silence and didn’t report Shawinigan as “not met.”
Only when he got to Sydney at 6 p.m. did the navy know the corvette was
missing. Eight hours of precious daylight search time were lost. Over the next
three days searchers combing the icy waters found carley floats, flotsam, and
finally six bodies. Shawinigan had been hit in clear moonlight by a Gnat fired
at 3,000 yards from U-1228. All eighty-five of her company died, victims of a
train of blunders.
In the meantime there was running warfare along the convoy lanes. On 10
September a Liberator of RCAF 423 Squadron got a contact south of the
Hebrides. C5 ships Hespeler and Dunver moved in and sank U-484. Then the
frigate Chebogue, on a convoy in mid-Atlantic, was completely crippled by a
Gnat. In mid-October the frigate Annan, patrolling with EG 6 near the Faeroe
Islands, got a solid submarine contact and dropped a pattern. The group
searched but lost their quarry. Annan was RN-built, commissioned into the
177
RCN in June, and fresh from work-up at Tobermory. Leaving the area after
dark she got a radar contact astern, turned, and chased back.
Annan was by herself. The echo was, in fact, U-1006, damaged by the earlier
depth charges, making off on the surface. Tactical instructions said it was
deadly dangerous for a single ship to approach a U-boat now that they had the
Gnat. Also, it was important td “step aside” with a big alteration of course to
avoid the vicious weapon. But Lieutenant Commander C.P. Balfry raced
straight in, fired illuminating rockets, spotted the enemy, and opened fire with
all guns. A blistering return fire knocked out his radar but he pressed in and
fired depth charges right alongside the surfaced boat. One actually bounced
off the casing. Up she went, then down. The group arrived in time to pick up
forty-six prisoners. Annan got sole credit for the kill. The decision that wins a
battle can hardly be considered wrong.
Six frigates of EG 9 did a Russia convoy in December and were back with
the return run to Greenock on the Clyde for Christmas. Greenock had been a
famihar and friendly place to the Canadians since 1940. HMCS Niobe, the
navy’s manning and accounting depot, had been there from late 1941 in a
gloomy and drafty old mental institution. Parts of industrial Clydebank and
nearby Glasgow were very tough indeed, but Scots by and large were friendly
to Canadians. Ships could book ice at the arena in Paisley for a hockey game.
Eggs, milk, and cream could be found at farms. In nearby Gourock the Bay
Hotel escaped the bombs. It was run by a warm-hearted and steady-handed
lady named Jean Cook who will always be remembered as a generous friend
of the RCN. It seemed that Miss Cook had some secret Hne to Admiralty and
Western Approaches because she always knew who was in what ship and
what ship was where.
Christmas, 1944, was a time for optimism and high hopes. But the war
wasn’t over. On 21 December a merchant ship was torpedoed right in the
Hahfax approaches and a trooper was due to sail on Christmas Eve. There was
a major step-up in patrols. Among many others. Lieutenant Commander
Craig Campbell and the ship’s company of his Bangor sweeper Clayoquot
were called back from Christmas leave.
At mid-day on Christmas Eve, Clayoquot, another Bangor, Transcona, and
the frigate Kirkland Lake with Commander N.V. Clark, RCNR, in command
were sweeping about three miles from Sambro Light Vessel. Just as the off-
watch hands mustered in Clayoquot’s forward messdeck for grog a torpedo hit
her aft. It was a Gnat fired by U-806, the same boat that had hit the merchant
ship three days before. Clayoquot went down like a stone. The search force
grew quickly to fourteen escorts and seven MLs. Captain W.L. Puxley, RN,
Captain (D) Hahfax, ordered Clark in Kirkland Lake to take tactical command
on the scene (as, in fact, he already had in the time-honoured way). But four
hours later Puxley sent out the shore-based Staff Officer AS Training, an RN
178
officer senior to Clark, to take over. It was the kind of RN assumption of

superiority that really galled.
The massive search expanded systematically, assuming the U-boat was
making for deep water. In fact, U-806 lay doggo and dead quiet on the bottom
in shallow water right by the shipping channel between Hahfax harbour and
the point where Clayoquot went down. Her Captain had short U-boat experi-
ence but he was a cool customer. Hour after hour he lay with everything shut
down and his men dead still in the fetid air. He listened to the “circular-saw”
noises of the searchers’ Cats. He heard the gravel-scrape of their asdics along
his hull. Finally, near midnight, he tiptoed away from the scene. He didn’t
even show his snorkel for twenty more hours. His crew had their first breath
of fresh air forty hours after submerging. Then with batteries topped up and
the boat aired out, U-806 settled on the bottom and celebrated Christmas one
day late.
Three modern Type IX C boats were in Nova Scotia waters to read the New
Year’s signal from Admiral Commanding U-boats: “Our watchword remains
the same! Attack, let ’em have it, sink ships. Sieg Heil.” Grosadmiral Donitz
added, “The striking power of our Service will be strengthened in the New
Year by new Boats.”
This was no idle talk. Snorkel-fitted U-boats were very hard to find. In
British waters there were over 400 escort vessels and close to 400 Coastal
Command aircraft; Murray had around ninety ships and Eastern Air Com-
mand had ninety-four aircraft. It was taking an enormous force to keep things
even.
The German construction was taking a beating from the RAF. Nonetheless,
intelligence said they would very soon have seventy boats on patrol, including
twenty-five of the Type XXL These new boats ran sixteen knots submerged
with great endurance. They would put a whole new complexion on the battle.
The First Sea Lord warned of a devastating campaign that could cut seriously
into supphes for the land battle in Europe. There was a deadly sting in the U-
boat force’s tail.
Early in the New Year U-1232 sank two ships out of three in a convoy off
Egg Island, twenty miles from HaHfax. A major hunt geared up, but her
Captain sHpped in just two miles east of Sambro Light and caught a Boston-
Halifax convoy strung out in single line, coming in the channel like ducks in a
shooting gallery. He torpedoed three ships in thirteen minutes.
The frigate Ettrick sowed a string of depth charges in the right
neighbourhood, and in fact, ran right over the U-boat and actually ripped off
the forward net guard with her Cat. She didn’t know it at the time, but the U-
boat did. A massive search proved fruitless. Six merchant ships and one escort
in half as many weeks with no loss in return was good pickings. U-boat
headquarters planned a massive campaign. The action heated up.
179
In February the frigate SaintJohn killed her second U-boat in Moray Firth
on the northeast coast of Scotland. Then Trentonian was sunk off Falmouth.
Next La Hulloise, Strathadam, and Thetford Mines of EG 25, with Lieutenant
Commander Jeffry Brock, RCNVR, as Senior Officer, got a kill. In March New
Glasgow rammed a U-boat outside Lough Foyle. The others in EG 26 joined in
but Lieutenant Commander R(3ss Hanbury, RCNVR, of New Glasgow properly
got the credit.
The Senior Officer of EG 26 was Commander Ted Simmons, RCNVR, in
Beacon Hill. Ide had started his U-boat killing with Prentice in Ghambly in 1941
and got another in the Mediterranean. Of the eight frigates in these two
actions, six were commanded by officers of the RCNVR. Five years of hard
experience had turned the Saturday night sailors into highly competent sea-
going officers. These frigates were up-to-date, well manned, well trained;
they were first-class fighting ships.
In February and March a dozen U-boats made for the eastern seaboard and
either passed through or operated in Canadian waters. Group Seawolf of six
boats went out for the last pack attacks on the convoys. Two U.S. carriers and
twenty destroyers got four of them in a week. Through the late winter
months U-boat reports and contacts soared in Murray’s command. Two
frigate groups now worked out of Halifax and put in a lot of chasing, but
without any luck.
Early on 16 April the Bangor Esquimalt was on anti-submarine patrol in the
Halifax approaches. She was due to meet a sister ship, Sarnia, on independent
patrol in another sector, at 7 a.m. It was calm and clear and she had switched
off her old radar; it wouldn’t detect a U-boat periscope or snorkel anyway. She
pinged away with her even older asdic. It was only a slight improvement over
the first sets that went to sea under wraps in the 1920s. Like all her sister
minesweepers, even with a top crew and the best will in the world, Esquimalt
on her own was absolutely no match for a U-boat.
Close to Sambro Light Vessel at 6:20 that morning she ran right smack into
one. U-190 was lying quietly in the favoured spot waiting for a juicy target
when Esquimalfs asdic came scratching along her hull. It was like stepping on
a coiled snake. The U-boat Captain took a quick cut with his periscope at an
escort coming right at him. He snapped off a Gnat; it went straight home. The
ship’s asdic operator reported nothing. No one sent a radio message or even
fired a flare. The stricken ship went down in four minutes almost within hail
of the Light Vessel. Two of six carley float releases stuck fast because they
hadn’t been looked after.
PO Writer Terrence Manuel, just off watch at the depth-charge throwers,
had stripped to his shorts and stretched out in his mess for some shut-eye.
Somehow he popped out through a wall of water. He got to a floating kit bag,
helped a shipmate cling to it. As it slowly sank, PO Motor Mechanic Carl
180
Jacques spotted them from a carley float. He knew his messmate, Manuel,
couldn’t swim. He called, “Hold on. Scribe,” swam over, got them back to
the float. The effort in the bitter cold was just too much. Jacques died. His
friend Hved.
Like Manuel, most men were in light clothing, the Chief Bosun’s Mate in
red pyjamas, the Navigating Officer in shirt and shorts. Few had lifejackets
handy. The lessons of the North Atlantic weren’t taken to heart here. But the
sea was smooth, the shore near, Sambro Light Vessel not far off. Rescue must
be at hand.
The sun rose, bright and clear. Aircraft overflew, but they thought the
carley floats were fishermen. They didn’t even circle. The Hght vessel crew,
surely they’d seen the sinking and radioed in. But they must have been asleep.
Then two minesweepers approached. Cheers, shouts, frantic waving. The
sweepers’ officers of the watch and lookouts must have been asleep, too. In
horrified disbelief the survivors watched them pass within two miles, then
fade away. Spirits then sank as deep as their own lost ship - the water was like
ice; cold crept deep into the bones; men drifted off, and died.
It was seven hours before Sarnia came across the survivors and radioed the
first word on the sinking. Forty-four out of seventy perished with home and
safety a few short miles away, most during those fateful, unbelievable seven
hours.
This sinking had its deadly train of errors. Esquimalt wasn’t zigzagging.
Neither had she streamed her Cat - though, in any event, she wouldn’t have
had time to trip it. She was by herself. Why, with the harsh lessons of
Shawinigan, Clayoquot, and a multitude more, were any ships, much less those
ill-equipped Bangors, still sent out singly on patrol? The Board of Inquiry
didn’t put that tough question to Captain (D) or his Admiral. Neither did it
find out what happened to Sarnia's radio report made when Esquimalt didn’t
show up at the rendezvous. Did it get lost? Or did Operations ashore just
shrug it off? Some link in the chain failed, fatally. But there was no Court
Martial to reveal it.
Keeping an ill-equipped ship on her toes is doubly hard when doing dull
chores on your own doorstep, seemingly a long way from the action. On that
sunlit April morning, too, the war seemed all but over. Esquimalfs Captain,
Lieutenant Robert MacMillan, RCNVR, was experienced. He had won a DSC
and his promotion to Lieutenant Commander was on its way through. But
the U-boats were still out there, deadly to the end, and his ship wasn’t in top
gear. Neither were communications and operational control in the Atlantic
Command.
The search that followed the sinking, with every ship available, concen-
trated along the hundred-fathom line. But U-190's Captain did exactly what
his forerunner on the Sambro shooting range had done - bottomed in shallow
181
water and waited it out. Admiral Murray got a USN group to help with the
search. No one caught U-190 but destroyers USS Buckley and ReubenJames II -
familiar names on the North Atlantic - did sink U-879. The USN by now
deployed a huge anti-submarine force. Down the eastern seaboard the curtain
closed. It was the twihght of the U-boats’ war.
Esquimau was the Royal Canadian Navy’s last loss. In three weeks came
Germany’s final surrender, and with it events in Hahfax that would submerge
all else. Headquarters found the Board of Inquiry’s report “inconclusive” and
the file was closed. But wrapped up in Esquimalt and the men who died
needlessly that day were all the navy’s problems: equipment, manning, train-
ing, maintenance. Going right back to lack of pre-war poHcy, the navy began
the war with far too little. Then it had taken on too much, and after the long
years of war it was still too thinly spread.
RECKONING
The U-boats’ homeland was in flames behind them. The north German bases
and the building yards at Hamburg, Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, Lubeck were
smashed to rubble by the RAF ahead of the advancing armies. The U-boat
pens were too thick with reinforced concrete for the RAF’s Blockbusters, but
the cities were completely shattered.
In early May the Germans scuttled over a hundred U-boats in home waters.
Donitz cancelled the order but still more were sunk by their own crews. Out
at sea they “fought like Hons,” as Grosadmiral Donitz said of his own, until
the very end. It was on his order that they surfaced at last with black flags of
surrender flying. The deadly U-190 was brought into Bay BuUs south of St.
John’s and U-889 to Shelburne under the White Ensign of Canada’s navy. The
Battle of the Atlantic was won.
Surrender came with no answer to the remarkable new submarines. Had
Hitler understood his navy better, given more to his U-boats before the war,
paid less heed to Raeder and more to Donitz earHer, and allocated resources
sooner for the new types, Karl Donitz and his superbly fashioned U-boat
force could well have won Germany the war.
They started with fifty-seven operational boats, built well over 1,000; in
January, 1944, the fleet reached its peak of445. Among them they sank 2,603
merchant ships - 13.5 milUon tons - and 175 Allied warships. They killed
over 50,000 people. Five thousand U-boatmen were taken prisoner, and the
submarine war cost Germany 632 U-boats and 28,000 men lost at sea. Thus,
70 per cent of the 40,000 who went to sea in U-boats died fighting. No other
major formation in any war of modern record, anywhere, has suffered such a
ghastly toll. To fight to the end amid such carnage was a truly awesome feat of
arms. Their own numbers were comparatively small - a bad day’s casualties in
182
one battle on the Russian front. But their battle was the lynchpin of the war,
and they came within a hair of winning.
The RN and USN, too, had badly undercalled the U-boat threat and overes-
timated their ability to handle it. The right ships and equipment weren’t there
when the war started. Then there were serious failures in high-level decision-
making: the agonizing American delay in starting convoys in 1942; low
priority on long-range aircraft for the North Atlantic; spending air effort on
Biscay sweeps instead of concentrating it around the convoys; delays in
getting escort carriers into the Battle of the Atlantic.
This was the sole battle of the Second World War that ran its full five and a
half years. There were blunders in Naval Headquarters. Blunders in com-
mand. Blunders out at sea. But Canada’s navy, starting off with next to
nothing, learned to fight out there on the convoy lanes against the toughest
and the best. And they learned their hard trade more than passing well.
183
CHAPTER TEN
BEGINNINGS
AND ENDINGS
THE BEGINNING OF CANADIAN NAVAL AVIATION

THE ROYAL CANADIAN NAVAL AIR SERVICE OF 1918 WAS STILLBORN. ADMI-
ral Lordjellicoe included aircraft carriers in his 1920 proposals for Canada’s post-
war fleet, but the navy barely survived and could dream of nothing so ambitious
as its own aviation. The RCAF was responsible for shore-based maritime air, as
was the RAF. At the start of the war it was even less ready. Organizing, training,
and equipping to fight the U-boats took time and travail, just as it did in the navy.
Co-ordination between the two left a lot to be desired.
Seaborne aviation was crucial to controlHng the sea. The Royal Navy
hadn’t really grasped this and lagged behind Japanese and U.S. naval aviation
in peacetime and paid for it severely. But by 1942 the naval air lessons were
legion: defeat off Norway; the key roll of the Fleet Air Arm in the Mediterra-
nean in beating the Italian fleet and fighting convoys through; Bismarck caught
by some intrepid little Swordfish; Pearl Harbor; the sinking of Repulse and
Prince of Wales off Malaya; Midway and the mounting series of American
amphibious assaults. Then - right in the Canadian navy’s line of business -
the proven power of shipborne aircraft out with the convoys in the battle
against the U-boats.
Land-based air was vital, of course, and British experience had proved that
whatever uniform the air crew wore, they must be under naval operational
control. But distance and weather cut effectiveness. Every naval air expedient
had proved its worth against the U-boats: the CAM ships - merchant ships
with catapults that launched a lone single-mission fighter to shoot down the
Kondor reconnaisance-bombers; the MAC ships - cargo-carrying merchant
ships with lash-up flight decks and a clutch of creaking old Swordfish; the
first escort carrier, HMS Audacity, using fighters to put down U-boats in 1941.
184
BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS
Wherever naval shipborne aircraft came to bear, the balance tipped against the
submarine.
But naval aviation was vastly expensive and complex, and a very high-skill,
hard-risk business. Combat flying in the 1940s was tough enough. For naval
pilots, add the sad fact that most British naval aircraft were ludicrously
inadequate. Then throw in the problems of navigating with a plotting board
on one knee over the weather-plagued ocean to find pinpoint targets. Press in
your attack, then get back to your carrier that’s been dodging the enemy
unpredictably in the meantime. Pitch in the vagaries of weather and lack of
alternate airfields. Cap it off by landing on a ridiculously small, violently
heaving deck offering no room for error. Naval aviators, at any stage of
advancing technology, always have to be the very best. In any navy in those
war years their skill, bravery, ingenuity, joie de vivre, insouciance even, were
extremely high. They had to be, because so many died.
Early in the war a few adventurous Canadians had found their way into the
Fleet Air Arm. Ted Edwards joined the RCNVR and worked up to command.
He led his RN squadron of Wildcats and Swordfish against the super battle-
ship Tirpitz lying in a Norwegian ôrd in April, 1944. In the same operation
Lieutenant Commander Digby Cosh, RCNVR, commanded a squadron of
Wildcats, four other Canadians flew fighters and bombers, and two were
fighter direction officers in the fleet carriers.
In December, 1942, Admiralty, suffering the manpower shortage that had
so much effect on the shape of the RCN, asked for more Canadians to train as
Fleet Air Arm air crew but stay in the RCNVR, i.e., be paid by Canada. In
NSHQ, Acting Captains Nelson Lay (Director of Operations) and Harry
DeWolf (Director of Plans) jumped in. These two forward thinkers were Vice
Admiral Nelles’s operational advisers and they pushed hard to send people for
advance experience in RN escort carriers and get four “Woolworths” - escort
carriers cheaply built with merchant ship hulls - one for each of the Canadian
groups on the MOEF.
In the spring of 1943 Captain Lay went off for familiarization and fact-
finding in the States and the U.K. At the end of August, with DeWolf gone to
command Haida, Lay made a one-man report to the Naval Board. He recom-
mended a Royal Canadian Naval Air Service modelled on the RN’s Fleet Adr
Arm. That was pretty well pre-ordained. It struck no one as strange that Lay
had spent only two weeks with the USN compared to two months with the
RN. The navy was too RN-aligned to think otherwise. Technical matters and
subjects like whose aircraft to use didn’t enter seriously in the matter, and Lay
had had no air engineer or pilot to advise him.
He recommended that two escort carriers be procured and manned by the
RCN and shore-based maritime air be left to the RCAF. The air force agreed to
185
provide the shore support in Canada and that made for trouble after the war.
Adopting U.S. Navy pattern aviation from the start, which included shore-
based maritime air, would have shaped a very different future for Canada’s
navy. Had Lay made a pitch for it the RCAF would certainly have fought. Also,
he wouldn’t have had much support from Admirals Murray or Jones, the
operational commanders. They weren’t at all air-minded. At the time, too, the
task of getting the carrier end going loomed quite large enough in the sights
of the overstretched Naval Staff.
Things moved quickly. At the Quebec Conference of August, 1943, it was
clear the U-boat was under control. Production of escort vessels was cut.
Now the Allies’ aim, beyond the invasion of Europe, was on the Pacific.
Canadian navy recruiting and training were in full gear and Admiral Pound
wanted manpower. Escort carriers were needed for both oceans. Nelles and
the Naval Staff were determined to finish the war with a lot more than a small-
ship navy, and a balanced big-ship fleet certainly would want naval aviation. It
was as good as done.
Two escort carriers. Nabob and Puncher, built for the RN in Seattle, commis-
sioned in September, 1943, and February, 1944. The RN constructors didn’t
accept the American practice in things Hke watertight subdivisions, so the
ships moved to Vancouver for conversion. The RCN wanted anti-submarine
carriers but these were fitted for the strike role. The RN owned them and there
was no changing that. So that Canada wouldn’t be accepting Lend-Lease aid,
both ships stayed on the British books as “HMS.”
The RN provided the entire aviation component. Shore support came from
the RN on the eastern side of the Atlantic and from the RCAF on the west.
Captain Nelson Lay, the only senior RCN officer who had had even a few
weeks’ exposure to modern carrier operations, took command of Nabob.
Captain Roger Bidwell took Puncher.
Nabob picked up the RN’s 852 Squadron with their Avenger torpedo-
bombers in San Francisco in January, 1944, and headed east through Panama.
She had an unhappy start. In carriers the aviators and sailors work different
and often conflicting routines. In the best-ordered ships it’s not easy to keep
them hauling together. With some 300 RN air people, 500 inexperienced
Canadians doing the seamen’s chores, and the engine room manned substan-
tially by British merchant seamen on special RN engagements, this ship’s
company was a real dog’s breakfast.
As well, RN rates of pay were a lot lower than those of the Canadians. So
was the daily victualHng allowance. RN standard prevailed and the food was
terrible. On the very first takeoff the aircraft ditched. A mutiny by a few men
was nipped in the bud when the ship fortuitously went to action stations in
the Caribbean. When she got to Norfolk, Virginia, there were deserters,
mostly young new entries who apparently hadn’t bargained on going over-
186
seas. Lay had a problem on his hands and wouldn’t take his ship to sea until he
had things sorted out. He flew to Ottawa himself and got Canadian victual-
Hng scales all-round and RCN rates of pay for RN personnel other than the air
arm.
When Nabob got active in U.K. waters, things shook down. By July she
joined Home Fleet strikes on Norway. Tirpitz had been hit in the April strikes
and then she was attacked by midget submarines. But she was still a menace.
By mid-August the whole of the Home Fleet that hadn’t gone to the Indian
Ocean and the Pacific sallied from Scapa Flow on Operation Goodwood. It
wasn’t a patch on the scale of American carrier task forces in the Pacific but it
was the biggest air operation ever planned by the RN. The core of the attack,
Force 1, had three fleet carriers with a battleship, three cruisers, and thirteen
destroyers, including Algonquin and Sioux. Force 2 was Nabob and sister ship
Trumpeter. With their stately maximum of eighteen knots they were escorted
by five frigates.
They steamed north of the Arctic Circle through the summer’s constant
dayhght into the Barents Sea. Nabob's four Wildcats flew combat air patrols;
her Avengers flew anti-submarine. This was U-boat country and the risk was
high. Weather fouled the operation but three squadrons of Barracudas from
the big carriers scored several hits on Tirpitz. Eleven of the sluggish planes
were lost. Preparing for the second round, the escort carriers pulled westward
to fuel the destroyers.
It was smooth and clear as Nabob laid out her fuelling hose, and without
warning she was torpedoed. None of the escorts got a sniff of a submarine.
Eight minutes later, HMS Bickerton, the senior officer on the screen, was hit.
Nabob's torpedo, from U-345, had ripped a fifty-foot hole below her
waterline, starboard side aft. Her stern quickly sank by fifteen feet. Power
went off the board. The electric engine-room fans stopped. The temperature
soared to 150 degrees and main engines had to be shut down. The ship
wallowed, a sitting duck. Up on deck boats and floats were slipped, ready to
abandon ship. But far down in the dark and flooded recesses the damage
control parties under Lieutenant Denny Forrester and the engine and boiler-
room crews worked furiously to save their ship. There might be another
torpedo. Or she could take an instant plunge. They would go with her if she
did.
Groping in the dark, they gradually regained control. Emergency diesel
generators came on line. Power leads snaked to auxiliary switchboards. Porta-
ble pumps were wrestled into place. Pumping mains were patched and began
to draw. Flooding was hmited and held down. But the key engine-room
bulkheads bulged ominously inward from the enormous pressure of the sea
that had rushed in through the huge underwater wound. With every roll of
the ship they worked and creaked, ever nearer to bursting. Chief Shipwright
187
J.R. Ball coolly directed a complex timber-shoring operation to hold them

firm. He’d got his practice salvaging damaged ships in St.John’s.
Reports reached Lay on the bridge. Power restored, fans running again,
steam on the turbines. Nabob began to move. But now she had no boats or
floats. The injured and some 200 more were taken off by destroyer. The rest
worked furiously, ditching heavy gear or working it forward to improve the
trim. Gradually, Lay worked his crippled ship up to ten knots.
Early the next morning an HF/DF bearing, then a surface radar contact, said
a U-boat was moving in. Two Avengers, their pilots’ luck stretched to the
hmit, catapulted off the sloping deck. For three and a half hours they kept the
intruder down. That gave Nabob a safe lead. But landing with the carrier
moving at only ten knots and a sharp upwards slope to her deck called for
inspired flying. One made it; one crashed and smashed six others in the deck-
park. Live depth charges careened around the heaving deck. They were
coralled before they rolled, perhaps fatally, over the side. But the Avengers had
done their job.
More men were taken off by Algonquin, then a fierce gale blew in that
pounded the crippled carrier for eleven hours. The toil below was ceaseless.
Ball’s classic shoring job, using every piece of timber in the ship, held firm. At
last, five days and 1,100 miles since being hit. Nabob entered Scapa Flow under
her own steam. She got a hero’s welcome.
Right at the start of the war the fleet carrier Courageous had gone down
quickly, victim of a single torpedo. Sound damage control hkely could have
saved her. But it had been treated in a lot of peacetime ships as a rather
tiresome and grubby hobby of the engine-room department rather than a
responsibihty of aU hands. Harsh wartime experience brought in proper
control of watertight doors and hatches, training in fire-fighting and emer-
gency operation, pumping and flooding and providing auxiliary power.
Nabob's team had learned their business well.
Later, in drydock in Rosyth, bodies of fourteen of the twenty-one dead and
missing had to be recovered from the bowels of the ship. They had been down
there a month. Dockyard mateys refused the job so ship’s officers, fortified
with stiff belts of rum, manhandled the wretched remains of their lost ship-
mates up deck by deck by deck.
Nelson Lay could be proud indeed of the mixed bag of a ship’s company he
had led through such a testing time. Seamanship and damage control and
airmanship saved the ship. The sad irony after , such a monumental struggle
was that U.K. ship repair facilities were overtaxed. Nabob's damage was
judged too heavy for worthwhile repair. Her brief and gallant war was over.
In the meantime, in April, 1944, Puncher got to sea. She spent irksome
months ferrying aircraft and passengers across the Atlantic. Not until early
February, 1945, did she at last take on an operational load: fourteen Wildcats
188
of RN 881 Squadron and four Barracudas of 821. Then for the next two
months she was suddenly and fully in the war with five major operations off
the Norwegian coast. First she flew air cover for an inshore surface striking
force. Then she covered surface minelayers and flew fighter escort for mine-
laying Avengers from Premier, her RN sister ship. Ten days later the two escort
carriers were b^ck covering minesweepers and launching Barracudas to drop
mines. There were more strikes in March, and in early April another four-
carrier operation aimed at the U-boat base in Kdlbotn, Norway. But gales and
huge seas north of the Arctic Circle knocked it out.
That was the end of Puncher's short, sharp operational life. The RN didn’t
need her in the Pacific and after V-E Day she had a quick conversion to a
troopship. Bunks were welded in the hangar and until year-end she shuttled
Canadian troops from the Clyde to Halifax. In January, 1946, Bidwell took
her to Norfolk and turned her back to the USN, to whom, under Lend-Lease,
she actually belonged.
Canada’s two wartime carriers had proud, if brief, records. They were too
late and in fact wrongly fitted to play the part DeWolf and Lay had planned for
them with the Canadian escort groups in the North Atlantic. But they got
Canadian sailor’s feet wet in the complex, demanding business of running
carriers. Nabob and Puncher wrote the introduction to modern Canadian naval
aviation, a most important part of the navy’s story. On one of Puncher's
eastbound runs in October, 1945, she carried stores and a draft of men for the
ship’s company of HMCS Warrior. With that new Hght fleet carrier the story of
Canada’s own naval aviation would begin.
THE WRENS
The Women’s Royal Naval Service was a strong organization in Britain in the
Great War. WRNS of course right away became “Wrens” and it always seemed
to characterize the brisk and cheerful way that Jenny Wren got about the job.
Britain got women’s services going again before World War Two broke out.
Senior officers in Canada saw no place for women - other than as nurses, of
course, who had proved themselves with armies in former wars.
Then in the spring of 1941 the RAF proposed sending some of its Women’s
Auxihary Air Force to their training units in Canada. That did it. The RCAF and
the army started women’s services and began recruiting in the fall. NSHQ said
all they needed was twenty women as motor transport drivers. In the turmoil of
navy expansion women looked more like a problem than a solution. So the
navy was, a year behind the others. Only in January of 1942 was a Director of
Women’s Services appointed - a male. Captain Eustace Brock, RCNVR. Three
WRNS officers borrowed from the RN did a fine job getting things going.
Recruiting began with a selection committee of Captain Brock and Superin-
tendent Joan Carpenter, WRNS. Her rank was equivalent to Captain.
189
The WRNS was an auxiliary service but the WRCNS was part of the navy so
its people had regular naval ranks. Canadian female officers, however, wore
blue stripes on their sleeves like the British; gold remained a male prerogative.
In March, 1943, one of the original WRNS officers. Chief Officer (Com-
mander) Dorothy Isherwood, took over from Captain Brock. That Septem-
ber the top post was taken over by Canadian Commander Adelaide Sinclair,
who had been getting experience in the U.K.
At the outset 2,000 appHcations were on file. Sixty-seven were taken in for
a month’s training in Ottawa. A third of these became officers, the others
Leading Wrens, and that was the start. Young women across Canada, eight-
een to thirty-five, were urged to join the Wrens to release a man for sea
service. There were plenty of volunteers.
Their basic training centre in Galt, Ontario, was a requisitioned correc-
tional institute called the Grandview School for Girls. The first new entries
started training in October under Dorothy Isherwood. HMCS Conestoga com-
missioned officially on 1 June 1943 under command of Lieutenant Com-
mander Isobel Macneill, WRCNS, one of the original class. She was the only
woman in the Commonwealth to command an independent naval establish-
ment. Conestoga's origins provided steel bars for the windows and an oppres-
sive atmosphere. Tradition provided the names “Drake,” “Nelson,”
“Colhngwood,” and “Beatty” for the buildings. A strange urge to give
young women a salty edge to their talk gave everything shipboard names and
levied punishment for failure to use them. Thus the bus that shuttled Wrens
between “ship” and town became the “Hberty boat.” The kitchen was the
“galley,” the bathroom the “heads,” dormitory rooms were “cabins,” floors
“decks,” stairs “ladders,” corridors “gangways.” Doing one’s laundry was
“dhobeying,” nightly cocoa was “kye.” The lounge was the “fo’c’sle” and a
wooden platform beside the parade ground was called the “quarterdeck” and
demanded a salute on passing. When fire struck a dormitory block the occu-
pants were turned out by the cry “Abandon ship!”
To learn one of some forty specialist ratings. Wrens went to the main
naval schools. To the general astonishment of the average man of the day,
they proved every bit as good, and often more efficient in the same position,
as the men. Soon Wrens were not a burden but a very welcome addition.
Nearly 7,000 joined. Five hundred of them served in the U.K., many more
in Newfoundland, and some in the U.S. They did what their branch of the
navy set out to do - release men for service at sea - and they did it extra-
ordinarily well.
Wrens were an adventurous lot, but in today’s terms they were often
treated more as schoolgirls than as responsible young women. They suffered
some gallingly Victorian restrictions. They were not, of course, allowed in the
wet canteen in Stadacona, about the only place in Halifax where a sailor could
190
buy a glass of beer. But in their undaunted and high-spirited way they learned
to find their way around such things. And their very presence made life more
pleasant for the men.
Sailors Hves are womanless for long periods at the best of times. Ashore
they quite naturally look for girls. In overcrowded, woman-shy wartime
ports hke Halifax, St.John’s, and Londonderry, a dance to the Sally Ann juke
box, sharing a Coke, then walking a Wren home to the barracks gate gave a
man a hft. The cheerful girl’s voice on the radio circuit, or a neatly turned-out
Wren clambering aboard a corvette to take short-hand evidence at a Captain’s
investigation could lighten a forenoon’s work. There was no official statement
that an objective of Canadian women’s services was to improve male morale,
but the Wrens very definitely did. A more enlightened and reaHstic outlook
would have produced more Wrens earHer - it would have done a lot for
shoreside efficiency and for morale.
MEET THE NAVY

Some Wrens and sailors who had been in show business, and many who had
not, joined the company of the unique and highly successful wartime stage
musical Meet the Navy. It was the brainchild of Captain Joseph Connolly,
RCNVR, Director of Special Services. With the help of Hollywood director
John Farrow, a Volunteer Reserve officer, he reached Hollywood and Broad-
way for a top professional producer and a choreographer. There was no
shortage of volunteers and the cast topped 200.
It was wonderfully fast-moving, zestful, tuneful, and funny - a smash hit
from opening night in September, 1943. No one who heard John Pratt
singing “You’ll Get Used to It” in his peanut-sized cap and baggy stoker’s
coverall could take life in the navy too seriously again. After a year touring
Canada, they went to the U.K. Through V-2 rocket attacks Meet the Navy
played to packed houses at the London Hippodrome. They played for the
King and Queen and after V-E Day entertained Allied troops across Europe.
After a two-year commission the liveHest, best-looking, and undoubtedly the
most unorthodox ship’s company in the navy’s history paid off.
Meet the Navy brought light and laughter to Canadian sailors - badly
needed commodities in six years of war. Had some of that brand of creative
energy been applied earher at the roots of morale, the service could have been
happier and, by definition, more efficient. As it was there were serious short-
ages, especially in Halifax, of the things that would have eased a sailor’s life:
recreational facilities; pleasant places to have a drink without the stony-faced
Shore Patrol looking over the sailors’ shoulders; clean rooms to have a com-
fortable night away from an overcrowded messdeck; reasonable, respectable
rental accommodation so a man could have his wife and family near; many
more restaurants.
191
Halifax had suffered badly in the depression. It was run down and poor and
suddenly it was grossly overcrowded. Good-hearted citizens and volunteer
organizations did everything they could, but very little was done by any level
of government or by the navy itself to relieve the basic situation, to provide
amenities. The very name of HaHfax - “Slackers,” as it was called - brought
on a sailor’s scorn. The attitude grew, unhappily. By war’s end it had grown to
the point of serious explosion.
THE MERCHANT MEN

“The Battle of the Atlantic was not won by any Navy or Air Force, it was won
by the courage, fortitude and determination of the British and AUied Mer-
chant Navy.” So, at the end of the war, said Rear Admiral Leonard Murray,
Commander-in-Chief Canadian North Atlantic
Canada herself, worldwide trading nation that she was, had allowed her
peacetime merchant fleet to erode to a mere forty-one ocean-going ships. It
was as small a token as her navy. In the first months of war Britain’s coastal
fleet was hard hit and Canada sent twenty-five lakers that could squeeze
down the Lachine Canal. Six were at the beaches of Dunkirk; only nine
survived the war. Later, others left the lakes to serve around the world and
wartime building swelled the ocean-going ranks.
But Murray had his finger right on it. Had those embattled, rust-streaked
ships not kept sailing through the terrible years of loneHness, misery, and loss
after loss, the war itself would have been lost; all the vast effort, the blood, the
technology and skill thrown against the U-boats would have been to no avail.
Statistics were one thing. They told their ruinous, implacable tale. But what of
the will to continue? At the end of 1942 Winston Churchill himself had seen
sure death to the Allied cause, not so much in the struggle between the escorts,
aircraft, and U-boats, as in the simple human loss of heart of the merchant
seamen. It was his action to put the best of the escort groups on the Mid-
Atlantic that had pushed the RCN aside.
As to organizing shipping, the RCN’s Naval Control Service was ready at
the start under Commander Eric Brand in Ottawa and in the key ports, and it
stood the test. In Halifax, Commander Richard Oland, the Naval Control
Service Officer, sailed the first convoy on 16 September 1939, ran things
extraordinarily well, and died of endless overwork two years later just after
promotion to Captain and winning the OBE.
Ships even in convoy needed some self-defence, if only for their own
morale. A few pieces of old cannonry had been stored in Canada by Admi-
ralty and there was an embryo organization called Defensively Equipped
Merchant Ships or DEMS in HaHfax to fit them and provide men to match. At
first a ship would be lucky to have a turn-of-the-century 4-inch gun, a few
shells, a stripped Lewis machine gun, and a single navy DEMS gunner. Even-
192
4
Day and night, in the tower high above the narrow entrance to St.John’s, Wren
signallers handled huge volumes of traffic. Some 7,000 young women learned a
legion of naval trades to release men for sea duty. (National Archives of Canada)
Five of the eight motor torpedo boats of the 29th Canadian MTB Flotilla race across
the Channel at their full 39 knots. These “G” type boats were 72 feet long with a
crew of 17. They carried a 6-pounder gun forward, two 20mm, and two torpedoes.
Here, though, for the invasion, their torpedo tubes have been replaced by depth
charges for attacking submarines and manned torpedoes. (National Archives of
Canada)
Kapuskasing, an Algerine minesweeper fitted for escort duty, fuels from a tanker in
one of the last convoys of the war. Escorts’ fuel was always a problem but underway
fuelling was only introduced in the convoys m 1942. This astern method was slow
but safer for merchant ships and the less powerful and less responsive escorts than
was the alongside method familiar with fleet units. Vancouver is on the right. The
photo was taken from Barrie's bridge. (National Archives of Canada)
The asdic hut wedged in forward of the open bridge m corvette Cobourg is a tight
squeeze. Cohourg was one of the twenty-seven corvettes commissioned in Canada m
1943 and 1944 with increased endurance and extended forecastle, mostly with gyro
compasses and considerably better asdic than the originals. (National Archives of
Canada)
V-E Day, 8 May 1945, in Halifax a
day of shame. This scene on Bar-
rington Street, at first glance, looks
high-spirited enough for an old naval
town with a couple of centuries of
scuffles. But the rampage by service-
men and civilians was destructive.
The breach between the navy and the
city took many years to heal. {Mari-
time Command Museum, N.D. Brodeur
Collection)
HMCS Uganda (Quebec from 1952 to 1956) runs with Task Force 57, the fast carriers
and heavy ships of the British Pacific Fleet, in the summer of 1945. Uganda was
designed at 8,800 tons, 555 feet, 30 knots speed, with nine 6-inch guns, four twin
4-inch anti-aircraft mountings, and a crew of 730. (National Archives of Canada)
The deck landing control officer or batsman in Warrior in late 1946. The job took
experience and a fine pilot’s eye. This human link in the hazardous business of land-
ing on a carrier’s deck was only eliminated by the RN invention of the mirror land-
ing aid, and the angled flight-deck of the early fifties. (National Archives of Canada)
Wave-off] This Sea Fury, hook down to catch the arrester wires stretched across
Magnificent’s flight deck, comes in too low, to be waved off by the batsman to try
again. The batsman and his assistant are diving for the safety net, lower right. The
British-built Fury’s engine was very powerful but not designed for the rapid throt-
tle changes needed by carrier aircraft. (National Archives of Canada)
Haida in Korean waters, her heavy armament turned in for two twin 4-inch mounts
and a Canadian-built twin 3-inch 50-calibre aft for anti-aircraft use, new radar, and
Squid for anti-submarine. {National Archives of Canada)
Vice Admiral Harold Grant, the

Chief of Naval Staff, on Cayuga's
quarterdeck with her Captain (and
Commander Canadian Destroyers
Pacific), Captain Jeffry Brock, along-
side in Toyko in October, 1950. This
was Admiral Grant’s farewell tour to
the Korean War theatre before turn-
ing over as CNS to Vice Admiral
Mainguy. {Department of National
Defence, courtesy Mrs. H.T. Grant)
Grumman Avengers, fitted for ASW,
fly over HMCS Ma^niftcent in October,
1950. In “Maggie’s” wake is Huron,
who will move out to the port quar-
ter as “plane guard” during flying on
or off the deck. {National Archives of
Canada)
The backwash of war. A junk, loaded with refugees and flying the Republic of
Korea flag, works its way out of Chmnampo. Smoke rises from the fires set by gun-
fire from Cayuga, HMAS Bataan, and USS Forrest Royal, under Captain Brock’s com-
mand. Such craft were a constant problem as they could sow mines and carry
infiltrators. The great number of genuine refugees were helped whenever possible
by the ships with food and medical aid. [National Archives of Canada)
Dirty North Atlantic weather, summer, 1953. Ma^nificenfs Avengers are lashed
down and flying suspended in weather beyond the limit for safety. {National Archives
of Canada)
HMCS Bonaventure enters Grand Harbour, Malta, m late 1958 during NATO exercises
in the Mediterranean. She had commissioned in 1957. Her flight deck, only 700 by
80 feet, and top speed of 22 knots would have daunted less determined aviators. The
angled flight deck, mirror landing aid, and steam catapult made it possible to fly the
Banshee fighters, but for this exercise they were left behind in favour ot a full com-
plement of anti-submarine Trackers and H04S helicopters {National Archives of
Canada)
St. Laurent in 1957. The first of the distinctive breed of Canadian-designed warships
of the 1950s and 1960s, she rides heavy seas with the ease and stability built into her
to handle the worst of North Atlantic weather. Commissioned in 1955, she was
converted to carry a helicopter and variable depth sonar in 1963 and finally paid off
in 1974. {Department of National Defence)
Chaleur, Thunder, and Fundy snug in St.John’s harbour below the Marconi Tower in
1961. They were among the twenty 390-ton wooden-hulled minesweepers
designed and built in Canada in the early fifties. {Department of National Defence)
tually they carried quite a range of simple armament and a nucleus of DEMS
sailors to look after it and train the crew for action. Some 1,600 Canadians
served in DEMS.
How effective were they? Independent ships sometimes staved off attackers
or at least made them spend torpedoes. In convoy they sometimes put a U-
boat off its mark. Shells and dying tracer could point to an enemy or pepper a
friend. Always, though, gunfire did the heart some good. The oiler or the
fireman in the tanker’s bowels had a dog’s chance if torpedoed. At least he
could feel some satisfaction in the whump and shudder of his own ship’s gun,
whether it hit anything or not.
The vital thing was the merchant seaman’s spirit, and the Germans knew it.
They used radio broadcasts. Agents swarmed in neutral ports, especially in
the U.S., at dockside bars and seamen’s hangouts. They tilled a fertile field.
The merchant seaman’s life was mostly wretched and ill-paid through the
depression years. Now it was almost unreheved misery. The “Merchant
Navy” wasn’t a navy. Only elite lines like Cunard had esprit, uniform, pride
of service, organized man-management, and scope for initiative or ambition.
The vast majority simply ground on at thejob because there was nowhere else
to go, or it was less odious to them than the army.
Men under foreign flags whose lands were overrun hved without families
and homes and without hope. They heard the endless Axis chant that the
British would fight to the last Greek, Dutchman, Norwegian, Dane, French-
man, Belgian, or Pole. The lascars. East Indian and African hands serving
their outcast nomad’s hfe under British flags, had thin prospect of ever seeing
their homes. Ashore, the merchant seaman had few of the amenities of the
uniformed services and none of their panache. They too often drew contempt
because they weren’t in uniform. A cheap Httle lapel badge with MN on it
didn’t impress.
Heap on this the weakness of the escorts, the nightmare of being herded
into convoys only to be killed, seeing the next in hne vanish in a sheet of flame,
friends dying in the oil-layered, icy sea. They shared a cheerless forecastle
with men twice or thrice torpedoed, reached harbour to face a single certainty
- going out again. Nobody looked out for the merchant seaman. So long as
their ships lined up with the convoys, kept in station, refrained from making
smoke or pumping bilges, showed no lights outboard, and weren’t torpe-
doed, nobody cared. And even when they were torpedoed, how often did the
navy stop to pick them up?
By mid-summer of 1940 Eric Brand’s Trade Division had recorded eighty-
seven ships that missed their convoy sailing in Halifax. There was a growing
shortage of alongside berths, dockside labour, bunker fuel, loading equip-
ment, and, of course, ship repair. Better late than never, a new Controller of
Ship Construction and Repairs was set up with the legislative teeth to get
193
things on a war footing. But there was another factor, far more difficult -
“crew trouble.” Ships were being delayed by sit-down strikes (mutinies, by
their proper name), deliberate damage to engines, desertion, refusal of duty.
Then Admiralty warned that time-fuzed explosives could be planted in ships
by enemy agents in American ports. In HaHfax Commander Oland set up a
Naval Boarding Service to exarhine cargo manifests and search for explosives
and saboteurs.
By great good fortune all of the few involved were bright, sensitive to
human factors, practical, and energetic. The navy ratings chosen had had pre-
war merchant service. Very quickly, in getting about their ship searches, they
began to hear the gripes and groans of the merchant seamen and their genuine
concerns. The senior hand. Able Seaman Allan Oxner, put his CO, Lieutenant
Frederick Watt, RCNVR, into the picture. Watt’s steady hand won the confi-
dence of ships’ officers, the co-operation of the sound ones, and the respect of
all. His friendly, efficient, smartly dressed sailors - always with gleaming
boots, blancoed belts and gaiters, and bayonets at the hip - solved many a
problem on the spot. Some they handled with their fists. Over cigarettes and
mugs of tea they became a respected and friendly finger on the pulse. In
Halifax the merchant seaman’s grievances found the Hght and didn’t fester in
the f’o’csle.
Information, problems, insights came via Oxner to Watt: a malcontent, an
agitator, a heavy drinker or a brutal officer, a thieving steward or an utterly
incompetent cook, a chronically leaking crew compartment, undermain-
tained or undermanned machinery. Watt then dealt directly with ships’ cap-
tains and officers. If necessary he took problems to his boss. Commander
Oland had earned the confidence of ships’ masters right at the start of the war.
Problems were quickly aired and adroitly handled. Eric Brand, now a Cap-
tain, saw the value of this quite unorthodox network. He brought Ted Watt to
conferences on North America-wide naval control matters.
Volunteer groups led by the Navy League sent warm clothing and com-
forts to merchant seamen as well as to the navy. The Boarding Service discov-
ered filching by some ships’ stewards so they took over distribution. HaHfax
women bundled hundreds of thousands of magazines and the Boarding
Service deHvered them in their launches, too. The same with 78,000 ditty bags
and four miUion cigarettes and special Christmas cheer. The system spread to
other Canadian ports. The Boarding Service became the friends of the mer-
chant men where before they had none. The link to the navy strengthened.
New warmth seeped through the battered, seaworn ships. In Canadian ports
someone Hstened, someone cared.
In 1941 Eric Brand got major reforms roUing. Manning pools in the main
ports provided decent accommodation and recreation, medical services, and
pay between ships for aU Allied merchant seamen. They made Hfe far more
194
pleasant and also made it easier for shipowners to muster crews. Under a new
Merchant Seaman Order a Boarding Service officer with an RCMP officer
could hold any crew member they believed might delay a ship’s sailing. Now
they could back ships’ masters or deal with them smartly if they were the
problem themselves. Time and again this cleared the decks for sailing.
Word reached Britain, where Admiral Noble was grapphng with these
very problems. He had Ted Watt brief him, and he listened well. Watt had
come across for familiarization with Oxner and Stoker First Class “Rocky”
Wolfe. Wolfe was an experienced union man, and Watt took him to meet
Charles Jarman, secretary of Britain’s National Union of Seamen. Like Admi-
ral Noble, Jarman recognized experience, competence, and results. He threw
his influence into getting co-operation from his huge membership in the
merchant ships.
One RCNVR Lieutenant, a few sailors, and Canadian initiative had a large
hand in beating that truly menacing and nearly fatal undercurrent of the war
at sea. Ted Watt, OBE, was the right person in the right place and time. So was
Able Seaman, later Chief Petty Officer A1 Oxner, British Empire Medal. And
so, too, was their immediate boss, Richard Oland, and Captain Eric Brand,
who won his OBE for the superb job he did in Trade.
Trade, when you got right down to it, was at the heart and core. Canada
built over 400 merchant ships for the Allies, including 150 run by Park
Steamship Company, a Canadian crown corporation. All told, 210 ocean-
going merchant ships sailed in the war at sea under Canada’s Red Ensign.
Thirty were lost, and with them went 1,064 Canadian merchant seamen. It
is a poor epitaph to their gallant, dogged war that the Canadian Merchant
Marine died from failure of government policy after it was over. Sixty per
cent of the nation’s trade - its lifeblood in war or peace - must move by sea,
yet the Canadian Merchant Marine of those fighting days has never
been revived.
HERO’S FAREWELL
On 7 May 1945 Germany surrendered. The 8th of May was officially V-E
Day. In every city and town and village, every ship and unit, every service
mess and canteen throughout the Allied world, celebration was the order of
the day. In naval ports like Portsmouth tens of thousands, service and civiHan,
surged happily through the streets, singing, filling the pubs and themselves to
overflowing. There were impromptu bonfires. Here and there were broken
windows and broken heads. There was isolated excess. But it was happy.
Delirious. A true celebration.
In Halifax it was an ugly outburst of all the pent-up frustrations and
resentments that had grown between the sailors and the city - their enforced
home for nearly six years. Without doubt the Command did too little to
195
prepare. So did the city. Movie houses in Halifax and Dartmouth had refused
the Mayor’s request to stay open. Of the fifty-five eating places in the whole
area, only sixteen were open on the 7th of May and six on V-E Day. The
provincial Hquor stores were shut tight on both.
At HMCS Stadacona, the naval barracks, there was nothing to do but go to
the wet canteen, the only drinking place for sailors in the entire city. No senior
officer had had the foresight to organize any form of entertainment, attrac-
tion, or celebration in the barracks or the dockyard. The “gangway was
open,” that is, men could come and go as they pleased. When the canteen
closed at 9 p.m. on the 7th there was a general movement downtown. Some
streetcars were smashed en route. Three Hquor stores were ransacked.
The following day it was “open gangway” again. The only event organized
was a huge gathering on the Garrison Grounds and a parade with Rear
Admiral Murray and the other service chiefs taking the salute. The time-
honoured signal, “Splice the main brace,” flew at the Admiral’s yardarm in
the dockyard. In the ships men drew their daily rum plus the extra tot for all
hands. Most celebrated on board. But up at Stadacona the wet canteen ran out
of beer at one in the afternoon. Sailors joined soldiers, airmen, and civilians
milling around in the city with nothing to do, smashing windows and brew-
ing trouble.
The hquor stores were attacked again. Civilians cheered sailors on, then
looted the stocks far more systematically. In one of the saner moves of the day.
Colonel Sydney Oland, the head of the old brewing family, joined his ware-
house staff and gave a case of beer and his personal thanks to each sailor until
he ran out. Along Barrington Street boisterous skylarking turned ugly. The
crowd became a mob. Civilians in serious numbers came to steal. Window-
breaking turned to looting. Police and Naval Shore Patrol had lost control.
The centre of Halifax was torn apart.
In the morning armed soldiers moved in from out of town. Mayor Allan
Butler broadcast on the radio: “I speak to the solemn protests of the citizens
against the Canadian navy. It will be a long time before the people of Halifax
forget this great crime.” In fact, when the dust had settled it was generally
agreed that while sailors took the lead in smashing windows and breaking
into liquor stores, civilians did most of the looting. Pictures in the papers
confirmed it.
But it was a day of shame, a day of disgrace. And for such days heads must
roU, and fast. The government appointed a one-man commission in Mr.
Justice Roy Kellock of the Supreme Court. The poHce blotter showed 152
arrested for simple drunkenness, and nineteen airmen, thirty-four naval rat-
ings, forty-one soldiers, and 117 civilians charged with various disorders. The
judge’s summation: the Naval Command had failed to plan, hadn’t kept their
people off the streets, and hadn’t stamped out disorders early enough or with
196
enough energy and force. No finger was pointed at the other services -
Halifax was a navy town.
Admiral Murray faced the civic officials’ accusations squarely. It was the
civilian population that had done most of the damage and looting. Whether
he hadn’t given the right personal direction or was let down by his officers, he
didn’t argue. For what the navy had or hadn’t done he took full responsibility
on himself. All Canada was shocked by the Halifax riots. The navy, certainly
not blameless but by no means alone, was seen as the scapegoat for the whole
unhappy event. In the glorious moment of victory it drew damnation for the
day rather than paeans of praise for those finest fighting years.
Yet, the Judge hadn’t put his finger on the real underlying cause. The guilt
for that was far more widely spread. Halifax was a city swollen beyond all
reasonable bounds. The Atlantic provinces had been far behind the rest of
Canada economically for fifty years. The depression had widened the gap.
There were rotten slums in HaHfax, verging on the dockyard. Young men and
women coming from elsewhere found the core of the city dingy, unpainted,
run down. Its population of 65,000 very nearly doubled during the war.
There were few enough amenities for its own population and not enough
resilience or entrepreneurial spirit to expand. Federal policies, deliberately
focusing industrial development in Ontario and Quebec, had done next to
nothing for Atlantic Canada.
Apart from barracks blocks, between 1939 and 1943 only 776 dwelling
units were added to the city. The influx reached 55,000. In spite of a booming
Canadian economy no money, federal or provincial, was put into housing. In
fairness, Haligonians suffered from the overcrowding, too. Among them
hved a generous share of very warm-hearted people. But a lot of landlords
gouged and gouged deep. A navy man who brought his young family down
at great expense on his meagre pay counted himself lucky to find a single
room. Unlike England, it was a long expensive train ride home, only possible
if a man had a rare long leave.
Living in their crowded, spartan little ships or in the bleak barracks block,
the men lacked welcome and comfort ashore. They queued up in the rain to
get into the Green Lantern or one of the other two sizable restaurants. None
of them was licensed. The only place they could get a glass of beer was the
cavernous wet canteen at Stadacona under the baleful eyes of the Shore Patrol.
No girls were allowed there, not even the Wrens. Beer and spirits otherwise
had to be bought at the provincial liquor store or from bootleggers at outra-
geous cost. And, unless a man had a room ashore, he drank it in an alley and
polished it off because he couldn’t take it back aboard. From 1941 the liquor
stores were closed on Saturdays.
Private funds and volunteer energy opened hostels. The Ajax Club was a
pleasant place with comfortable rooms, a library, and a garden behind where a
197
sailor could relax over magazines and a beer. But the outlook of some Haligo-
nians was as narrow as Nova Scotia’s liquor laws. The club was shut down on
complaint by the thin-Hpped vestry of the neighbouring church. The Ajax
group then arranged hospitality in private homes. There were hostels -
YMCA, Salvation Army, Knights of Columbus, Merchant Seamen’s Club -
but not nearly enough to go around, and hardly anywhere could one get a
clean comfortable bed for a night’s or weekend’s break from the ship.
Straight numbers, and prejudice, too, made it hard for a sailor to meet a
decent girl. Prostitutes trooped into town. They paid the rents that a sailor
who wanted to bring his family down to HaUfax couldn’t afford. The whores’
trademarks became white galoshes in the gloom of rain-lashed streets, stand-
up sex in alleyways, and a sky-high rate of venereal disease.
Officers had much readier social access and more money, but not much. An
acting Lieutenant Commander, Captain of a destroyer and group senior officer
to boot, got $5 a day! Officers had their own comfortable club-Hke messes
ashore and afloat, however, with Hquor and a good standard of food. Stemming
from the RN heritage, built on British society, they were better off than their
men by a very big margin. Probably they didn’t feel the squeeze enough.
In this whole sea of conditions of service, the old RN chart wasn’t right for
Canada. The traditional divisional system, where a ship’s officer saw to the
performance, discipline, advancement, and welfare of his men, was basically
sound. But wartime officers were short on training themselves. In the turmoil
of war the system badly needed support by proper social and welfare services
ashore. The Canadian, generally with a higher standard of hving, didn’t have
the RN sailor’s stoic acceptance of harsh conditions. On the other hand, he
lacked the well-developed British gift for making do and drumming up
amusement of his own. For sport and recreation, Halifax was nearly as bereft
as Scapa Flow. The one quite inadequate gymnasium was turned into hving
space early in the war. The Stadacona recreation centre, with pool, gym, squash
courts, and bowling alleys, didn’t open until 1944. And at that it was only
adequate for a navy one-fifth the size.
In June, 1943, as Debby Piers had reported from sea, the sailor on the
Newfy-Derry run had little to look forward to at either end. Not until 1944
was a Special Service Officer appointed to Londonderry and a recreation
camp set up. It had taken Captain Rollo Mainguy’s personal efforts as Captain
(D) St. John’s to organize a camp there earlier. It was Mainguy, too, plus the
generosity of businessman Leonard Outerbridge (later Lieutenant-Governor
of the province), who started the Seagoing Officers’ Club. The Crowsnest, up
a teetering flight of wind-lashed steps in a warehouse attic, was famed the
breadth of the Atlantic and written in naval posterity as a tight little haven for
relaxation - rowdy or restful as the choice might be.
198
In St.John’s, in Londonderry, in Boston, in Argentia, wherever Americans

went, what they did for their own showed how poorly the RCN provided for
theirs. By reasonable North American mid-twentieth-century standards,
Canada’s navy looked after its people very badly indeed. The senior officers,
reared in the Royal Navy, sought to shape young Canadians to its mould. It
was an uneasy-and often painful fit. But war was no time to cast a new mould.
That would have to wait.
Attitudes breed attitudes. To the great majority right through the wartime
navy, “Slackers” was the place you didn’t want to be. And, sad to relate, when
word flashed around the Fleet that “Slackers had got it,” there was a boister-
ous, bitter cheer. It was the only Canadian city that had really been in the
war’s front Hne, had seen its ravages firsthand: haggard survivors and the
shrouded dead; wounded ships staggering in for repairs to fight again; gunfire
and explosions that meant death. Of all cities, Halifax should have seen
rejoicing at war’s end. But it finished there in anger and bitterness and left a
deep and lasting scar.
And Rear Admiral Leonard Murray, who had steadily, implacably fought
the U-boats, who had led the fighting navy through the most terrible of times,
who more than anyone had shaped a real and potent fighting force, went
down in disgrace. The pohticians must have a scalp. No one stood on his
behalf. From the Chief of Naval Staff and long-time rival. Vice Admiral G.C.
Jones, Leonard Murray got no real support. An officer and gentleman, he
took the whole load and buttoned his lip. He retired early, in September, 1945,
left the country of his birth for good and all, and went to live in England. A
fine career of dedicated service was unalterably wrecked.
Leonard Murray, from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, the first Commander
of the Canadian North Atlantic, was deeply and deservedly respected by the
seagoing navy. He was neither colourful nor brihiant, yet he was a hero, a
dogged hero, though Canadians resist that word. His name should never be
forgotten. The irony of his fife was that his downfall came the very day his
arch-enemies, the U-boats, surfaced to surrender.
PACIFIC WAR
There was still Japan to fight. Pearl Harbor, then the loss of Singapore in
March, 1942, and the American collapse in the Philippines had taken Allied
fortunes to the depths. From the Battle of Midway in June, 1942, however, the
Americans were on the offensive. Marines landed in Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands that August. By July, 1944, the greatest seaborne campaign
of all history had taken the mounting might of America across the Pacific
island stepping stones to the conquest of Saipan. By that time the ceaseless
and skilful USN submarine war against Japan’s merchant fleet had all but
199
choked the country off from Southeast Asia and its essential sources of
supply.
Japan started the war with some 6 million tons of merchant shipping. They
increased to 10 million by capture and new construction but ended up with
less than 2 million tons, mostly small wooden coasters. They lost over 2,100
vessels and submarines accounted for 60 per cent. With a far smaller fleet than
Donitz’s and less than 10 per cent of his losses, the Americans actually did to
Japan what the U-boats had so nearly done to Britain.
Canada’s projected Pacific naval force was to be 13,000 men and some sixty
ships: two hght fleet carriers, two cruisers, a flotilla of fleet destroyers, thirty-
six frigates, and eight Castle-class corvettes. Six more destroyers, including
the three unfinished Canadian-built Tribals, and two dozen escorts were
earmarked as operational reserve. It was to be a sizable contribution. This was
no escort fleet any more; it was the big-ship kind of navy, the balanced fleet so
long the aim of Canada’s admirals.
The first to head for the Pacific was the 6-inch cruiser HMCS Uganda. She
was taken over from the RN while refitting in Charleston, South Carohna, and
commissioned on 21 October 1944. Her first Captain was Rollo Mainguy.
Apart from him, his Executive Officer, Commander Hugh Francis Pullen,
and a handful of officers and senior hands, most had served in nothing larger
than a corvette. An old sailors’ superstition against changing a ship’s name is
the only apparent reason for keeping the British-colonial identity rather than
making her Canadian.
Mainguy took her to Halifax for stores, to Scapa Flow for work-ups, then
east via Suez and on to Sydney, Australia. There, on 1 March 1945, shejoined
the Fourth Cruiser Squadron of the British Pacific Fleet. Events were moving
fast. Two weeks before, U.S. Marines had landed on Iwo Jima, then on
Okinawa, 340 miles south of Japan itself - though it would take eleven weeks
of bitter fighting to subdue it.
For the Canadians this was a new kind of war. The submarine threat was
minor and random. A huge fleet of transports, landing ships, and special craft
to move the armies had been formed. The carrier task force was the mighty
weapon to control the sea. Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers ringed the
carriers, defending them from air and surface attack. Alternately, they backed
the landing forces and bombarded for them.
Another vital element was the Fleet Train. The Pacific Fleet had to live at
sea many miles from established bases. Its fuel, its ammunition, its supplies
and provisions, its spare parts, its replacement aircraft all went forward with
it. Repair ships and floating drydocks, store ships and hospitals, moved with
the surge of war. Everything was afloat. Atolls with their protecting reefs
became naval bases overnight. The RN had forgotten some of its time-
honoured principles and become base-bound in the nineteenth century. It was
200
still so minded well into World War Two and they had plenty to learn from the
U.S. Navy.
Uganda left AustraHa in late March and joined Task Force 57. This was the
bulk of the British Pacific Fleet - four fleet carriers, two 14-inch-gun battle-
ships, six cruisers, including Uganda, and two flotillas of destroyers. Their job
was to stop enemy aircraft from getting through to Okinawa. Day after day,
strike after strike flew off to hit the staging airfields on the Shakashima Islands
and Formosa. The enemy struck back with kamikazes.
On 1 May the battleships and cruisers moved in to blast airfields in the
Shakashimas. While that was going on two of the carriers were hit. Then right
on the heels of a returning air strike, the Japanese flew in a massive attack. The
heavy ships formed around the carriers in the “iron ring.” Up went an
enormous barrage, a sky pocked with airbursts, crisscrossed with tracers.
Kamikaze pilots flew in to their death. They hit both Victorious and Formidable.
But the British carriers shrugged them off. In half an hour the fires were out,
decks cleared away, and both were flying off again. Their armoured steel
flight decks were far tougher than the U.S. carriers’ wood.
By mid-July, the whole might of the combined U.S. and British forces,
under Admiral “Bull” Halsey, moved on the southern Japanese home island of
Honshu. Aircraft smashed at ships, naval bases, airfields, and the industries
around the Inland Sea, then at Tokyo itself. Lieutenant R.H. “Hammy” Gray,
RCNVR, leading a strike from Formidable, was heavily hit by gunfire but
pressed in to sink a Japanese destroyer and was killed. Already gazetted for the
DSC, his last courageous flight won him Canada’s only naval Victoria Cross
of the war.
On 28 July, the British Task Force pulled back to the replenishment area.
When she’d topped up, instead of going back to the battle, HMCS Uganda
headed for Esquimalt. She did so in silence and without cheers, the only ship
in recorded naval history whose own company had actually voted her out of a
war.
This stain on the navy’s history stemmed from a politically self-serving
decision made by the Canadian government three months before. Prior to
that, in November, 1944, reinforcements for the hard-fighting Canadian
army in Europe were so badly needed that Mackenzie King withdrew his
dead-set opposition to sending conscripts overseas. By spring an election was
in the offing and King announced in the House of Commons on 4 April that it
was “not intended to detail men for service in the Pacific.” Those in forma-
tions directed against Japan would be “chosen from those who elect to serve
in the Pacific Theatre.”
The Prime Minister did this against the unequivocal advice of all the
service heads. Now each man in every service had to sign an official form. If
he volunteered to serve in the Pacific he got thirty days’ special home leave
201
before he went; if he didn’t he stayed in line to be released, to go home and get

first crack at civ vie life and a job.
Captain Wallace Creery, in command of the auxihary anti-aircraft cruiser
Prince Robert now on the west coast, was getting her ready for the Pacific. He
knew each man had to make a tough decision, the married ones especially. He
pointed out to his company that Prince Robert had escorted the original Cana-
dian contingent to Hong Kong. Were they going to leave them there in the
prison camps or do their damnedest to get them out? Eighty-five per cent said
they’d go.
But Prince Robert was getting ready to go. Uganda was already there. Her
crew had last seen Canada nine months before. No one Hked being crowded
and uncomfortable, and RN-designed ships were low on comfort: ventilation
was bad and the ship was a great steel oven; the engine room ran up to 159
degrees Fahrenheit; boilers had to be cleaned at anchor at 120 degrees; fresh
water was always short. Food, from RN victuaUing, was poor. Hardly a man
had set foot ashore since the ship left Sydney in March. Actions had been
sharp but few against monotonous months of steaming. Canadian sailors
weren’t alone in their discomfort. Most had endured tough years at sea,
growled, and got on with it. They’d signed on to fight. If they were told to go
somewhere, they’d go. But give anyone in any fleet the choice of the Pacific
war or going home . . .
As Captain of a ship of war operating against the enemy, RoUo Mainguy
was required by Ottawa to ask his whole ship’s company if they were pre-
pared to fight the Japanese or not and to sign accordingly on the dotted hne.
At anchor in the forward base of Manus in June the democratic process was
observed. Three ballot boxes were set up on the quarterdeck. One was for the
federal general election, the second for Ontario residents for an election there,
the third for the Pacific volunteer election forms. Of 900 officers and men,
600 elected not to serve. It was clearly a vote to leave the war.
The whole dreadful business divided the ship into two bitterly opposing
camps. While she was on the July strikes, doing what the majority had voted
not to do, the matter of sending out 600 replacements was muUed over in
Ottawa. And what about the 300 volunteers on board? They were due thirty
days of home leave. The only decision was to caU the ship back to Esquimalt,
her tail between her legs. Four days before she arrived, on 6 August 1944, the
historic atom bomb obliterated Hiroshima. On the 9th, Nagasaki was des-
troyed. There would be no bloody landings now. On 14 August Japan surren-
dered unconditionally.
The second cruiser, Ontario, arrived too late for the fighting. Her Captain,
Harold Grant, had commanded the RN cruiser Enterprise and won a DSO for a
resounding victory against eleven German destroyers off Biscay. After a
variety of tasks in Manila, Hong Kong, and Japan she went home to
202
Esquimalt. On the same day that Uganda got home Prince Robert arrived in
Sydney to join the British Pacific Fleet. On 31 August she entered Hong
Kong. Captain Wallace Creery, whose ship Fraser was the RCN’s first loss of
the war, represented Canada at the official Japanese surrender there in mid-
September. He and his company of Pacific volunteers returned proudly to
Esquimalt imlate October loaded with Canadian prisoners from the Hong
Kong camps. Sadly, the political craft of Mackenzie King had clouded Cana-
da’s pride in the sohdly efficient and effective job done by HMCS Uganda in the
Pacific war.
WAR’S END
Halifax on V-J Day was relatively subdued. As Wren Fiddy Greer observed:
“. . . this time ‘Stadacona’ was ready, the solution to any possibihty of a
recurrence of the V-E Day ‘celebrations’ so simple as to be ludicrous. The Drill
Shed opened its doors to all and there appeared to be an unlimited supply of
beer, hamburgers sizzling on stoves brought in for the occasion and dozens of
officers to serve them all day and far into the night. The ‘Stadacona’ band
played for hours while we danced and ate and drank. There was no need to go
into town to celebrate . . . everything was right there at home. And it was all
free! . . . For one glorious day there were no rules or regulations. It was a
wonderful party.”
The party was really over, though, on the 28th of May. At one minute past
midnight all the ships at sea - the merchant ships still in convoy after six long
years; the faithful escorts still busy in their screening stations; the aircraft on
their lonely sweeps and carrier patrols - switched on their running Hghts. The
U-boat war, the longest, hardest, most bitter and costly battle in the naval
annals of the world, the one that very nearly brought Adolf Hitler’s Third
Reich to world domination “for a thousand years,” had come to its end.
It was the campaign that brought Canada’s own navy to real stature.
Twenty-four ships went down and nearly 1,800 gave their lives. All but four
of the ships were lost in the U-boat war. In return the navy sank thirty-one of
the U-boats and disposed of forty-two surface ships. In the give and take the
httle ships saw 25,000 merchant voyages across the Atlantic, 180 million tons
of vital trade. And that was Canada’s most decisive contribution, not just to
the war at sea, but to the war itself.
With all its agonies, its shortcomings and mistakes, Canada had forged a
navy from virtually nothing. A generation of young shore-bound Canadians
had turned to face the sea. They had shown themselves, if not the world, that
they could fight there as weU as any and a good deal better than most. That
war, too, laid a base of hard experience on which a navy to meet the country’s
future needs could well be built.
If the country did not turn its back once more, and if its will was there.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SICKLY
SEASON
DOLDRUMS
CLOSE TO 100,000 MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAD VOLUNTEERED FOR WAR
service in the Royal Canadian Navy couldn’t get out soon enough. Veterans’
preference gave them their old jobs back if they wanted, and there were plenty
of new ones in a buoyant economy, as well as free university courses and
vocational training. Social programs begun in the war, such as unemployment
insurance and family allowances, stayed in place. Labour hung tough and
pushed hard, and wages rose. Canada had had a profitable six years of war; by
1947, the country had passed the wartime economic peak despite drastic
cutbacks in all the armed services.
The great escort fleet the navy had built with such agony and ultimate
success was scrapped. Government authorized a peacetime force at first of
two aircraft carriers, two cruisers, twelve destroyers, and 10,000 all ranks. The
Wrens were dismissed as a wartime anomaly. The two light fleet carriers.
Warrior and Magnificent, were coming forward in British yards. The other ships
were in commission or, in the case of the Canadian-built Tribals, near comple-
tion in Halifax. A handful of frigates and sweepers was kept in reserve. It was a
dizzy descent from the wartime high but, compared to 1939, a substantial
force. And it was what the admirals had been looking for - a “big ship” navy,
not an escort force.
Finding 10,000 people for the post-war fleet meant fleshing it out with
Reserves, appealing to war-trained people to join the permanent force, and
attracting new recruits. But who wanted armed forces now that the war was
over, much less be in them? Family separations had gone on quite long
enough. Who, indeed, would choose to stay at sea and sling a hammock in a
creaking messdeck? Things were great outside and that’s where the money
was. Besides, where was the motive? Canada was active in forming the
204
THE SICKLY SEASON
United Nations in 1945. Then, guided by Mackenzie King, the country

turned away from Europe’s tensions as it had in the 1920s. Canadians scarcely
heeded Winston Churchill’s icy warning that “An iron curtain has descended
across the continent.” That was in March, 1946, the same month Canada
pulled its occupation troops out of Germany.
THE COLD WAR

The country was no longer bound to Britain. Continental defence, as the very
junior partner of the United States, seemed more to the point, and in 1947
Canada agreed its forces would use US. weapons, communications, and
methods. Stahn, using German technology, was building a strong fleet of
submarines, but Prime Minister King and his cabinet saw the combined
American and British fleets as vastly superior to the Soviets. There seemed no
point to an expensive navy for Canada.
Indeed, after the atomic bomb seared into the world’s psyche, there seemed
Httle purpose at all for a navy. A convoy or fighting force would surely be
snuffed out by a single bomb. In mid-1946 Captain Nelson Lay led the RCN
observers at Operation Crossroads, the awesome tests of atomic airburst and
underwater blasts on a huge sacrificial fleet anchored inside the reef at Bikini
Atoll. Measurement dispelled myth. There was no heavy damage to ships
outside 1,000 yards from air or underwater burst. Aircraft on deck were
damaged at 2,000 yards, so loss could be limited to one ship by keeping them
2,000 yards apart. New ships, it was clear, must survive heavy underwater
blasts, and radioactivity was obviously a major problem. Ships must some-
how deal with fallout and contamination. But proper construction and the
right tactical dispositions would cope with the Bomb at sea.
In the US. fear of subversion and spying within the nuclear fraternity
verged on hysteria. In September of 1946 a Soviet cypher clerk, Igor
Gouzenko, defected from his embassy in Ottawa with evidence that Soviet
spies were gleaning allied atomic secrets. In Europe, meanwhile, the tension
rose between East and West. Yesterday’s ally, the Soviet Union, seemed poised
to move. But in January, 1947, the year columnist Walter Lippmann called it
the “Cold War,” Canadian defence spending was cut 25 per cent; the navy’s
manpower ceiling dropped to 7,500. By the end of that year the fleet stood at
the carrier Warrior, one operative cruiser and one in maintenance, five destroy-
ers, and two Algerines.
Then in February, 1948, came the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia.
Europe, shaken and fearful, closed ranks. Britain, France, Belgium, the Neth-
erlands, and Luxembourg formed a military alignment called Western Union.
In weeks the Soviets slammed a blockade on Berlin. American strength in
Europe was down to one weak division, but President Truman brought back
the draft and the US. still had the monopoly of the Bomb. US. aircraft joined
205
in the inspired airlift that kept the German city virtually alive. Prime Minister
King, with his horror of the European vortex, wouldn’t let the RCAF take part.
King, with his isolationist fears, retired later that year. The new Liberal
leader and Prime Minister, Louis St. Laurent, had clear, broad views of
Canada as a nation in the world. So did his Minister at External Affairs, Lester
Pearson. In continental terms, Canada’s eyes were turned to the potential
polar battleground. Warrior, with Haida and Nootka, exercised during the
summer of 1948 in Hudson Bay. The RN-designed carrier was no northern
ship; in fact, she had to spend her only Canadian winter on the west coast. She
was swapped for Magnificent, which at least had steam heat and some cold-
weather engineering. That same year there was money in the Estimates for an
Arctic patrol vessel.
In 1949, when the Soviets produced their own atomic bomb. Western
Union became nothing without the Americans. Canada, uneasy in the lop-
sided North American alliance, joined the drive to pull the U.S. back to
Europe. On 4 April 1949, Canada, with the original Western Union plus the
United States, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Portugal, signed the
North Atlantic Treaty. It tied Europe and North America together in mutual
defence against the Soviet bloc. And it was something quite new in treaties. It
required not just response to actual aggression, but each member - except
Iceland, whose assets were airfields and geography - must maintain forces
pre-committed to the alliance.
This march of world events and time of national growth had, for the navy,
been four years of drift. Vice Admiral G.C. Jones died in harness just after the
war. His relief, Rastus Reid, spent one reluctant year heading the navy, then
went fishing on the west coast. Vice Admiral Harold Grant then became
Chief of Naval Staff. During the war Grant had been Chief of Personnel and
Captain (D) Newfoundland. Then he was Captain of HMS Enterprise, won his
DSO battling German destroyers, was wounded in the Normandy invasion,
and later became Captain of the brand new Ontario. Harold Grant was blunt,
arbitrary, a firm decision-maker, and a sea-dog to the core.
Recruiting improved in 1948 with a rose-coloured campaign offering a
good job, a skill, and security, but the valuable older hands weren’t signing on
again because of conditions. And for mid-twentieth-century Canada they
were bad: pay and allowances were low; food was poor; the time spent at sea
was very high, especially in critical skilled trades like the engine room; there
was too httle slack to allow for thorough training; and moves between ships
were too frequent, especially for over-taxed key men. As well, there wasn’t
enough housing for families in HaHfax and Victoria - except for a few senior
officers, no one had married quarters. A leading seaman trying to support a
family on $120 a month was forced to moorJight, and when he went to sea his
family had real hardship. Often they had to go home to live and marriages
206
THE SICKLY SEASON
suffered. Some ships’ captains unofficially rotated men ashore so they could
earn enough to keep their famiHes together. For the single man, barracks were
bleak and lacked privacy. Recreational faciHties were poor. Young men think-
ing about their future saw little chance of a satisfactory family life. Requests
for release or transfer to the RCAF with its stable station Hfe were epidemic.
Those at the top didn’t seem to be grasping the point or making it with
government. Pay, housing, and food were marginally improved through a
series of niggardly budgets, from a Parliament that didn’t much care represen-
ting a country that didn’t want to know. But the basic problems went deep.
There was a malaise in the navy and it took mutiny to bring it to the surface.
MUTINY AND THE MAINGUY REPORT

Mutiny is an ugly word. It smells of anarchy, violence, and death. These
Canadian mutinies weren’t violent. No one swung from the yardarm. But, as
in Iroquois in 1943, they all involved collective insubordination. And mutinies
they were.
On 22 August 1947, HMCS Ontario was on a shake-down cruise anchored
off Nanoose, Vancouver Island. Captain Jimmy Hibbard had been in com-
mand for six weeks. Commander Jeffry Brock was Executive Officer and had
been there a year. Hibbard was old navy. Brock, pre-war RCNVR, with most
of his sea service on loan to the RN. Both had fine war records.
After dinner that day some fifty junior men locked themselves in a mess-
deck intending not to answer the routine pipe for “hands fall in.” Word got
out and the pipe wasn’t made. Technically, that avoided the actual crime. The
Captain cleared lower deck, spoke to the ship’s company, and all hands turned
to. He found that there were petty complaints against having to wear night
uniform, aggravations over unsettled ship’s routine. A general disgruntled
feehng centred on the Executive Officer.
Commander Brock was puUed from the ship by the Flag Officer Pacific
Coast, Rear Admiral Rollo Mainguy. The men, as in Iroquois in 1943, gained
their ends; they got rid of one officer, in this case their XO. There was no
formal investigation, and no charges were laid. Brock carried the blame
personally though not officially. He was seen as an ex-Reserve lacking the
experience to manage a big ship. Brock was an intelligent man, brilliant even,
and supremely confident at higher staff levels. But his arrogance outweighed
his understanding. He kept distant from his subordinates and had little feel for
the lower deck. He hadn’t built the confidence and support an XO needs from
his officers.
The new Commander, Patrick Budge, DSC, had an altogether different cut
to his jib. He was a hands-on man, a firm and fair disciplinarian who set clear
standards and insisted that all hands toe the mark. Pat Budge was already a
legendary character. He came up the hard way from Boy Seaman on the pre-
207
war lower deck, had served on the North Atlantic, and was First Lieutenant of
Huron in the Channel. He was a great hand at getting up ships’ choirs and
concert parties, and co-composed “Roll Along Wavy Navy,” the classic sig-
nature song of the RCNVR. His unusual hobby at sea was doing intricate
needlepoint. Everything in Budgie’s book - from getting on his knees to
show an ordinary seaman how to scrub a deck to chasing destroyers into their
screening stations - was done with gusto and good humour, and, as he called
it, “a seamanhke manner.” Later he put his hallmark on new entry and
leadership training at HMCS Cornwallis.
The Ontario episode seemed isolated. Then, a year and a half later, in
February and March of 1949 there were three more. Athabaskan (the built-in-
Halifax successor to the “Atha-b” sunk in the Channel) was fuelHng in
Manzanillo, Mexico, when the junior hands refused to turn to. The next came
a couple of weeks later in the destroyer Crescent in Nanking. She was in the
Chinese Nationalist capital guarding the interests of Canadian citizens as the
Communist army advanced. Roughly the same thing happened there.
In the meantime, Athabaskan had gone through the Panama Canal to join
the carrier Magnificent in the Caribbean. The ships’ companies met ashore in
Colon so talk of the destroyer’s mutiny was rife. Out at sea after flying
stations early Sunday morning, thirty-two of Magnificent's aircraft handlers
stayed in their messdeck rather than falling in after breakfast. Captain Gus
Miles interviewed them all, and there were no charges.
All cases were pretty much the same: only junior hands were involved, and
they got on with their work after their captains spoke to them, and no one was
punished. The immediate complaints were mainly about upset routines. All
three incidents were short-lived, and in each case the target was the Executive
Officer, the one responsible for the day-to-day running of the ship.
The three destroyers’ XOs lacked experience, though Magnificent's was
Commander Debby Piers, an officer with plenty of hard-fighting seatime in
command. A carrier is a complex organism, very different from a destroyer -
it needs a lot of intricate co-ordination and co-operation between aviators,
operations staff, seamen, engineers. An XO’s job is different from that of a
Captain. Piers’s leadership was the arbitrary kind.
Three mutinies in three weeks sent out shock waves, but even the journal-
ists called them “incidents.” Punishment in the law for mutiny, reaching back
centuries, was death - death for all in a mutiny with violence; death for
ringleaders without violence, and fife imprisonment for all the rest. So every-
one was careful to avoid the dreaded word.
Another dread was abroad in those days, the fear of communism. Three
mutinies in three weeks raised spectres of a navy rife with subversion, about
to mutiny en masse, to fly apart. The Minister, Brooke Claxton, quickly
appointed a commission to investigate. It was not to take disciplinary action -
208
THE SICKLY SEASON
the time for that was gone - but rather to record what happened and make
proposals “to improve conditions of service, the relations between officers
and men, the machinery for the ventilation of grievances and . . . the training
of naval personnel.” The result was a searching inquiry into conditions in the
navy.
Claxton chose the commissioners wisely. The chairman was Rear Admiral
Rollo Mainguy. Consideration for his people was written in his record. As
Captain (D) in St. John’s he started the recreation camp for men and the
Crowsnest Seagoing Officers’ Club; as Captain of Uganda in the Pacific he
held direct talks with the ship’s company en masse. This he called “Town
Hall,” and it took a fair-minded, well-informed, and respected man to carry it
off. Mainguy’s fairness showed in the Report’s statement that pulhng Com-
mander Brock from Ontario “without a complete investigation, appears nei-
ther completely wise nor completely fair. ” That decision had been Mainguy’s
own.
Another commissioner was ex-RCNVR officer L.C. Audette. “Uncle Louis”
was torpedoed in Saguenay, commanded Amherst in convoy battles - including
SC 107 under Debby Piers - and the frigate Coaticook. A lawyer by peacetime
profession and a member of the Maritime Commission, Audette was a percep-
tive, objective, and broadly educated professional. The third member, Leonard
Brockington, was a lawyer who became first chairman of the CBC, then a
wartime special adviser to the Prime Minister. His resonant voice was familiar
to Canadians through his radio commentaries on major issues.
Over 200 witnesses, from the Chief of Naval Staff to new entry sailors,
were interviewed in camera. Each was promised immunity. The commission-
ers found that men from the Ontario and Iroquois mutinies were scattered
through the affected ships. The modus operandi and its previous success were
well known, and though there was no collusion or subversion, one successful
mutiny certainly fuelled the next. There were as well some strong common
threads. Routines were unsettled and disruptive. The XOs concerned were
highly arbitrary or inexperienced or both, and they didn’t have the confidence
of their officers, chiefs, or petty officers. Out of their control, however, were
changes in ships’ companies which were far too frequent. Leonard Murray
had fought that problem in the first half of the war. As young Captain Horatio
Nelson had written in 1783: “The disgust of Seamen to the Navy is all owing
to the infernal plan of turning them over from ship to ship so that men cannot
be attached to their officers or the officers care twopence about them.” The
“Nelson tradition” is too often scoffed at as barnacle-bound prejudice, pag-
eantry, and polished brass in lieu of leadership. There was a certain amount of
that in the navy, to be sure, but that great sea officer left all the navies of the
world a legacy of enlightened humanity in a harsh age, of leading by example
and rock-solid professional ability.
209
In the RCN, communications up and down the line between officers, chiefs,
and petty officers and the junior men weren’t working. Neither was the
divisional system that grouped men under an officer responsible for their
work, advancement, and welfare. Nearly two years before. Headquarters had
reahzed all wasn’t well. A group of chiefs and petty officers had told Lieuten-
ant Commander Bill Landymore - a man they impHcitly trusted - about
unhappiness and unrest on the lower deck. Landymore reported personally to
Rear Admiral Frank Houghton, the Vice Chief of Naval Staff, and Commo-
dore Adrian Hope was sent off to investigate. A lot of problems boiled down
to money, but a big one was that people didn’t think they were being heard.
A month prior to Ontario's mutiny, a general message ordered all ships and
estabhshments to set up standing welfare committees, to be chaired by the
ship’s Executive Officer and to provide “free discussion between officers and
men of items of welfare and general amenities within the ship.” Many
tradition-bound officers found it hard to accept, a threat to the estabHshed
way. Running a ship by committee (though, of course, this was not intended)
was not for them. They knew sailors and ships and they knew how to run
them.
In fact, Athabaskan's committee hadn’t met during that cruise, and during
Crescent's lonely duty in China several welfare committee proposals were
quashed by the Captain, David Groos, or XO out of hand. Magnificent had no
welfare committee at all - the XO had read the order but didn’t beHeve it was
the right thing and ignored it. Worse, neither Captain nor Flag Officer saw to
it that the clear Headquarters order was obeyed in the navy’s biggest ship.
There could be no justification here for a Nelsonian bHnd eye. Disregard of
orders on the quarterdeck was an invitation to disobedience by the lower
deck.
The commission found throughout the service an artificial distance
between officers and men - people who in Canadian society could well have
gone to the same high school. No one objected to officers having privileges
but when officers didn’t deHver on their basic responsibifities, resentment
replaced respect. Disciphne - the right kind - had broken down. The report
put it thus: “The only disciphne which in the final analysis is worth whhe, is
one based upon pride in a great service, a beHef in essential justice, and the
wilhng obedience that is given to superior character, skih, education and
knowledge. Any other form of discipline is bound to break down under
stress.”
It boiled down to the quahty of officers. The timeless nub of the naval
profession was summed up in the report’s quotation of Admiral John Paul
Jones, who said in 1776: “The naval officer should be the soul of tact, patience,
justice, firmness, charity and understanding. No meritorious act of a subordi-
nate should escape his attention or be left to pass without reward, even if the
210
THE SICKLY SEASON
reward be only one word of approval. He should not be blind to a single fault
in any subordinate; at the same time he should be quick to distinguish error
from malice, thoughtlessness for incompetency and well-meant shortcoming
from heedless and stupid blunder. As he should be universal and impartial in
his rewards and approval of merit, so should he be judicial and unbending in
his punishment or reproof of misconduct.”
Though they might have good hands-on junior training, officers in the
RCN were not very well educated. They fell far behind the USN. Too, most of
the wartime entry officers had had the sketchiest of training. The navy was
also behind the RCAF, which pre-war had set university degrees as a require-
ment for career officers. As in the Royal Navy, leadership wasn’t actually
taught. The assumption was that this most vital attribute of all went along
with social class or would somehow be acquired by osmosis as the young
gentleman advanced. The inspirational side of leadership wasn’t easily
defined, but the RN, and thus the RCN, had no manual on leadership. The U.S.
Navy did, and it was well worth the study.
Many aspects of navy Hfe, such as decent accommodation, pay, food, and
social services, lagged behind the other Canadian services and compared very
badly with the USN. DiscipHne in the U.S. Navy was far harder, but the
facihties and services on their bases filled the RCN with envy. Also - an old
RCN story - there were too few people for too many tasks. All these things
could be fixed with money, and the report was prime ammunition.
But another frustration could be fixed for nothing. The feeling came
mostly from the lower deck and it was the simple urge to be “Canadian. ” The
RN label had stuck to the RCN and that stuck in a young Canadian’s craw.
Without question the RCN inherited much of deep and lasting value, above all
a great sea-fighting tradition. But time was overdue for the RCN to keep what
was worthwhile, throw what wasn’t over the side, and be its Canadian self.
This wasn’t a rejection of naval smartness, ritual, and ceremony. The tradi-
tional flourishes had evolved since men first flew flags at sea and would
always have their time-honoured place in ships’ and sailors’ lives. Every navy
worth its salt has its own treasured version and guards it well. But restoring
the wartime Maple Leaf on the funnel was obvious and simple. How easy it
would have been to give Canadian names to Warrior and Magnificent. It was
easy to sew on “Canada” badges, and designing more livable ships and
feeding men properly would come. Moulding a navy to fit Canadian social
values, traditions, and character went deeper and would take a good deal
longer.
The Mainguy Report was a watershed in the navy’s history. Mutiny,
shameful as it was, had triggered a much-needed self-examination. It was a
catharsis. And like it or not, events in the world at large soon meant Canada’s
navy had to stand firmly on its own.
211
CRACKING SHOW
Through this uncertain time Canadian naval aviation was taking shape. Back
in 1943 those Headquarters mainstays, Acting Captains Nelson Lay and
Harry DeWolf, had gone hard after aircraft carriers, one for each escort group.
Lay manoeuvred a directive straight from the Minister to go look at aviation
in the USN and RN and report to the Naval Board.
Lay’s report, given his imbalanced examination of the British and Ameri-
cans, predictably recommended that the Canadian navy’s air service be mod-
elled on the RN’S Fleet Air Arm. Without a doubt, the RCAF would have
fought against an American model, which would have meant more control of
aviation, including shore-based patrol aircraft, in naval hands. But the truth
was that the U.S. had the superior carriers, planes, and techniques for naval
aviation. Going the U.S. route would have meant a stronger navy and a
different future for Canada’s armed forces, but old ties, not long-term logic,
cast the die.
Nabob's fighting record under Lay’s command strengthened the navy’s
hand in getting an air arm. So, perhaps, did family bonds. Nelson Lay’s
widowed father had married Mackenzie King’s sister in 1907 and he’d always
called King “Uncle WilHe.” The war against Japan was the cHncher. Britain
was building the ships; Canada had the men. In April, 1945, Uncle WiUie’s
war cabinet approved two RN-built light fleet carriers for the Pacific war. Four
Canadian squadrons were formed from old Fleet Air Arm hands plus the
cream of some 500 RCAF-trained pilots who had joined the RNVR for a chance
to fly in the Pacific. The war ended before they got their chance.
No modern navy was complete without naval air. For Canada after the war,
one carrier and two squadrons were the limit. Even at that, enthusiasm was
once again taking on too much with too little. Warrior commissioned in
January, 1946; in March her two squadrons, 803 with Seafire fighters and 825
with Firefly fighter-reconnaisance planes, flew aboard off Spithead and the
ship made for Halifax. Canadian naval aviation was in business. With the
training done by the RN, the carrier on loan, aircraft with replacements and
stores, and destroyers Crescent and Crusader tossed in, Canada paid no more
than $10 million - a bargain-basement price.
But even without an enemy and wartime pressures, naval aviation was a
high-risk business. An efficient warship needs a fine-tuned team and equip-
ment; a carrier has to have the ultimate. RN aircraft weren’t good, while the
U.S. Navy’s were. In the British Pacific Fleet, where Canadian pilots like
Lieutenant Dickie Bird had flown in action, they beached the Seafires for
American Corsairs. The USN’s reliable old fighter, the Hellcat, also outclassed
the Seafire in the air and on the deck. The RN Barracuda strike plane was a
menace, and the Firefly couldn’t compete with the proven American Avenger.
212
THE SICKLY SEASON
This went right back to the RN losing control of its Air Arm in 1918. It was
still stuck with adaptations of RAF planes. The legendary Spitfire’s landing
gear, fine on grass flying fields, was too narrow and far too fragile for carriers,
and the Seafire inherited it. The Firefly’s wasn’t much tougher. The U.S.
Navy, by contrast, had complete control of its own aircraft, designed them
from scratch for deck operations and, among other things, built in twice the
undercarriage strength.
True to the old-boy network, key naval air posts in Ottawa were filled by
RN officers until the mid-fifties. Other important slots, such as Commander
(Air) in the carrier and at the air station, were filled by RN officers in the early
days, too. There were some fine officers among them but the RN didn’t
generally send its best. And Admiralty dearly wanted to sell planes. Acting
Captain Hank Rotheram, RN, Director of Naval Aviation in Ottawa from
1946 until 1949, knew, for example, where his final loyalties lay. Just as a new
batch of Seafires was going to be purchased, he shot down a USN offer of fifty
surplus Hellcats, all in top shape, for under $3,000 each. It was a steal. But as
he wrote in his memoirs (characteristically called It's Really Quite Safe), he was
afraid accepting the U.S. offer over the Seafires would prejudice the Canadian
order for the new RN Sea Fury. The Furies were running late but enough were
diverted from the first RN delivery to equip an RCN squadron. So the inexper-
ienced Canadians, with their small, slow carrier, got the hot new RN aircraft in
1947 complete with its development bugs. It had serious problems and good
men died.
In addition, the new Firefly MK V ASW aircraft from the RN was hard to
maintain and fell far short in all-weather performance. Like the earlier Fire-
flies and the Seafire, exhaust flames interfered with the pilot’s vision in the
carrier circuit at night. Four of them cracked up on Magnificent's flight deck off
Bermuda the first time the squadron tried night deck landings.
There were problems at the top, too. Admiral Jones certainly was not air-
minded. His successor as CNS, Vice Admiral Reid, observed that “naval
aircraft are merely weapons hke torpedoes or guns.” That hardly made for
confidence among the rising generation that aviation was properly under-
stood. The Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal R. Leckie, had started his career
as a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service, transferred to the RAF in
1918, and joined the RCAF in 1940. He’d seen the disastrous rundown in
British naval aviation and maritime air between wars and was determined that
the RCAF would hold all the post-war aviation cards. A priority of Leckie’s
was developing a corps of well-educated, well-trained staff officers, and in the
tough infighting for budget dollars the RCAF beat the simple sailors hands
down. It wasn’t until September, 1948, that the RCAF’s Dartmouth air station
was commissioned as HMCS Shearwater.
213
Carriers were new territory to most Canadian sailors, and they didn’t take
kindly to weird routines to accommodate the “flyboys.” The early COs -
Captain Frank Houghton and Commodores Harry DeWolf, Gus Miles, Gus
Boulton, and Ken Adams - had plenty of experience in small ships and were
determined to make naval aviation go, but they had to pick up carrier opera-
tions as they went along. The’same was true of their executive officers. The
wartime ground crew had gone quickly to prime jobs in civilian aviation or
comfortable shore biUets in the RCAF, so there wasn’t enough skill to go
around. Short of flyable aircraft, pilots were lucky to get four hours in the air
per month, which was dangerously low. Even in 1948 Lieutenant Com-
mander Pop Fotheringham, an Air Group Commander, was getting under
seven hours. It wasn’t until 1950 that pilots got a reasonable twenty hours a
month.
In fairness, the RCN wasn’t alone in its accidents and casualties. But the
early years were too expensive in aircraft and, what is worse, in good people.
Carrier aviation had grown up in wartime hazard. One didn’t dwell on the
death of a squadron mate but laughed it off - risk be damned. Surviving the
dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy in the faithful old Stringbag
bred a cavaher, press-on-regardless outlook. Amazing deeds went with ludi-
crous aircraft. This rubbed off easily on the Canadians, an ebullient lot them-
selves.
Now these young aviators were trying to prove themselves in a navy that
understood little about the air. They tried to do too much with an oversized
can-do approach. Thinking of safety, as Air Group Commander Ray Creery
said later, was looked on as a sign of cold feet.
An accident required the pilot to make out a report on a form ‘A 25.”
Wartime had produced the classic Air Arm song:
They say in the Air Force the landing’s okay,

If the pilot gets out and can still walk away.
But in the Fleet Air Arm the chances are slim,
If the landing is poor and the pilot can’t swim.
Cracking show!
I’m alive!
But I still have to render my A-twentyfive.
The song Hved on with many ribald and cheerfully insulting Canadian verses
added. The naval aviators were an insouciant, irrepressible lot who worked as
hard as they played. But poor aircraft, marginal maintenance, and too httle
flying practice equalled too many killed. Major accidents were running at
five, six, seven per 10,000 flying hours, which was unacceptably high. In the
six months from October, 1948, to March, 1949, seven aircrew lost their lives.
214
THE SICKLY SEASON
There was talk of suspending flying. Operations were set aside for basic
measures like tighter training, more attention to safety, upgrading of instru-
ment flying standards. Challenge would always be part of the game, but it was
a game for professionals. The dashing aviator with the white scarf and the
cracking-show syndrome had to go.
At last Canadian naval aviation looked to North America for aircraft and
for attitude. It had been through a bad time, as had the navy as a whole. ‘A
bloody war or a sickly season” has been the toast drunk on Thursday night in
naval messes for generations. In the dark old days, it took gunfire or an
epidemic to make room for promotion. From war’s end to 1950, Canada’s
navy had been through its own sickly season. Now, new prescriptions had
been written and new cleansing winds began to stir.
NATO was calHng for commitment. Concepts for ships designed and built
in Canada were taking shape. The coming years would see new ships, new
aircraft, new people, new drives, energy, thrust, and, above all, a new, proud,
and quite distinctly Canadian naval identity. And suddenly there was a war to
fight along the way.
215
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE OPENING GUNS

ABLE SEAMAN GEORGE BROWN, A STEWARD IN HMCS ATHABASKAN ALONG-
side in Esquimalt, was working in the wardroom pantry on a fine June
morning in 1950 when a messmate called down, “Hey, war just broke out in
Korea.” Brown said, “Oh, where’s Korea?”
He and his shipmates found out quickly enough. In ten days Athabaskan,
Cayuga, and Sioux were topped up with ammunition, stores, and all the extra
men and spare parts they could filch from other ships in Esquimalt and were
on their way to join the United Nations force in the Korean War.
Few Canadians knew any more about Korea than Brown. At the end of
World War Two an Asian equivalent of Europe’s Iron Curtain had drawn
across the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel. North Korea was firmly in
the Communist Chinese orbit. South Korea emerged as a somewhat shaky
democracy. Nearby, Japan was garrisoned by the AUied occupation forces -
mostly U.S. troops - under General Douglas MacArthur.
The United Nations Commission on Korea watched uneasily as tensions
between the two small states rose. At dawn on Sunday, 25 June 1950, North
Korean troops and tanks burst across the border. The United Nations Security
Council call to withdraw was ignored. Two days later the United States put a
resolution to the Security Council asking all members to help the Republic of
Korea repel the attack and restore peace and security. The U.S.S.R. had only just
withdrawn from the Security Council. It couldn’t exercise its veto and the
resolution passed. President Truman had already ordered U.S. forces to help
South Korea and neutraHze Formosa. Now he had the legal stamp.
In four days Britain turned her ships in the Far East over to the UN under
General MacArthur. Australia and New Zealand followed. The next day, on
30 June, the House of Commons in Ottawa rallied unanimously behind Louis
216
KOREA
St. Laurent and External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson - Canada supported
the UN. Only the navy could provide a fighting force for immediate service;
hence, on the 5th ofjuly the three destroyers sailed. In command was Captain
Jeffry Brock in Cayuga.
THE NAVY’S ROLE

As the Canadian ships island-hopped across the Pacific, North Korean infan-
try swept through the Republic of Korea (ROK) forces and some hastily
mustered U.S. troops. The USN rushed fresh troops from Japan to Pusan at the
southern tip of the peninsula. By the time the Canadian ships arrived in
Sasebo, Japan, on 30 July, the Pusan bridgehead was surrounded by North
Koreans and defeat was very close.
217
There were a lot of old hands in the destroyers, and green ones like young
George Brown. None of them knew what to expect. What kind of enemy
were they up against? Submarines? Aircraft? Torpedo boats? Were the Rus-
sians coming in? What about atomic bombs? The answer was, be ready for
anything. They started right away, escorting troopships to Pusan and taking
oilers around to the west coast for the naval force already there. For the third
war in a row the navy was the first in action. On 15 August, with fierce
fighting going on ashore, Cayuga opened fire on port installations at Yosu, the
first of 130,000 rounds hurled at the enemy ashore by Canadian ships over the
next three years.
In September, General MacArthur launched a full-scale amphibious land-
ing at Inchon on the west coast, spearheaded by U.S. Marines, and suddenly
the situation was turned around. The enemy besieging Pusan cracked and ran
north in disorder. The ROK and U.S. forces followed. The UN navy battered at
their flanks and flew strike after strike from the carriers. The North Koreans
retreated across the 38th parallel, then crossed the Yalu River with the 6th
ROK Division at their heels. The river was the border with Communist
China, and there the AUies stopped.
The UN navy’s role was the historic one of projecting land power. It could
dehver men and material across the ocean, put forces ashore when and where
it chose, evacuate them when it had to. It could support the land battle with air
strikes anywhere on the peninsula and gunfire on the seaward flanks. Over-
whelming power at sea held the whole of it in a tight blockade against
infiltration and support, except of course overland from the north, from
Communist China, and that was immune. The war must finally be decided
on land, but without control of the sea the UN would have been powerless to
pursue it.
The American 7th Fleet was strongly reinforced and provided the fast
carriers. Task Force 77. It operated in the Sea of Japan, east of Korea. The RN
had a light fleet carrier, HMS Triumph, three cruisers, and four destroyers, and
Austraha and the Netherlands each contributed a destroyer. Including the
Canadians, the total UN force by October, 1950, counted eight carriers, a
battleship, nine cruisers, fifty-four destroyers, six submarines, sixteen mine-
craft, over 100 amphibious force vessels, and seventy-five transports. There
was also a sizable swarm of ROK small craft for the close, inshore work.
Some North Korean gunboats were knocked out early on and there was no
sign of more naval opposition, no sign of Soviet submarines. Commonwealth
naval forces worked mainly on the western. Yellow Sea side. A brush with the
Chinese or Soviet Hght forces was more Hkely there, and such an encounter
would be less explosive than if American ships were involved. The North
Koreans had few aircraft to worry about, though that could change at any
time. The hazards at the moment were shore batteries and mines.
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KOREA
INSHORE OPERATIONS
Through the Inchon landings and the North Korean retreat all ships ran flat
out. The west coast is difficult, shallow, heavily indented, and studded with
small islands, rocks, and shoals. Tides range to thirty feet and run strong.
Channels shift and change. There are few good harbors but countless villages,
fishing coves, and landing places - ideal for enemy small craft to slip in, land
raiding parties, and sow mines. Navigation is taxing and tricky. Mines laid on
the bottom - acoustic, pressure, and magnetic types - were a constant hazard.
So were drifting mines sown by small craft.
Athabaskan, commanded by an experienced destroyer man. Commander
Robert Welland, worked non-stop Hke aU the others. In a single patrol she co-
ordinated landings with ROK forces, sent parties of her own ashore, bombarded
enemy enclaves, illuminated night operations with starsheU, intercepted junks
and other small craft, destroyed a radio station with demolitions, and gave
medical treatment to ROK and civilian casualties. George Brown’s regular duty
as a steward was serving meals and tending to the wardroom. But he was often
at his action station at B gun. Also, he’d had some first-aid courses and volun-
teered his services to the medical officer, which meant sometimes going ashore
to help evacuate wounded soldiers and civilians.
Mines took endless vigilance. Sonar could often detect them, but in these
tight waters there were close calls. Athabaskan had a real problem with moored
mines in her area. She couldn’t reach them with 40mm gunfire when they
were floating at low water, but at high water they were an invisible menace.
This called for ingenuity. Commissioned Gunner David Hurl took in the
motor cutter with the ship’s little sailing dinghy in tow.
He closed on the first mine in the dinghy. The trick was for the oarsman
very delicately to keep it just far enough from the mine to avoid a fatal
explosion but close enough for Hurl and his helper to reach over the bow and
attach a TNT charge. Then the oarsman backed off and rowed away hke mad,
and up went a spectacular explosion. The team scored four mines by the turn
of the tide. Next day HMAS Bataan learned the Canadian trick and joined in.
OPERATION COMEBACK
The wretched pHght of the Koreans living in the war-torn islands, washed
over by the tides of war, had made a deep impression on the Canadians. They
had done what they could where they could but it was a daunting task and
winter was coming on. Back in Sasebo for maintenance in September, Captain
Brock put a plan to Vice Admiral Andrewes, RN, to get the inhabitants back
on their feet. The idea was to clear out pockets of North Koreans and sympa-
thizers, establish law and order, set up guarded fishing sanctuaries, and pro-
vide food and medical aid. Andrewes heartily approved and told off two of
the Canadian destroyers and some ROK vessels for Operation Comeback,
219
under Brock’s command. After Inchon, with the enemy pushed north, the
destroyers weren’t needed for cover so the ROKs did the job themselves.
The UN advance to the Yalu River in October had the messdecks buzzing
that it would all be over by Christmas. Forces on patrol were reduced. The
Canadian ships were given a spell in Flong Kong. On the way they rode out a
typhoon. To George Brown in Athabaskan his first tropical storm was awe-
some. A man was swept over the side but rescued by Welland’s skilful
shiphandhng. The new sailor’s unspoken fears that no ship could survive such
monstrous seas were dispelled by the sight of a forty-foot saihng junk bob-
bing along safe as a cork.
The ships all had weather damage to repair in the RN’s Hong Kong dock-
yard as well as getting up on their maintenance backlogs. Hong Kong always
had entrepreneurial working parties, mostly Chinese women, who con-
tracted with the First Lieutenant to do all manner of ship’s work, such as
chipping, scraping, and painting the side and upper deck. Their “pay” was the
privilege of taking the food the ship would otherwise throw away - some-
thing to give well-fed Canadians cause to reflect. Hong Kong has always been
a legendary leave-port, so for the men their spell of leave ashore for the first
time in four months was one to remember.
CHINNAMPO
In late November Captain Brock took over the west coast blockade with the
three Canadian destroyers, two Austrahans, an American, and three small
ROKs. Suddenly, the news that many feared flashed in - the Chinese army had
come into the land battle, and in force. It was a whole new war. On the eastern
front the Tenth Corps pulled back with heavy casualties but stayed intact. On
the west the front crumbled. Chinese troops lanced through, and the Eighth
Army broke in full retreat.
Another sea withdrawal loomed. Chinnampo, the port for the North
Korean capital of Pyongyang, was the place and transports were on the way.
Brock disposed his force to cover the transports to the harbour approaches
and give gunfire support to the army retreating south. On 4 December, with
Chinnampo bulging with refugees, troops, and stores, the senior USN officer
there signalled, “The local situation may reach emergency basis (tomorrow)
forenoon.” Offshore in Cayuga, Brock had to make the tough decisions.
The passage up Daido-ko estuary to Chinnampo was a tortuous twenty
miles through a maze of low islands and shifting mudflats. On a clear day
with the right tide it was difficult enough. Added to the natural hazards were
hundreds of mines planted by the North Koreans when they had pulled north.
A swept channel 500 yards wide was marked by unlit dan-buoys, but with the
current and the tide their positions were shaky at best, and navigation marks
were suspect. No UN ship had ever tried the passage at night. It was Hkely, too.
220
KOREA
that floating mines would be released from the myriad small craft about.
Altogether, Chinnampo was an unappetizing proposition, especially as the
destroyers couldn’t get there before nightfall.
But the enemy was nearly at the gates. The transports there would need
destroyers’ guns to get them clear. Waiting until morning could very well
mean that the destroyers would be too late. Captain Brock made his decision,
and at 8:30 that night he took the lead in Cayuga and headed in. It was, said
Bob Welland, following in Athabaskan, “one of the blackest nights I have ever
seen.”
All the Canadian ships had the new Sperry radar. It could detect very small
targets Hke snorkels, even dan-buoys. It was outstanding in precision work at
short ranges and better in that bracket than anything the other Allies had.
Equipment, of course, is only as good as the people using it, but the Canadi-
ans’ skill at spotting tiny targets and using their radar to navigate in very close
waters was already proved.
HMAS Warramunga, running behind, grounded and dropped downstream
to check for damage. Sioux, with Commander Paul Taylor, grounded Hghtly,
backed off the mudbank, and her screw fouled a dan-buoy wire that had
drifted into the channel. She, too, had to drop back. In Cayuga's operations
room, the Navigator, Lieutenant Andy Collier, used the Sperry radar and
fixed the ship’s position with consummate skill every two minutes for the
four-hour blind passage. On the bridge Brock conned the ship through the
inky dark. Athabaskan, Bataan, and Forrest Royal followed and the four
anchored before dawn off Chinnampo. As Captain Brock ordered, “Ring off
main engines,” the harbour looked to him “a blaze of lights and all peaceful
and serene.”
Serene was hardly the word for the day that dawned. A Chinese break-
through was reported by the Eighth Army twenty miles north. Refugees
swarmed, trying desperately to get south in junks, sampans, anything that
floated. Vast quantities of war materiel had to be loaded into the LSTs and
transports or demolished, and loaded ships had to finish their outward pas-
sages before night fell - a ship aground could plug escape for the rest.
Demolition and fire parties were detailed to destroy what couldn’t be
loaded. They, too, would pull out at dusk. Ships’ gunfire would wreak the
final destruction after the docks were cleared. Targets were identified and
allocated to each ship’s gunners. The day raced on. Explosions shattered rail
lines, boxcars, workshops, warehouses, factories. Smoke rose in columns.
Athabaskan moved to seaward to hold a protected anchorage halfway down.
It was intended for the destroyers when their job was done and for any other
ships that couldn’t make the open sea by dark. Steward Brown was at his gun
station as the ship slipped along with the procession of sampans and junks.
Armed sailors in the ship’s boats searched native craft for mines; sonar
221
probed; lookouts kept eyes peeled for floaters. Along the bank lay a string of
concrete pillboxes, empty now but waiting occupation by the enemy. Welland
passed the word to knock them out. Brown and his mates passed ammuni-
tion, and the 4-inch guns blasted away point blank, shattering pillboxes one
by one.
Back at Chinnampo there was still no sign of the enemy. As darkness fell
the last shore parties put the torch to the dockside and pulled out. The fires Ht
the scene enough for the gunners to spot their targets. Three destroyers
opened fire. With the first broadsides they started fresh blazes. The whole
waterfront Ht up - an oil tank flung a huge shower of molten metal, then
another; giant fireballs merged into a pall of thick black smoke. The guns
hammered away through the night, brewing a monstrous inferno of destruc-
tion. From Athabaskan's anchorage, Chinnampo looked to George Brown
“hke the Fourth ofJuly.”
At first light the destroyers weighed anchor and shepherded the last of the
LSTs downstream. All ships were clear of the channel by mid-forenoon. It had
been an impeccable operation in a tense, action-packed thirty-six hours. In
the words of Admiral Andrewes, it was “a fine feat of seamanship on the part
of all concerned, and its bold execution was worthy of the finest traditions of
the Naval Service.” Decorations were awarded, in part at least, for Chin-
nampo. Captain Brock got the Distinguished Service Order to add to his
World War Two DSC, Commander Welland a bar to his DSC, Lieutenant
Collier the DSC; the British Empire Medal went to Chief Petty Officer D. J.
Pearson, Cayuga's Coxswain. He’d been in charge of the wheelhouse and at
the wheel himself during those faultless river passages.
But this was a retreat and not a victory. The report of an enemy break-
through had in fact been wrong, but the Eighth Army was badly shattered
and confusion reigned ashore. On the eastern front the Tenth Corps pulled
out by sea to Pusan. Inchon was now the west coast evacuation port. The
destroyers ran and ran, topping up with fuel and ammunition from replenish-
ment ships offshore, going in for more shooting, trading gunfire as the enemy
moved south. The army pulled out of Inchon and in early January it was
abandoned.
CREATURE COMFORTS
The destroyers rotated to Sasebo for maintenance and a rest. When Cayuga got
in she’d been on patrol, including Chinnampo, for a full fifty days. Christmas
was livened as always by the youngest man in the ship becoming Captain for
the day. Athabaskan's “Captain, ” resplendent in Commander Welland’s beme-
dalled blues, ordered away his motor boat and called on Vice Admiral Dewey
Struble, USN, flying his flag in the battleship Missouri. The Admiral, with due
courtesy, entertained the young “Captain” in his splendid cabin in “Mighty
222
KOREA
Mo,” gave him a glass of medicinal brandy and a large cigar, and saw he was
properly piped back over the side.
At the UN bases new sailors like Brown saw the three navies side by side.
The Commonwealth base at Kure, near Hiroshima in the lush and lovely
Inland Sea, was much less to their liking than the main U.S. base at Sasebo.
The British had^the right kinds of ammunition and machinery spares for the
Canadian ships, but ashore there wasn’t much for sailors and British provi-
sions were terrible. Canadian ration scales were much better than RN now, but
in Kure they mostly got tough mutton. It was supphed, per RN custom, by the
carcass. From the Americans in Sasebo there was first-rate beef, neatly butch-
ered, trimmed, and ready to cook. Steaks, the great U.S. Navy staple, came
right from the package to the grill. Ice cream, milk, fresh fruit and vegetables,
and such magic as frozen French fries came in abundance and packed with
ships in mind.
The young fellows were getting to be seasoned fighting sailors. The
destroyers’ operations rooms, weapons, equipment, and communications had
been improved, and both men and equipment got better with use - and they
had plenty of that. This was a gunnery war and the tradition of the fighting
Tribals was very much ahve. Living conditions, though, were mostly as of
yore. Sioux had been fitted with bunks and a central cafeteria as an experiment
a few months before she went to Korea; but even the Hahfax-built destroyers,
laid down in wartime, had followed RN plans.
In Athabaskan, George Brown and eleven others hved, ate their food, and
slung their hammocks hke sardines in the stewards’ mess. It was about the size
of an average home’s kitchen. Sailors were issued with two hammocks, a thin
mattress, two mattress covers, two blankets - no sheets, no pillow or pillow-
case. A man who harboured notions of hygiene and comfort bought his own.
The faithful and time-worn hammock, which every old sailor remembers
with wry affection, was a rehc of sailing men-of-war. Seamen then slung
them in the open ’tween-decks over the guns. A dozen men formed a mess,
rigged a portable table, and that’s where they lived, prepared and ate their
food, and slept. With a leading hand in charge, the “mess” was the social unit
of the ship. The USN had turned hammocks in for bunks long since, as
Canadians who served in the horrendously rolling four-stackers well remem-
bered. Also, their men fed in separate mess-rooms. It was far more efficient
and sanitary and food was served to each man direct from the galley, piping
hot. The RN had stuck firmly to the old concept that men, their hammocks,
lockers, living, and feeding arrangements fitted in where weapons weren’t.
Officers in RN ships hved in relative style in a club-like wardroom fitted
with comfortable (but inflammable) mahogany and leather. They could spend
pleasant leisure hours there and entertain themselves and their guests with a
drink - at modest expense because liquor was duty free. Sometimes the
223
George Browns served at some pretty boisterous parties. Wartime, though,

had ingrained a general “no drinking when under way” dictum in the
wardroom.
Canadian ships and customs still followed the RN suit. There was a separate
officers’ galley with specially trained cooks who were adept at getting the best
cuts from the carcass. Dinnet in the wardroom in harbour on special occa-
sions was an elegant affair with poHshed table, gleaming silver, and sparkling
crystal filled with good wines. In Sasebo, Kure, or a quiet isolated anchorage,
such a dinner was a chance to extend hospitality, celebrate an event, entertain a
distinguished visitor, or just enjoy good fellowship. It preserved a certain
island of civility in harsh and grinding times.
In USN ships the men were far better off but officers’ wardrooms were
rather spartan places, mainly for eating with Httle added comfort. That
pushed officers back to their own staterooms, where they worked endlessly
on correspondence courses and as hke as not kept a bottle for a surreptitious
drink. The ship wasn’t their home as it was in the British tradition - in
harbour they got ashore as fast as they could to the officers’ club or a restau-
rant or a bar. Overall, the USN’s modern ships combined far better creature
comfort for the majority in conjunction with heavier armament.
As always, the bar in the Canadian wardroom and rum in the messdecks
were magnets to the USN. Officer or man, the reciprocal hospitaHty of Ameri-
can steaks and ice cream with a first-run movie to follow were doubly enjoyed
in the hot, humid Sasebo summer. USN ships had been air-conditioned for
years. The RCN’s old Rolls-Royce destroyers had led the RN with steam heat
by some twenty years, but air-conditioning was still to come.
Not long before George Brownjoined the navy, it had taken a leaf from the
USN book and issued all men with dungarees for everyday working dress.
Before that. World War Two included, only stokers and artisans had boiler
suits. Everyone else worked in his blue serge or tropical white shorts and kept
one suit clean and “tiddley” for Sunday Divisions and going ashore. Another
USN lead put officers, chiefs, and petty officers into khaki uniform for sum-
mer weather. In American navy stores dungarees and khakis were top quality
and dirt cheap. George Brown noted the USN sailor changed his dungarees
every day and sent them to the ship’s laundry. Canadians changed theirs once
a week and put them in the washing machine they’d bought with their own
canteen funds. The British sailors changed theirs once a month and washed
them in a bucket.
Ashore the Americans had ship’s exchanges with every imaginable goodie
at rock-bottom prices. There were recreation faciHties, USO shows with top
stars, leave centres in Tokyo and Japanese resorts - and a Shore Patrol that used
nightsticks first and asked questions after. The Sasebo hotels had lush hot
baths fed by volcanic springs.
224
KOREA
ARMY AND AIR FORCE

The first of the Canadian Brigade Group, the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s
Light Infantry, had arrived in Pusan on 18 December. They finished their
training there and joined the British Commonwealth Brigade at the end of
February, 1951. After seven months the destroyer men weren’t the only
Canadians on the front hne in the Korean War.
In the meantime an RCAF transport squadron was plugging efficiently
away on the Pacific airhft. No Canadian air fighting units went to the Korean
War. RCN airmen made a determined bid to get Magnificent out there, but the
carrier was needed in the Atlantic for NATO. Later, nudged through the
personal net, the RN asked for a Canadian Sea Fury squadron to fly from their
Korean carrier. It was working up for the job when the war ended. Lieutenant
JJ. MacBrien, on exchange with a USN squadron flying Panther jets, spent six
months off Korea in USS Oriskany. He flew sixty-six combat missions, mostly
ground attack, and was the first Canadian to win the U.S. Navy’s Distin-
guished Flying Cross.
DARK NEW YEAR

At the end of 1950 the whole of North Korea was firmly in enemy hands.
Withdrawals continued; General MacArthur’s headquarters was in disarray;
morale had shrivelled. Talk was that the UN would soon be right out of the
whole peninsula. At the United Nations the General Assembly set up a
Cease-fire Committee. But the Chinese were implacable. There would be no
compromise and no end to the fighting.
The beaten, dispirited American Eighth Army was whipped into fighting
shape by General Matthew Ridgway, the new ground forces commander who
arrived in late December. The Chinese took Seoul but the defence held south
of the Han River. Revived units moved up from Pusan; fighting spirit was
restored. The UN, including the Princess Pat’s, attacked in the harsh winter
weather. Hard fighting forced the enemy out of Seoul. The ships, coping with
cold, pan ice, and bHnding snowstorms, hammered away with their guns
along the flanks. By April, all South Korea was back in UN hands. The
workhorse destroyers had fired 60,000 shells at the enemy, a fair share of those
from Canadian guns. They had also taken relief food and supplies to a great
number of destitute and suffering Koreans.
Nootka had left Halifax in November, arrived in Sasebo in mid-January, and
the next day Sioux sailed for home. Huron, from Hahfax, would speU off Cayuga
in March and Sioux would come back to spell Athabaskan in May. From then on
the rotation kept each ship away from her home port for about a year.
THE YELLOW SEA FUELLING STAKES

The carriers ran day in, day out through that winter, flying strikes, reconnais-
225
sance, and bombardment spotting sorties. The Canadians spent a lot of time
off the west coast screening the duty carrier and rotating on plane guard. It
meant high-speed steaming and topping up with fuel from a carrier or fleet
oiler every couple of days. Mostly it was dull work.
But whatever the manoeuvre, doing it precisely right, smartly, and faster
than the next is the mark of a good ship, and every sailor worth his salt works
his butt off to make sure his ship is the top. That way even a chore Hke fuelling
at sea can Hven up a long patrol. To do it right calls for poHshed skill and spHt-
second timing by the whole team: finely judged shiphandHng by the Captain
or Officer of the Watch; instant response by the helmsman and the engine
room and boiler room crews; skilful Hne throwing and handling on the upper
deck; dexterity with tools - all on a moving deck in whatever weather God
provides. It doesn’t have to be done faster than the next ship, but sailors are
always sailors.
The record in the Commonwealth ships, from the moment the first line was
thrown across until pumping started, was eight minutes; the tanker always did
the timing. Sioux, at her first crack Canadian-style, knocked it down to 4:46.
Cayuga beat that by a minute. Then, during a long spell of carrier screening in
March, Athabaskan and Nootka polished their skills, whittling away at the record.
Finally, they were assigned to fuel in succession from the oher Wave Knight. The
RN tanker had a sporting Captain and an agile Chinese crew.
Nootka ran in fast and close. Up went the “pumping started” signal in an
amazing two minutes and twelve seconds. To beat it meant the narrowest
possible gap between ships. With the whole ship’s company on the upper
deck to cheer their fuelling team, Commander Welland took Athabaskan in
himself, scant feet from the oiler. The first hne was over, the hose hauled
across and coupled on, and pumping begun in an incredible one minute and
forty seconds.
That was it. For safety’s sake, the Canadians called the competition off and
let that record stand. No one else in the entire multi-nation UN navy ever
touched it. Replenishment at sea has been refined over the years and Canada’s
navy has taken a lead in developing gear and techniques. But the basic princi-
ples still apply and seamanship wins. Topping the fuelling stakes is a Canadian
navy tradition to this day.
Soon after, Athabaskan took the short great circle route home via the Aleu-
tians. Getting alongside the exposed fuelHng jetty in Adack in a gale-driven
snowstorm, ship’s legend had it that Welland came in at twenty-five knots. It
wasn’t that fast, of course, but George Brown swore the American sailors on
the jetty ran for their lives. One precisely timed “Half astern” on the engines
and the ship nudged so gently alongside she wouldn’t crack an egg. Their
Captain’s shiphandling was as much a point of pride in the stewards’ mess as
226
KOREA
on the upper deck. Brown s other lasting memory was the fresh, clean scent of
evergreens that wafted out to greet the ship as she closed the lush forest of the
B.C. coast. The perfumes of the Orient had their allure, though. He volun-
teered for Athabaskan's second tour.
THE SEAWARD FLANKS

By spring the blockade and escort force. Task Force 95, had eighty-five ships
- carriers, cruisers, and destroyers - clamped around the peninsula. Mostly,
the Canadians worked the west coast. Shore raiding parties with ship’s gun-
fire kept the enemy off balance, worried always about another big amphibious
assault. Destroyer guns backed ROK landing parties and they seized the
islands in the approaches to Inchon and Chinnampo. The blockade spread
north right to the Yalu River to stop everything that moved. Even Chinese
fishing boats were targets because they were landing their catches in North
Korea. Nootka caught a Chinese fishing fleet in dense fog. Off went the motor
cutter with an armed party, and the ship guided them with radar and radio as
they rounded up the whole fleet.
In late May Nootka joined in hitting the railway and roads on the east coast.
The east side of Korea is quite different from the west. Shores are steep, almost
unbroken, and backed by mountains. The water is deep inshore and the rise
and fall of tide is sHght - good conditions for moored mines. The prevaiUng
current is north to south so floating mines were always a threat, too. The main
railway line hugged the coast, ducking through tunnels and crossing trestles.
It was the main supply line for the North Koreans and a prime target for naval
bombardment.
Nootka's first target was a bridge near Songjin spanning a gully between
two tunnels. There’d been some doubt that the enemy was actually using the
hne and as Nootka moved in there was no sign of Hfe. On the principle that
well-placed explosives are more certain than gunfire for such jobs. Com-
mander Fraser Fraser-Harris decided on an armed landing party and demoli-
tion crew in the motor cutter, with Lieutenant Tony Slater in charge. At this
point fog moved in. The ship couldn’t back them with gunfire now but they
could get inshore unseen.
The cutter chugged steadily in. Along the shrouded shore nothing moved.
There was little surf and the cutter crunched up on the rocky beach. Out
popped North Korean soldiers from the tunnels above and laid down a
blistering fire. Slater’s crew fired steadily back. He’d been told not to stay and
do battle and pulled out in good order. A little more patience by the North
Koreans and the foray could have had an ugly end. From then on Nootka stuck
to gunfire. But Fraser-Harris came from the “cracking-show” school of naval
aviators. He had been a squadron commander with the RN and the first pilot
227
to land a Seafire on a carrier and had the DSC and bar. He added some
ingenious twists.
Next he drew a specially stubborn target that the whole force had dubbed
“The Rubber Bridge. ” It was a trestle that shrugged off shells. Any damage was
repaired at night and the trains kept rolling. Fraser-Harris, with the naval
aviator’s Hght regard for gunners, saw he must get in really close. There was
high risk of mines along the shore, however, and there were no sweepers about,
so Nootka provided her own. Two motor cutters towed a wire between them
and swept a channel. Nootka followed in, searching with sonar for mines and
firing Squid bombs ahead as an extra counter. Cautiously, they moved right in.
The cutters’ wire snagged nothing. They got inside 1,300 yards from shore.
Suddenly soldiers poured from the tunnels. Nootka levelled her 4-inch
guns, firing right over her own boats at near point-blank range. The 40mms
joined in. The enemy scuttled for cover. Nootka then turned her guns on the
trestle as USS Stickell followed her wake, joining the party with her 5-inch
guns. The Rubber Bridge was reduced to splinters. Resource and that ever-
ready wilUngness of the Canadians to work the small ship close inshore did
what hundreds of heavy shells hadn’t. Nootka won a cutter-load of fresh fish
for her trouble, killed by the Squid bombs. The North Koreans at great
expense of time and labour restored the rail line by filling in the gully.
TRUCE TALKS
By mid-June the Chinese and North Koreans were badly battered. They
made overtures and truce talks began on 10 July 1951 at Kaesong. But it was a
holding device and talks went on sporadically for two years. There was no
more major land offensive but there were fierce actions with Hmited objec-
tives. They cost the UN another 100,000 casualties.
Naval and air forces could keep pressure on the enemy with less risk so the
truce was even busier for the ships in many ways. The west coast islands were
a shifting, dangerous battleground. Both sides wanted them because they
controlled harbour approaches and communications and were used to gather
intelligence. The enemy wanted them for mining bases. The ships worked
hand in glove with ROK units and guerrilla groups ashore.
Lieutenant Donald Saxon was an anti-submarine specialist but this was a
war without submarines, so he became liaison officer with the ROK units.
Living ashore with the South Koreans, he joined in planning and organizing
raids and counterattacks and supporting guerrilla actions. They used fleets of
small boats, junks, and sampans. Saxon organized support by the ships:
supplies and medical help; gunfire; starshell when needed. For his outstand-
ing services in this phase of the war he won the DSC. There were some fierce
skirmishes and the ships’ medical parties tended a lot of the wounded, many
of them ashore in difficult situations.
228
KOREA
THE GREAT IMPOSTOR

Around this time Cayuga's medical officer, Surgeon Lieutenant Joseph Cyr,
drew a lot of attention in the hero-hungry press in Canada for some spectacu-
lar medical feats and operations on wounded Koreans under fire in primitive
conditions ashore.
But “Dr. Cyr” was actually Ferdinand Waldo Demara, an American with a
strange psychosis who made his bizarre way through Hfe filling fantasy roles.
He had served a hitch as a medical corpsman in the U.S. Navy and so knew the
medical jargon. A real Dr. Joseph Cyr practised medicine in rural New
Brunswick and was also Hcensed in the state of Maine. Demara had called on
Dr. Cyr, introduced himself as an American physician interested in the same
kind of practice from the U.S. side. He borrowed Dr. Cyr’s medical documents,
saying they’d help him with his appHcation, and presented himself, documents
and all, at the Naval Division in Saint John as a volunteer for active service.
With the war on, doctors were badly needed and he got a quick commis-
sion as a Surgeon Lieutenant. In Halifax he blended affably into the
wardroom officers’ mess. He genially carried out routine medical duties in the
naval hospital and even took over as resident psychiatrist when the regular
well-qualified practitioner went away on a course. Off to Korea in Cayuga on
her second tour, his exploits - real or apocryphal - were his undoing. In
October, 1951, when Demara had been a seagoing medical officer for five
months, the real Dr. Cyr spotted a newspaper account of amazing deeds by
the brave New Brunswick doctor. He’d seen the face in the photo before, and
he blew the whistle.
Demara was rushed back to Canada, released by an embarrassed navy, and
deported. He basked in the limelight and perhaps some wealth for a time as
consultant on a Hollywood film about himself called The Great Impostor. His
strange mental quirk took him into more weird situations; none, though,
could match the sheer gall of posing as a ship’s medical officer in a war zone.
He actually had extracted Commander Jamie Plomer’s wisdom teeth - and
neatly and efficiently, at that. It was lucky for the ship’s company that they
were the most critical thing he had to remove. No one ever knew how many
Korean lives might in fact have been saved had Ferdinand Demara been a
genuine MD.
ANOTHER YEAR
New Year’s in the navy is traditionally rung in by sixteen strokes on the ship’s
bell. Cayuga welcomed 1952 with sixteen salvoes fired at enemy positions on
the stroke of midnight. Enemy aircraft were appearing now, from airfields
beyond the Yalu River in Manchuria or China. They hit ground targets in the
islands so when the destroyers were working inshore away from the carrier,
they had their own Combat Air Patrol (CAP) flying overhead for defence.
229
The price of staying the UN advance in June had come home to roost. The
Communist forces had dug in with enormous strength and firepower all
along the truce line. The chances of taking them by storm or forcing a
reasonable settlement were gone. Another amphibious assault behind enemy
Hnes was out because of the total forces they could muster.
Ships hved off the fleet train and rotated for major storing and maintenance
in Japan and rest and recreation in Hong Kong. The UN navy was endlessly
busy around the islands off the west coast. Along the east coast there were
railway and road targets and gunfire support of the army’s flanks. And the
enemy gun batteries on the east coast were getting far more accurate. They hit
over a dozen ships. Nootka got close into an eight-gun battery and took some
near ones that raked the upper deck. She had to do some fast manoeuvring. In
October, Iroquois was on a “railway package” bombardment when she was hit
by a shore battery. One officer and two men were killed and ten wounded.
The dead and badly wounded were transferred to an oiler, the damage
patched, and the ship back on task, barely missing a beat. The Captain,
Commander Bill Landymore, had seen plenty of action before.
The east coast railway got endless pounding from air and sea but it stub-
bornly stayed in business. Ships’ gunners now zeroed in on the trains them-
selves. A USN ship destroyed two on a single patrol in July, 1952, and the great
game now for every ship was to get a bona fide membership in the “Trainbus-
ters Club.” It wasn’t that easy. The tunnels along the hne gave sohd shelter,
and if a train was stopped with gunfire the engine often was uncoupled and
shunted to safety. The club rule was that you had to get the engine itself to
score a complete train.
Crusader, who reHeved Iroquois in the fall, smashed boxcars in one train and
hit all the cars and demohshed the engine of another. Haida, fresh in from
Halifax, stopped a train and destroyed the cars but the engine chuffed into a
tunnel. On her last Korean patrol in May, 1953, she scored a clean kill and
then a second.
With all this opposition the trains usually ran at night. An alert ship’s
lookout could spot sparks from the fire-box and from the wheels when the
engine braked. Then up went the starshell and the guns would swing into
action.
Crusader's 4.5-inch guns proved deadly again in April, 1953. Her Gunnery
Officer, Lieutenant Fred Copas, spotted a southbound train on a dark night.
All guns swung into action and quickly knocked it off the tracks. In the
morning the ship lay off and deliberately smashed the wreckage, one shot at a
time. Then in late afternoon another train was spotted on an inland spur.
Lieutenant Commander John Bovey took his ship in to the very edge of the
swept channel. The range was stiU 14,000 yards - seven nautical miles - but
230
KOREA
the guns were right on. Direct hits quickly stopped the train. In minutes
another appeared on the same track and that, too, was knocked off.
Crusader was now the UN champion trainbuster. While the gunners were
sponging out their smoking barrels and touching up bhstered paintwork, the
ship raced off to join the fast carriers of Task Force 77. Her fame had gone
before her. As she sighted the powerful force - three fast Essex-class carriers,
one battleship, a cruiser, and twelve destroyers - the Commander, Rear Admi-
ral R.F. Hickey, USN, welcomed her personally on voice radio. Crusader's
uninspiring call sign was “Leadmine,” but Admiral Hickey changed it on the
spot to “Casey Jones.” (The Admiral’s call sign was, appropriately,
“Jehovah.”)
Trainbusting, for want of ships to fight, stayed as the main sport. Atha-
baskan scored two and that made a final total of eight for the RCN. It was a
remarkable figure. The combined score by UN ships for the entire war was
twenty-eight trains. The Canadians, only three of some eighty destroyers,
spent most of their time on the other coast. Their gun armament wasn’t nearly
as powerful as the USN’s. But from their captains down they were masters at
using what they had. No ship of whatever size ever matched Crusader's score.
WAR’S END
The fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953. The Chinese and
North Koreans were highly unpredictable, and without a full poHtical settle-
ment there’d be no letup. In January, 1954, the Canadian army force was cut
but the full complement of three destroyers worked steadily on, patrol after
patrol, until the end of the year. Like the navy itself it was first in, last out:
Sioux, with Commander Gus Rankin, stayed until September, 1955.
Eight of the RCN’s eleven destroyers completed twenty-one tours of duty
among them - Cayuga, Athabaskan, Sioux, and Crusader from the Pacific Com-
mand and Haida, Huron, Iroquois, and Nootka from the Atlantic. Over 3,500
officers and men served there at least once. Three were killed and two severely
wounded.
The Korean War was hard slogging, often tedious and dull, sometimes
charged with danger. Always there was tension. Ships spent 65 per cent of
their time under way, with patrols ranging up to fifty days. Most ships’
companies were away from home for a year. And this was “peacetime.” But
morale was extraordinarily high - it was foreign; it was different; there were
some breaks for leave in a fascinating country and most ships had a rest period
in Hong Kong. Mainly, though, they were doing a job that had to be done,
working at it hard, and doing it well. The ships hit the heights of efficiency.
From Chinnampo on, the RCN earned a real reputation in the sister navies for
resourcefulness, efficiency, and getting things done with spirit and dispatch.
231
When Crusader parted company from Task Force 77 after four days of high-
speed screening, Admiral Hickey signalled: “I want you, your officers and
your men to know that you leave with the deep and profound admiration of
all for your enviable performance during your stay. Your ship operated Hke a
veteran from the beginning. I consider your alertness and efficiency in all your
operations an outstanding lesson to sailormen everywhere.”
Such accolades are not earned lightly. It could well have applied, other
times, other places, to the other ships’ companies in Korea. They had done a
first-class job, an important one, for the UN, for peace, and for Canada. And
they had done a great deal for the navy. Korea brought out in them a standard
of excellence, a special and distinctive way of doing the job - their own way.
Canadian sailors, in what was now a fast-expanding fleet, had shown them-
selves again what they could do.
232
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEW NWY
A BANNER YEAR
WHEN VICE ADMIRAL HAROLD GRANT, CHIEF OF NAVAL STAFF, FLEW TO
Korea to inspect the destroyers in late 1950, he brought heartening news from
Ottawa. The St. Laurent government had raised the navy’s ceiling to 13,000
men. A few months later the target was 100 ships and 20,000 men by 1954. It
was a tall order. But with the war on and Canada strongly committed to
NATO, the climate was right and a good deal was already under way.
There was a popular notion that Europe, in war, could be kept supplied by
air, like Berhn, and this had strong promoters. A serious look at the tonnages,
however, showed the idea to be ridiculous, and from early NATO strategy
sessions it was clear the North Atlantic sea Hnes of communication must be
defended. Stalin’s navy already had four times the number of submarines that
Germany had at the start of World War Two, and, with German technology
and technicians, they were building updates of the Type 21 that was so
dangerous in 1945. It could do seventeen knots submerged for a burst, ten
knots for eleven hours, dive to 900 feet, and carry twenty torpedoes. In short,
it was nearly eight times as hard to detect as the regular U-boat of World War
Two and, if caught, five times as hard to kill.
Admiral Grant steered clear of the NATO (i.e., the U.S.) battle fleet. Canada,
Grant said, would contribute anti-submarine escort forces. The carrier would
be devoted to that role, too, with fighters for air defence. Anti-submarine
work, after all, made sense. It was Canada’s realm of experience. It called for
small ships and many more were needed. The dozen wartime-built destroyers
were updated in the early fifties while new escorts were being built. Later, to
expand, twenty-one wartime frigates were converted into useful ocean
escorts. Mines, with Korea as the reminder, were a cheap and easy threat to
Canadian ports. Some wartime Bangors were recommissioned as a tempo-
233
rary minesweeping force; meantime twenty fine little Bay-class minesweep-

ers were laid down starting in 1951, to go into service between 1953 and 1957.
Preliminary design had started in 1948 on a completely new and quite
radical escort vessel. Three were approved and in 1950 the first, HMCS St.
Laurent, was laid down in Montreal. To fight the new enemy submarine they
had to be far faster and more’ powerful than corvettes or frigates. In any war
Britain must be counted out for supply, so dependence on the RN went by the
board. The navy must rely on North American sources. Unless it was to buy
off the USN’s shelf, it must design its own ships and work with Canadian
industry to build them. That meant an advanced technical and industrial base
must be created. The navy’s program injected technical advances into indus-
try as never before, not just in building hulls but in a great range of high-tech
equipment - electronic, electrical, mechanical. This was a real boost to the
economy and made thousands of jobs. As well, the expansion gave a terrific
boost to the navy. It was just what Sir Wilfrid Laurier had in mind for Canada
in 1910.
The year 1950 was a turning point in aviation, too. The RCAF’s campaign
against naval air had been blunted with NATO’s demands. Indeed, they would
have to put some effort themselves into maritime air. And now the spell of RN
aircraft broke at last. As a solid rehable plane for ASW the navy bought
seventy-five used Grumman Avengers from the USN. They were modified at
Fairey Aviation in Dartmouth and that began a long partnership with the
aircraft industry.
The “Turkeys,” as they were called, were air-sea kindly, rugged, and easy to
maintain. Over the next seven years the rising generation of naval aviators learned
aU-weather ASW in the faithful Turkeys from Magnijicenfs deck. Pilots at last were
getting at least thirty airborne hours a month. They now looked south of the
border for attitude as well as aircraft, and safety became respectable.
Rear Admiral George Stephens had laid the technical foundations for an
independent navy. By 1956, Rear Admiral J.G. (“Fat Jack”) Knowlton, the
Chief of Naval Technical Services since 1948, had built a professional and
technical staff of some 400. Most, both service and civiHan, were brought
from the U.K. The Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, a civiHan arm of
Admiralty, lent Mr. R. Baker, an experienced and innovative naval architect.
“Roly Biker,” with his broad Cockney, was viewed askance in England as
something of a renegade. Flis ideas were rather too advanced for the notably
conservative Royal Corps, but the targets set by Canada’s Naval Staff called
for his kind of mind and energy. He was made a Commodore and master-
minded the design of the St. Laurent-class (to be followed by improved
Restigouches and Mackenzies) under Knowlton, who managed the whole
shipbuilding, converting, and new equipment program.
234
THE NEW NAVY
For about ten years Canadians were quite concerned about defence. Army
and air force loomed far larger than navy in the public view and the share of
the public purse. But in ten years, from the early fifties, the navy designed and
built forty-one new ships and did major conversions to thirty-three more.
Bright young naval architects and engineers got real responsibiHty for
advanced design, development, and production work. As well as sophisti-
cated high-tech industry for Canada, the navy developed an expert officer
corps and an in-house capability in warship design and engineering that
could take on any future task.
THE CADILLACS
Harking back to the “Rolls-Royce” destroyers of 1933, someone rightly
dubbed this new family of war vessels the “Cadillacs.” These were ships for
the North Atlantic the Canadians knew so well. Excellent seakeeping, long
range, good sustained speed, and reliable sonar were essential. Icing up was an
old problem, controlled by high freeboard and reduced upper-deck clutter
and a reserve of stability that gave the ships a characteristically sharp roll. And
they had to be capable of rapid building in quantity. For the first time, a ship
was designed from scratch for the Captain to take command in action from
the operations room rather than the bridge.
Noise that gave away a ship’s position to submarines was controlled by hull
and propeller design and machinery mountings. Post-Bikini, the ships had to
cope with heavy underwater shock. Contaminated spray and deadly radioac-
tive fallout had to be washed off quickly with spraying systems. No RCN ships
or aircraft were fitted for nuclear weapons, but both friends and enemies had
them. Either way, ships and men had to survive and keep fighting.
In a new departure, Canadian Vickers in Montreal was the “lead yard.”
The Naval Central Drawing Office estabHshed there guided construction of
all new ships and conversions from Halifax to Victoria, with tight naval
overseeing and minute attention to detail. The commercial yards did high-
quality work.
With the first of the newly built ships RCN standards of shipboard life
leaped far ahead of the RN and ran past the Americans. There were comfort-
able bunks with reading lamps and quality bedding, decent-sized personal
lockers, modern electric galleys serving first-rate food in central cafeterias.
They had much more refrigeration and freezer space, air-conditioning,
greatly improved washrooms and heads, on-board laundry, good supplies of
fresh water, and better Hghting everywhere. Living at sea can never equal
comforts ashore. But wartime sailors who took memories of the little cor-
vettes aboard a Cadillac found themselves in a totally different world. Cana-
da’s sailors of the fifties were getting the very best.
235
The first of the Cadillacs, HMCS St. Laurent, went to sea in 1955 under
Commander Bob Timbrell, last seen killing U-boats with Chummy Prentice
in the Channel in 1944. “Sally the Second” went through all the hoops with
the U.S. Navy’s Operational Evaluation Command out of Key West. Timbrell
and his team quickly found out how to get the most out of their ship.
American evaluation showed HMCS St. Laurent, the first solely Canadian-
designed warship, to be the best of her type ever built.
From the mid-fifties on “Sally” and her sisters symboHzed the Canadian
navy’s unique identity. Twenty of the new family came into service over nine
years. The last two of the line came fresh from the shipyards in 1964 with
hangars and flight decks. The same year St. Laurent came back to sea reconfi-
gured in the now-classic mould of the heHcopter destroyer, the Canadian
DDH.
NATO’S NAVY
Vice Admiral Rollo Mainguy followed Harold Grant as Chief of Naval Staff
in late 1951. The navy wasn’t yet transformed but, as Grant said in his farewell
signal, it was “close-hauled and beating to windward.” A sound basis for a
modern navy had been laid on the broad international outlook of Louis St.
Laurent and Lester Pearson, the commitment to NATO, and the thrust of the
Korean War, plus the industrial nationaHsm of C.D. Howe, the wartime
Minister of Munitions and Supply, then of Reconstruction, and finally of
Trade and Commerce.
A sad gap in NATO’s and Canada’s own strength was the lack of a seagoing
Canadian Merchant Marine. Without national policy its wartime strength
had virtually disappeared. Canada, though, stood up among its allies, deUv-
ered when it spoke, and was heard with due and growing respect.
RN apron strings had often been a lifeline, but over the years they had
sometimes caught around the Canadian navy’s throat. The strings weren’t
officially cut, but they were replaced by the bond of mutual professional
respect. Canada’s navy was on its own now but never alone. As the fifties
moved on and it took its expanding place in NATO, it felt its own strong
tradition, the thrust of adventure and innovation, of professionahsm and
pride. Canada’s navy was well on its way to running with the very best.
Winston Churchill ran an emotional and eloquent campaign for an RN
Admiral to reign over NATO’s Atlantic, but he got no support from Canada.
The first Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (Saclant), Admiral Lynde
McCormick, USN, hoisted his flag in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1952. The war-
time Canadian North Atlantic Command dropped into place as a NATO sub-
command. Rear Admiral Roger Bidwell, CBE, Canada’s Flag Officer Atlantic
Coast, took on the NATO hat, too.
236
THE NEW NAVY
Army and air units were assigned permanently to NATO commanders and
stationed in Europe. The naval command structure stayed in place but forces
were so mobile and each country had such national needs that ships were
committed on paper to NATO command in emergency and for exercises.
Admiral McCormick wasted no time gearing up the exercises. Strategy and
tactics, communications and command, had to be tested, and a looming NATO
exercise was a sharp jab toward excellence.
Fall was the time for the big NATO gatherings. Each winter most east coast
ships were off to the Caribbean, west coast ships to California or Hawaii. The
kindly weather and the marvellous USN facilities meant top value for training
time and dollar. Sunshine and warmth eased painting and maintenance. And
there were intriguing runs ashore for young men who did, after all, want to
see more of the world than open ocean and downtown Victoria or Citadel
Hill. Wives left behind in icy, storm-lashed Halifax never did believe that all
hands had in fact been working very hard when they came back in springtime
sporting expensive tans.
Uganda (later recommissioned Quebec) had circumnavigated South
America in early 1946 to announce that post-war Canada was open again for
trade. It worked. From time to time there were more such cruises, some to the
exotic places of a young sailor’s dreams: Japan, Australia, Africa, Malaysia, a
host of European countries. Showing the flag in foreign ports saw the ships
polished, glittering, impeccable. Ceremonial guards paraded and bands
played; dress uniforms, swords, and medals gleamed; bugles and the shrilling
Bosun’s call greeted foreign officers and bigwigs; cocktails on the quarterdeck
under coloured awnings lubricated relations; ships were thrown open to
swarms of curious visitors.
To many - especially those on the lower deck who laboured while the
officers played well-groomed hosts and were entertained lavishly ashore -
these visits were something of a bind. But showing its flag flying over a
smartly impressive naval ship has always been a telling way for a country to
make its point abroad, whether the point is good will or raw power or goods
for sale. Canada’s image as a strong NATO and Commonwealth member and a
major worldwide trading nation was presented by the navy very well indeed,
in ports around the world, and in the summer of 1953, for instance, at a great
Review of the Fleet at Spithead, off Portsmouth, when Queen Elizabeth II
celebrated her coronation.
That fall it was back to hard business in Exercise Mariner, involving nine
NATO countries, 300 ships, 1,000 aircraft, and half a million men at “war” for
nineteen days. Magnificent, Quebec, Algonquin, and frigates Swansea and La
Hulloise, as well as three RCAF maritime squadrons of aging Lancasters, took
part. The problem posed was control of the North Atlantic and European
237
approaches. Convoys from America must be fought through to supply

Europe against “Orange” submarines, surface raiders, and shore-based air-
craft - and against a brutal lashing of North Atlantic weather.
One grey squally afternoon the task group, with carriers Magnificent, USS
Bennington, and USS Wasp, moved in south of Iceland to strike at airfields in
“enemy” hands. Quebec was among the surface support. The big formation
turned into the wind, flew off the first strike, and resumed course. Forty-two
aircraft, including eight of “Maggie’s” Avengers, climbed through the glo-
wering clouds toward their targets.
Then, without warning, a dense blanket of fog rolled in, and that meant
hkely fog in Iceland, too. A fast command decision: planes were recalled;
disciphned, precise, the force turned into wind again, straight toward the fog
bank, with very Httle room. Ten planes got aboard - just.
And the fog clamps down. Visibility nil. Thirty-two aircraft stack up
overhead. Each carrier controlled approach operator uses radar, talks his
aircraft in. On “Maggie’s” bridge, with Captain Herbert Rayner, it’s quiet,
controlled. Below on the fog-swirled fhght deck, cleared for emergency, all
hghts burn. The rescue man in his asbestos suit shifts and checks his fire-
fighting gear. A Turkey’s engine down the port side can be heard, coming
round, then closer from astern, and closer. The Landing Signal Officer, bats in
hand, strains to will away the fog. With radar the pilot still must see the deck
and batsman, just that last snatch of visibiHty, to land on. The plane is heard,
throtthng back, still closer, coming in, in. Then he guns it, roars up and
overhead. No dice. Another tries. Another.
Around drone the planes in the dense grey pall, circuit after circuit, looking
for a thinning of the fog. In Quebec's operations room muted radio speakers
carry the laconic voices - pilots’, controllers’, signalmen’s - cool and disci-
phned. The bright spots on the radar scan show the ordered ring of ships.
“Heavy ships move clear” - extra masts are bad news for low-flying planes
in fog. Captain Pat Budge on Quebec’s bridge works his ship through the
murk, past the destroyer screen, out of the formation. “Planes report your
fuel states. ” Shore airfields? Too far now for dwindhng fuel. Exercise rules are
off and darkness approaches - decision time again. “Aircraft prepare to ditch
ahead of the force.” A nasty business in the fog, that. “Destroyers station
ahead to pick up crews.” If they can see them.
An “Orange” submarine, USS Redfm, 110 miles away, has been hstening
and reports: “Ceiling here one hundred feet, visibility two miles.” That’s
enough to ditch safely and maybe get picked up before dark and frigid water
do their work. It’s just on sunset. Another decision. “Planes with fuel, go for
Redfm. Remainder ditch.” “Roger. Out.” “Roger. Out.” “Roger. Out.” The
margins are narrowing to nothing.
238
THE NEW NAVY
Then, from “Maggie’s” bridge, the fog is thinning. The flight deck comes
to view, the masthead, the other ships. It’s a patch of warmer water. But will it
last? Controllers call the aircraft back, into the circuit. Lowest in fuel land first.
And down they come and drop on deck - any deck - but precisely and with
care, because a landing hitch can deal disaster to the friend behind. Every
plane gets down, and in mere minutes the fog clamps in. The Hght fails.
Professionals must face the eternal challenge of the sea. But this was a
miraculous stroke and no one had any illusions about it. It made a sailor think.
There were other oceans, other challenges. HMCS Labrador opened a new
chapter in Canada’s Arctic, navigating the fabled Northwest Passage in 1954,
but soon she turned civiHan with the Department of Transport. Following
Lester Pearson’s initiative in 1956, which led to the United Nations Emer-
gency Force in Egypt, Magnificent offloaded her aircraft to ferry the Canadian
contingent. That was a crash operation in Hahfax over Christmas. First it was
the Queen’s Own Rifles. But the Egyptians, violently anti-British, rejected
such a name - and uniform. Canada badges wouldn’t show up in a rifle sight.
Aboard came communications and logistics troops and vehicles. “Maggie”
sailed and unloaded at Port Said.
The reward for uncarrier-Hke operations and many hours of stevedoring
was a look at the wreck-Httered entrance to the Suez Canal, camel rides at the
pyramids, and a memorable rest and recreation stop at Naples. In that steamy
seaport the proprietresses of certain places of entertainment sought to redeem
a sizable bale of Canadian Tire “money” from the ship’s paymaster. It had
seemed authentic in the dimmed lights but their bankers decHned to accept it
in the hght of day. Join the navy and see the world indeed.
A NEW GENERATION
Quite a number of first Heutenants and commanding officers of small ships
were, by the mid-fifties, graduates of Canada’s own naval college. The navy
had seized its chance when money was available and opened the Royal Cana-
dian Naval CoUege at HMCS Royal Roads in 1942 to train permanent-force
cadets. It had been twenty years since the earlier college closed. Now the 100
cadets occupied a fine old stone mansion and some newer outbuildings on a
stunningly beautiful estate facing the anchorage off Esquimalt.
Two models for Royal Roads were studied: the RN’s Britannia Naval College,
Dartmouth, and the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. The RN, for untold
generations, had sent boys to sea largely from the upper middle class to
become officers through a sort of apprenticeship. More modern days contin-
ued the class bias and a college was built ashore for schooling a bit beyond
secondary level, basic training, and thorough naval indoctrination. Parents
paid a fee. Only engineering midshipmen went on to degree level. The
239
executive officers, the big majority, went to sea and more technical training.
Intellectual development was up to them. As of yore, “the man-of-war was
their university.”
The U.S. Naval Academy, by contrast, took high school graduates through
stiff competition, gave them four years to a respected science degree, and
included naval training and thoroughgoing indoctrination. The RN way pro-
duced young, well-trained, hands-on, sea-wise junior officers. Generally, by
their first command they were better seamen and navigators, better
shiphandlers, and more flexible, innovative tacticians. The results showed at
sea. But the American way produced a well-educated officer corps. The
results showed in the power of the USN. It was educated admirals versus well-
trained juniors.
A war was no time to be starting a university in Canada. In any case, with
all the RCN’S senior officers cast from the RN mould, the choice was as
inevitable as the one made the following year on naval aviation. And it was
just as much an albatross. Captain John Grant, brother of Harold, was in
command. “Stumpy” Grant was an old Naval College graduate himself, a
between-wars schoolmaster. He was a benevolent httle martinet who could
spot a speck of dust on a cadet’s uniform at a hundred yards and ran the place
hke a senior boys’ boarding school in navy blue.
College candidates certainly had to be fit and have good junior matricula-
tion, but the main filter was a half-hour personal interview by a board of
senior officers. Their leanings, and possibly the way the word was spread,
were clear. Nineteen of the first Royal Roads class of fifty came from private
schools. There was no thought to Quebec. With an age ceihng and mandatory
math and science for entry, graduates of Quebec colleges had small chance of
qualifying. Few French Canadians even appHed.
From its opening, predictably on Trafalgar Day, things ran very much in
the RN mode. Except for the mandatory ice-cold plunge each morning it was
Httle changed from the old college. The norm was two years of education and
all-round vigorous naval training on top of junior matriculation. It brewed
fine naval esprit and well-trained young officers, though only half stayed in
the regular force. Graduates went off to sea as midshipmen for two years with
the RN, then did technical courses in the U.K.
In 1947 Royal Roads became the RCN/RCAF college. The air force insisted on
senior matriculation for entry, and Brooke Claxton was determined to get the
three services together at the start. The next year the Royal Military College in
Kingston reopened as a four-year degree-granting university for the three
services. Royal Roads became tri-service, too. The air force, aiming for edu-
cated air marshals, had all its cadets go on to RMC for degrees. The navy,
however, stayed on course, sending cadets straight to sea after two years, still
mostly to RN ships.
240
THE NEW NAVY
Back in the early twenties the shrunken RN had sent a lot of its surplus young
officers off to Cambridge to extend their education for a year. The rock-bottom
RCN couldn’t raise the modest fee of £1 per day for any of Grant’s, Reid’s, or
Mainguy’s generations. Who can tell what their attitudes to junior officer
training would have been had their minds been thus expanded? It wasn’t until
1957 that a study by Commodore Patrick Tisdall went so far as to say “a
fundamental knowledge of the sciences and humanities is an essential require-
ment for command of a modern ship.” At that point, finally, the aim was for all
officers, executive and supply as well as engineers, to have university degrees.
Now, too, all executive and engineering prospects would get both bridge and
engine room certificates and all would quaHfy for command at sea and could
become Flag Officers in Command or Chief of the Naval Staff.
In the meantime the Regular Officers Training Plan, which entered officers
through the service colleges and universities, wasn’t producing enough for
the expanding service, especially aviators. To fill the gap HMCS Venture started
in Esquimalt dockyard in 1954. The Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Admiral
Hugh Pullen, was a traditionalist. Venture was a little naval coUege on the old
pattern. To run it PuUen made a sound choice in Captain Robert Welland, DSC
and bar. WeUand mustered the best of instructor officers and chiefs and petty
officers. A lot of adventurous young men who didn’t aspire to degrees rose to
the challenge. There was a special introductory course run annually in Que-
bec and a fully French classroom stream in the first year of the two-year
course. For the first time ever the navy got good response from French
Canada. Over the years Venture produced about half the officers for the navy.
What they lacked in higher education they made up in know-how and esprit,
and a lot reached the top.
Venture, too, was the prime source of naval aviators. Selection and training
saw to it that they were smart, quick, innovative, and flexible. From the early
fifties, aviators were becoming first heutenants of destroyers, then command-
ing ships, then escort squadrons. These were well-rounded naval officers. It
was this combination of thoroughgoing sea and air professionalism, for
example, that married the hehcopter and escort. With the navy’s single-
minded focus on anti-submarine it was what made the RCN of the sixties the
leading ASW outfit among NATO’s navies.
AVIATION GROWS UP
Bonaventure replaced Magnificent in 1957. She’d been laid down in Belfast in
1946 and in 1952 Canada agreed to buy her for, it was said, some $30 milhon
worth of good Ontario cheese. She came complete with some outstanding
post-war RN innovations that were taken up by every navy’s carriers: the
mirror landing aid that did a far better job than the old “batsman”; the steam-
powered catapult that could squirt a heavier aircraft up with much less wind
241
over the deck; and - most important of all - the angled deck. The whole
cornbination brought dramatically better safety and flexibility and far greater
peace of mind.
In 1955 the Sea Fury was replaced by the American navy’s F2H3 Banshee.
They couldn’t fly from the unimproved “Maggie” so, waiting for Bonaventure,
they flew from Shearwater air station. The “Banjo” was the only Canadian
fighter carrying a guided missile, the heat-seeking Sidewinder. The squadron
under Lieutenant Commander Bob Falls regularly beat out the RCAF’s CF-
100s on intercepts and was rated the top Canadian formation in North Ameri-
can Air Defence Command.
The CS2F Tracker, bravely promoted by Commodore Keighley-Peach, RN,
over Britain’s Gannet, succeeded the Avenger in 1956. The navy bought 100
built by De Flavilland in Toronto under Hcence from America’s Grumman.
The “Stoof” was a big, sohd, capable ASW aircraft and carried radar, MAD,
sonobuoys, and homing torpedoes. It, too, needed the angled deck. The
Sikorsky H04S “Horse” hehcopters were aboard, too, carrying their dunking
sonar.
The navy was nudging hard at Bonaventure's limits. The Americans
wouldn’t consider operating Banshees from such a small deck. The Tracker
was so big that landing a few feet off the centrehne a wingtip would hit the
island. But Commander Pop Fotheringham was her first Commander (Air),
and by now he and his people were seasoned professionals with hard-won
experience. They hadn’t lost their old spirit of “press on,” but it was not
“press on regardless.” Ship, seamen, aviators, equipment, training came
together at last. Now there was work to do to mould them into a top fighting
team.
Captain WiUiam Landymore took over command of Bonaventure in Janu-
ary, 1958. His physical size - they called him “Shadow” at Royal Military
College in the thirties - was the only thing small about him. He was a
thoroughgoing, energetic, tough-minded professional. Officer to ordinary
seaman, sailing with Bill Landymore, or commanding a ship in his task force,
you knew exactly where you were.
When Landymore took over, Bonaventure's air operations, hke NATO carri-
ers generally, revolved around day flying as they had in the war. One might
launch before dawn but preferred to recover before dark. Flying at night was a
special exercise. But submarines were in business twenty-four hours a day.
Escorts didn’t stop pinging at night. The long-range patrol aircraft (LRPA)
stayed on the job. So, said Landymore’s logic, why not carrier planes?
He told his aviators bluntly that if they couldn’t fly around the clock, day in
day out, at maximum effort, then Bonaventure wasn’t worth keeping afloat. He
knew people and he’d thrown the gauntlet to the right kind. Besides Pop
Fotheringham, the Tracker Squadron CO, Dickie Bird, was very experienced.
242
THE NEW NAVY
The Executive Officer whose job it was to co-ordinate the whole ship’s
organization was Commander Arthur McPhee. As an aircraft direction spe-
ciahst he’d been long connected to naval flying.
So hatched “sustained operations” or SUSTOPS. The first target was to keep
two Trackers airborne round the clock for five days plus two AS heHcopters
during dayHghf hours. (Until the all-weather Sea King they couldn’t hover
with their sonar ball in the water unless they could see the horizon.) The
hmiting factor, they found, wasn’t mechanical failure or deck crew energy or
weather. It was aircrew fatigue. So they boosted the Tracker squadron from
twelve to eighteen crews - one and a half per plane. That turned the trick.
Soon “Bonnie’s” SUSTOP standard was four Trackers and two hehcopters
up, plus “Pedro,” the faithful rescue and odd-job chopper, when needed. The
whole ship’s routine was meshed - day, night, any weather, twenty-four
hours a day for six, seven, even eight days. Slow undersized carrier and all,
give the Canadians an ocean area 200 miles square and they would keep it
saturated with airborne anti-submarine forces right around the clock. ASW
SUSTOPS became the hallmark of Canada’s carrier. The other navies had to run
hard to catch up. Innovation, in fact, was becoming the hallmark of the navy
itself.
HELICOPTERS AND ESCORTS

When Commander Timbrell and his team were putting St. Laurent through
her paces in 1955 they chased the world’s first true submarine, the nuclear-
powered USS Nautilus. With a submerged speed of around twenty-six knots
and infinite endurance, she was a nearly impossible quarry. She was very
noisy, however, and could be easily tracked by passive sonar. Nautilus had a
conventional submarine hull designed for good seakeeping on the surface.
Not so the new USS Albacore, which was shaped like a dolphin for top
performance submerged. She could “fly” through the water in the range of
thirty knots. Such low drag, high speed, and quiet manoeuvrabiHty, given the
hmitless endurance of nuclear drive, could beat the surface ship.
While St. Laurent was at Key West the navy’s first anti-submarine helicopter
squadron started flying from Magnificent. They carried a “dunking” sonar that
could be lowered into the water while they hovered. They were invulnerable
to torpedoes and far faster than the new submarine. Timbrell’s Executive
Officer was Lieutenant Commander Pat Ryan, a naval aviator who was quick
with a new idea. Ryan had the shipwright shore up the aluminum hatch cover
over St. Laurent's anti-submarine mortar well. Naval pilots, always willing to
try something new, found it made a tidy landing deck.
The idea of anti-submarine helicopters flying from escorts had come up in
World War Two. But now it took its first practical steps ahead. An experimen-
tal flight deck was quickly rigged on the stern of Buckingham, a wartime
243
frigate. The Americans set about developing a small drone helicopter to carry
a weapon and drop it on command from the ship’s sonar. The British went for
a manned hehcopter that could drop a weapon. Only the Canadians had the
confidence to go for the whole bundle - the all-weather anti-submarine
helicopter with its own sonar, radar, and weapon load, flying from the deck of
the small escort vessel, and in North Atlantic weather.
It was a radical combination. The hehcopter had to land on a tiny, rolling,
pitching, spray-lashed deck day and night. It was a huge, heavy bird and it
had to be moved into a hangar for shelter to be maintained. Ingredients for
success were the seagoing quaHties and configuration of the CadiUacs, a first-
rate helicopter, the American Sea King, and Canadian ingenuity, innovation,
seamanship, and aviation know-how. After eight years’ development Cana-
da’s navy on its own brought a whole new dimension in anti-submarine
warfare to the navies of the world.
SCIENCE AND SEAMANSHIP

Winston Churchill had caUed the Battle of the Atlantic “a war of ambuscade
and stratagem, a war of groping and drowning, a war of science and seaman-
ship.” Science and seamanship got together in Canada’s navy in these post-
war years. The Naval Research Establishment set up in Halifax in wartime had
done some useful practical work, but there wasn’t much background in
research and development in Canada. Now one main target, the high-speed
submarine, focused naval energy and ideas.
The U-boats in the Gulf and off the east coast had escaped detection too
easily. Sonar conditions were one main reason - temperature layers, especially
bad in Canadian waters, baffled sound beams. The answer, after some practi-
cal trials at sea by the ever-innovative Bob Welland, was quite simple - just
lower the sonar transducer somehow and tow it along below the layer. The
“somehow” was the problem. Welland’s first lash-up arrangement in 1947
brought echoes from a submarine booming in at 9,400 yards. It was four
times a wartime sailor’s fond hope, and a variable depth sonar, or VDS, clearly
would be worth a lot of work.
It took time. The heavy, streamlined body containing the sonar transducer
must be raised and lowered in rough weather. It had to point in a steady
direction and be towed at high speed. A production prototype VDS was at sea
in HMCS Crusader in 1960. She stuck like a leech to the RN’s high-speed
submarine Excalibur despite all the tricks in the submariner’s books. The RN
had taken up the VDS, too, but the Canadians’ sonar was better. Other navies
bought it, and VDS was here to stay.
Displaying the action picture so commanders could make the right deci-
sions fast meant combining radar, electronic, sonar, and radioed inputs from
other ships. It was still done by hand and was too slow and imprecise. After
244
THE NEW NAVY
the war the USN and RN set huge resources to the problem. The Canadians
worked at it, too, and, remarkably, set their sights far above the others. All data,
the Canadians said, must be transferred between ships by automatic radio Hnks.
Everything would be processed, calculated, and stored using the new digital
techniques rather than the old analogue method common for years.
The scientist in the case was communications engineer Stanley Knights,
who spotted the crucial connection between digital techniques and radio
transmission. The seaman was Commander Dan Hanington. Back in the
helter-skelter battle for convoy SC 42, Sub-Lieutenant Hanington in Keno-
gamrs tiny charthouse had tried to shout a cohesive action picture up the voice
pipe to his Captain, Cowboy Jackson, on the bridge. Eight months later
Hanington did far better in Windyer’s Wetaskiwin when they teamed with
Dyer’s Skeena to sink U-588, because they were better equipped with radar
and radio and much better trained. Hanington won the DSC for that one. He
knew the problem.
In 1950 a target generated in Toronto was sent by radio to move simultane-
ously on Stan Knights’s scope in the Canadian Naval Electronics Laboratory
in Ottawa. It was the world’s first radio digital data link, as significant as
Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone message. But the USN and RN
observers sniffed. “Not practical, too bulky.”
Canada pressed doggedly on. In three years “Datar” was working between
two ships. Each was loaded with 4,000 vacuum tubes, but Knights collared
some very early transistors and slashed the size. The team proposed Datar for
Bonaventure and the St. Laurents. By now, however, money was short, and so
was the Canadian attitude. Bureaucrats looked askance at naval develop-
ments. If the USN and RN were working on something, then the little RCN
shouldn’t duplicate it. On the other hand, if the others weren’t doing it, there
couldn’t be a valid need. This was the caution and the underconfidence that so
often sold the navy and indeed the country short.
Datar was Canada’s unique headstart on all the space-age automatic,
satellite-linked communications systems of today. Unhappily, government
had no guts for R&D. In 1958 Datar went in the pigeonhole. It was fifteen years
before Canadian warships went to sea with a system that could handle things
as well as Datar. But the USN had forged ahead on Canadian advances. In 1960
when their first big system went to sea they even acknowledged Mr. Knights
as “the father of the naval tactical data systems.” Canada’s navy wallowed in
its own wake.
Another unique project was the hydrofoil. Back in 1943, after the slaughter
on the beaches of Dieppe, the Canadian army wanted a high-speed craft to lay
smoke in front of an amphibiou s assault force. The Naval Research Establish-
ment dredged up Alexander Graham Bell’s Great War work on hydrofoils in
the Bras d’Or Lakes and did some experiments. The project went on the back
245
burner but in the early fifties many naval tacticians, Commodore Jeffry Brock
among them, were interested in the “fast, small, and many” concept for
screening and fighting the high-speed submarine.
Funds were shy but more experiments and trials produced a proposal from
NRE for a 200-ton craft that might tow a VDS. In 1961, stimulated by a
sweeping report on the navy’s future by Rear Admiral Brock, the hydrofoil
project went ahead, and we will pick that tale up later.
Add the hehcopter/escort match. Add literally hundreds of other projects -
corrosion protection, replenishing at sea, the first wide-band radar direction
finder akin to HF/DF, new sonars, and on and on - and Canada s navy racked
up an amazing record. From canvas and cordage to command and control,
navies have always had to be on the cutting edge of technology. The endless,
varied, harsh environment of the sea; the self-sufficiency needed by every
unit; the need to fight alone as well as in a mighty concert of sea-based
strength - all these call on the best, on innovation, imagination, and a sense of
adventure pointing to new horizons. This is the long-standing tradition of
the sea.
THE NAVAL RESERVE

After the war the Reserve was looked on as the base for mobihzation in the
event of a future war. The Royal Canadian Navy (Reserve) had divisions in
twenty-three cities and authorized strength of 18,000, including 3,000 in air
squadrons. The “wavy” stripes were dropped at last. But when the Russians
built their Bomb the spectre of nuclear war meant you had to fight with what
you had. So the Reserve shrank.
The lessons of Walter Hose hadn’t been forgotten, however, and a lot of
effort went into training. Reserve Wrens came back in 1951. The Flag Officer
Naval Divisions hoisted his flag in Hamilton in 1953 and started the Great
Lakes Training Centre for new entry and sea training. Five naval air squadrons
had their own aircraft. They flew operational types in the summer and a lot of
pilots quahfied in deck landing. Reserve strength at the end of the fifties was
4,600.
Each division had a small regular force staff and supported the winter
training for the University Naval Training Divisions. UNTD cadets - the
“Untidies” as they called themselves - went through regular cadet training in
the summers at the naval schools and at sea. They became the prime source of
well-trained Reserve officers and some joined the regular force. Too, they
were a well-informed link between the navy and the civilian world.
MARITIME COMMAND
The RCAF had kept maritime air low in its priorities. For over twelve years
only old wartime Lancaster bombers modified for the ASW role were used. In
246
THE NEW NAVY
1958 they got the first of thirty-three Argus planes, an outstanding Canadian-
built long-range ASW aircraft. The next year Maritime Headquarters Atlantic
was formed under the Flag Officer Atlantic Coast, Rear Admiral Hugh
Pullen. The Air Officer Commanding RCAF Maritime Command became his
deputy. There was a similar arrangement out west under the Flag Officer
Pacific Coast. All maritime sea and air operations were now firmly under
navy control.
In the Joint Maritime Warfare School in HaHfax, in exercises, in the opera-
tions rooms, and at the sharp end out at sea, sailors and aviators in light and
dark blue worked as one to keep a controlling hand on the common enemy,
the Soviet submarine. Saclant had put up a standing prize of a case of Jack
Daniels Kentucky Sour Mash Bourbon Whiskey for the unit, air or sea, that
forced a Soviet submarine to the surface. It had been won more than once.
There were plenty of submarine contacts by the sound surveillance system
called SOSUS, which had listening arrays sitting on the bottom off Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland. Wrens had come back into the regular Navy in
1956 under wartime senior officer Commander Isobel Macneill, and among
their duties was operating SOSUS at the Shelburne, Nova Scotia, station.
Patrol aircraft would follow up contacts, and ships might then be sent. Sub-
marines were photographed alongside Soviet fish-factory ships on the Grand
Banks, and ships and aircraft patrolled the nooks and crannies of Newfound-
land and Labrador and ranged the reaches of the North Atlantic.
FIFTY YEARS A NAVY

In 1960 the navy was fifty years old. In the regular force were 20,000 men and
women, fully half of them at sea, fifty-five fighting ships and fifty aircraft, and
a swarm of auxiliaries and tenders. New ships were on the building ways and
new anti-submarine hehcopters on order. There were close working ties with
the RN and USN. The White Ensign still flew and uniforms were nearly
identical, but the umbilical cord to mother RN had gone.
The late fifties had brought recession, so there were financial constraints
and, consequently, fewer people than needed and too few ships to honour
fully NATO commitments. Half the new minesweepers had been sold to NATO
partners. The chronic reluctance of Canadians to spend money on defence in
peacetime meant that pay lagged behind that of civihan counterparts. But the
navy had hit its stride.
“Hard-over Harry, ” Vice Admiral H.G. DeWolf, the Chief of Naval Staff
since 1956, took the salute at the fiftieth anniversary sail and fly-past in
Halifax, gleefully arranged by that arch-patron of pageantry. Rear Admiral
Hugh Pullen. DeWolf, the brilliant fighting Captain of war-famed Haida, had
reached the pinnacle of his distinguished career of forty-two years. He had
joined the old college from his Halifax home in 1918, so he had seen the navy
247
in a burst of Great War action; he had experienced its bare survival for twenty
years and its incredible growth in wartime; he had witnessed the post-war
lapse, then helped to bring it back to what it had become.
His navy now totalled a carrier, fourteen spanking new St. Laurent and
Restigouche-class destroyer escorts, nine destroyers - his gallant Haida still
among them - twenty-one oCean escort frigates, and ten minesweepers. It had
an envied record of designing and building its own ships and equipment. It
had boosted the nation’s growth in sophisticated shipbuilding and leading-
edge electrical and electronic technology, and it created skilled employment
for thousands of Canadians. It had added enormously to knowledge of the
Arctic. Its reputation in ASW was second to none in NATO. Its people were as
fine as one would find in any navy, anywhere.
Certainly DeWolf would have preferred a bigger fleet. It fell short of the
country’s needs and obligations. But Canada was stepping into the sixties
with a first-class navy and there were new ships on the ways. And numbers
alone are not the measure of a navy’s strength - a real esprit shone on that
fiftieth anniversary from the gleaming ships and faultless uniforms and the
tight formations flying overhead.
That year Harry DeWolf turned over as Chief of Naval Staff to Vice
Admiral Herbert Rayner, DSC and bar. Twenty years before he had turned
over command of Laurent to Rayner during the Western Approaches battle,
and the two had fought together in the Channel in 1944. Now their new navy
was on a steady course, well-found and set to serve the country well.
248
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE NORTHERN
GÊ
MARTIN FROBISHER, THAT LUSTY ELIZABETHAN SEA-DOG, CLAIMED THE

discovery of the Northwest Passage to be “the only thing in the world left
undone whereby a notable mind might be made famous and fortunate.”
Many nineteenth-century Royal Navy explorers who groped through the
awesome, ice-bound channels in their wooden ships, without finding the
Passage, have been recorded in heroic terms. John FrankHn is best remem-
bered, though less for achievement than because he and all his people per-
ished. But for the first half of the twentieth century, with Arctic geography
roughly sketched, Canada’s navy, like the country itself, paid slight heed to
the frozen hinterland lying at its northern gate.
In World War Two, with Canada’s consent, the U.S. built Arctic weather
stations and a chain of airfields called the Northwest Staging Route to ferry
aircraft to the Russians. At war’s end those great circle routes for interconti-
nental aircraft showed as straight lines on the kind of map most people hadn’t
heeded much before - the north polar projection. For the first time the world
looked at itself from the top and saw the Arctic as the crossroads of the
modern world.
In a very short time it was the projected path for the rockets and the bombs.
Where Canadians sat, the border between the great power blocs wasn’t
between East and West. It was between North and North, and Canada, a
sprawling buffer for the United States, faced Russia across the Arctic Ocean.
Suddenly and emphatically, the Arctic became the strategic cockpit of the
world.
Vice Admiral G.C. Jones, the CNS, was slow off the mark. The navy took
no hand in starting the Canada/U.S. Joint Experimental Station for cold
weather work at Churchill, Manitoba. It didn’t join the USN’s big Arctic
exercise, “Nanook,” in 1946. Admiral Reid the next year advised against
249
getting into Arctic operations. Naval ships weren’t designed to run with
safety in ice-infested waters. Reid didn’t even send token representation to
join the USN in building more Arctic weather stations in 1947.
Mackenzie King was looking north if the admirals weren’t. He was against
keeping Warrior hut agreed to one carrier if it could be used up there. Magnifi-
cent, according to the RN, was “arcticized,” i.e., she had a half-decent heating
system and cold-weather engineering for upper-deck machinery. She cer-
tainly couldn’t operate in arctic ice - no carrier could. In any event, she
replaced Warrior in 1948.
The Prime Minister had made a clear point. The North was important, and
the navy should pay heed. Design studies started late in 1947 for an arctic
patrol vessel. Harold Grant, by this time the Chief of Naval Staff, had the wit
to send Magnificent and two destroyers into Hudson Bay the following year.
Then Swansea visited Frobisher Bay and the Httle naval auxiUary Cedarwood
sailed with a Canada-U.S. scientific expedition from Esquimalt through
Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea. These were gestures. Until 1954, apart
from the thin line of the RCMP patrols to Inuit settlements, Canada’s Arctic
waters were the sole domain of the USN.
Proper presence in the North called for the navy and it must have the right
kind of vessel. HMCS Labrador was approved early in 1949 and was the first
new navy ship to be laid down since World War Two. The U.S. Navy was the
technical source. The basic design was their Wind-class icebreaker. Labrador's
Captain-designate, Captain Owen Robertson, spent two years with the U.S.
Navy and Coast Guard before his ship commissioned, learning the Arctic
business.
“Long Robbie” - he was enormously tall - was a fine practical seaman.
Among many wartime exploits, he got a blazing American ship, SS Volunteer,
which was loaded with ammunition, safely clear of HaKfax harbour. It was a
nerve-stretching operation alive with memories of the devastating blast of
1917. That won him the George Medal. He was in charge again after a huge
explosion at the Naval Magazine on Bedford Basin in July, 1945. The fire
burned for four days as HaHfax and the navy held their collective breath until
Robertson and his firefighters won.
Robertson was used to the unusual and the Arctic was an exciting prospect.
It was, is, and always will be sombre, awesomely beautiful, and cruel. A
Hmitless challenge and overpoweringly vast. From Cape Chidley at the
northern tip of Labrador to the Alaskan border the coast sprawls across 70
degrees of longitude - one-fifth of all the world at latitude 70° North; in a
straight line that’s about 2,000 miles. The Arctic archipelago is the largest
group of islands in the world. The coastal group - Baffin, Somerset, Prince of
Wales, King William, Victoria, Banks, and lesser ones - is divided from the
northern Queen Elizabeth Islands by Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Vis-
250
THE NORTHERN GATE
count Melville Sound, and M’Clure Strait. This is called the Parry Channel
and it is the axis of the Northwest Passage.
For over half the year the sea is covered with ice averaging nearly two
metres thick. Where it has ridged and rafted, it’s far thicker. In the brief and
brilhant summer the straits and channels winding through the islands are
open, more or less, with zero to nine-tenths ice cover depending on the area
and conditions of the year.
Most of Baffin Bay is wide open in summer, though there are thousands of
icebergs - giant, gHttering, many-coloured menaces for the unwary. Open
water extends westward through the Parry Channel as far as Barrow Strait in
a bad year, and to M’Clure Strait (between Melville and Banks islands) when
conditions are good. In rare years there is clear passage north of Banks Island
right to the Beaufort Sea. The shallow mainland coast opens pretty well each
summer from Simpson Strait, past the mouths of the Coppermine and Mac-
kenzie rivers, right through to Bering Strait. Brilliant summer sun dips below
the horizon for an eerie twihght. Gales and blinding snowstorms strike from
nowhere. Navigation marks are few. Soundings, even today, are sparse. It is a
place that still demands the best of a “notable mind.”
HMCS LABRADOR
Robertson went north with the USN and Coast Guard and fed experience
back to the drawing board. Thus Labrador got a hangar and enlarged flight
deck for three hehcopters. There were big improvements over USN commu-
nications and radar. In line with the new navy, the living and recreation
quarters were quite superior.
Icebreakers are quite round bottomed to work in ice. They can’t have the
fixed bilge keels that steady a conventional ship, so they have an extraordinary
roll in the open sea. Labrador got retractable stabihzing fins, which helped.
Icebreakers are deep-drafted and have big screws tucked well below the reach
of tumbling surface ice. The common action is to drive the ship forward so the
bow mounts the ice and the weight of the ship breaks it downwards. One
technique is to roll the ship by pumping water from side to side between
heeling tanks. Labrador could pump at the remarkable rate of 40,000 gallons
per minute. Similar tanks and pumps were fitted for trimming fore and aft.
Her six diesel electric engines delivered 10,000 shaft horsepower. For her
6,900 tons displacement, she was well up to the job.
Labrador, though, was not to serve simply as an icebreaker, a ship to get
other vessels through. Ice-breaking for her was a means, not an end. She was
to patrol northern waters, building knowledge and experience for future
operations. Along the way she would support Arctic bases, do hydrographic
and scientific surveys, provide rescue and limited salvage service. She would
break ice as she needed on the way.
251
252
THE NORTHERN GATE
The new ship commissioned in Sorel, Quebec, on 8 July 1954 and had just
two weeks to get to Halifax, get organized, and sail for the summer season in
the North. In that briefest time her new ship’s company learned to run a new,
completely strange ship, tested, tried, cahbrated all her complex equipment,
stored and provisioned for three months, embarked strange cargo, such as
eighty tons of coal for the RCMP at Alexandra Fiord, and flew on her three
helicopters.
OPENING THE ARCTIC

Often in our own time, just as in Frobisher’s, the Far North is styled as our last
great adventure. Few of Labrador's company had been anywhere near it before.
AJl entered the mysterious realm in the tracks of some of the greatest mariners
and most intrepid explorers of human history. Martin Frobisher himself sailed
in 1576 on the first expedition organized specifically to find the Northwest
Passage, more than ten years before he fought the Spanish Armada with Drake
and Hawkins and that brave company of old free-booting friends. The driving
force to the Passage then was commerce, the riches of the East the prize.
Right of discovery, in the manner of the time, marked the Arctic islands as
British from the sixteenth century. Whalers from England, Scotland, Ger-
many, and Holland followed the explorers. But a rich whaling ground was a
well-kept secret. They were fine seamen but few were literate, and no records
were kept; hence, no new territorial claims were made.
With Napoleon beaten in 1815, a great navy lay idle with thousands of
seasoned professionals eager to make their mark. Britain turned to the north
in a burst of Arctic exploration that caught the imagination of the Victorian
age. A Northwest Passage was eventually confirmed by Captain Robert
M’Clure while searching for the long-lost John Franklin. M’Clure
approached from the west via Bering Strait in 1854 and was blocked by ice
before he reached the point achieved from the east by Lieutenant William
Parry in 1819. Parry, sailing into Lancaster Sound, had seen open water ahead,
seized his chance, and got past longitude 110° West to win a prize from
Britain’s Parliament of £5,000. M’Clure forged the final Hnk by sledges, man-
hauled across the intervening ice. There was indeed a passage across the top of
North America that might be navigated in a single season when ice conditions
were right. But it was not for ships of Queen Victoria’s day.
Britain lost interest in the Arctic. The Northwest Passage and the islands,
after all the lives and treasure spent, had no commercial value. In 1880 she
turned over the last of her North American possessions, except Newfound-
land, to the young Dominion. Giving the Arctic islands to Canada, so the
thinking went, should at least keep them from the Yankees.
Americans were increasingly busy in the Arctic. There had been some
Franklin searchers and then, around the turn of the century, polar attempts by
253
Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook from the rim of Ellesmere Island. Their
feats, and some questionable claims, roused raging controversy and great
international interest, but Canada’s national interest in the North burned low.
Between 1898 and 1902, Norwegian Otto Sverdrup travelled Ellesmere
Island and discovered islands off its western coast, hence those distinctively
Scandinavian names. Long hegotiations led in 1931 to Canada buying out
Norway’s claim to Sverdrup’s discoveries. The other great Norwegian con-
tribution was Roald Amundsen’s. He set off in 1903 to locate the Magnetic
Pole and navigate the Northwest Passage along the Canadian coastal route.
He took his forty-seven-ton herring Esher Gjoa into Lancaster Sound and
south through Peel Sound and spent two winters in Gjoa Haven on south-
east King William Island, a third in the western Arctic. Gjoa's engine
plugged faithfully along and Amundsen finished his work in 1906. The
Northwest Passage, with a very small party in a very small vessel, had at last
been won.
SUGGESTIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY
American whalers had become more and more active and by 1900 the feehng
grew in Canada that the U.S. might try to take the islands over. A geological
survey and flag-planting expedition went off in 1903 and the North West
Mounted PoHce began collecting customs and regulating Hquor and the law.
American action, or fear of it, is a not unusual force in Canada’s history. It
finally triggered some interest in the basic business of sovereignty in the
Arctic islands.
Meantime, L.P. Brodeur, the Minister of Marine and Fisheries who played
such a key part in starting the navy, was the driving force in upholding
northern sovereignty. In the early years of the century he made sure a Cana-
dian presence was maintained, slight though it might be, with regular expedi-
tions and patrols. Captain Joseph-Elzear Bernier commanded CGS Arctic on
northern voyages between 1904 and 1911. She was small: 762 tons with a
fifty-horsepower steam engine. Sealers had been working the Newfoundland
pack for generations so her design was right. The main aim was to confirm
sovereignty. Bernier was an experienced and capable mariner. He brought
back a wealth of information and did a lot of valuable surveying in the islands.
But he was more intrepid than imaginative.
In 1908 Arctic lay in M’Clure Strait, beyond Parry’s farthest point of 1819,
and ice-free water stretched ahead as far as Bernier could see. The way looked
clear, indeed, to skirt the north shore of Banks Island, where no ship had gone
before. If so, Bernier might open a new Northwest Passage in a single season.
He knew that Amundsen’s route along the mainland coast was too shallow for
merchant ships of size. The way that lay ahead could be a commercial route
and he believed his Arctic could have made it. But as he “had no instructions to
254
THE NORTHERN GATE
proceed through the Northwest Passage” he turned back to Winter Harbour

to lay up for the season. His chance was gone. On his next voyage he had
instructions to press on if conditions allowed. They did not. He had missed
his moment and it never reoccurred.
But Bernier was a prodigious achiever. He planted innumerable cairns and
survey marks. He surveyed by sea and by dog-sled and built a rich knowledge
of Arctic navigation. He planted a plaque on Melville Island, on Dominion
Day, 1909, asserting Canadian sovereignty over “the whole of the Arctic
Archipelago lying north of America from Longitude 60 West to Longitude
141 West.” Bernier followed the old tradition of naming corners of the Arctic
for benefactors. Baffin had so named Lancaster Sound; James Ross named
Boothia Peninsula after his backer, who distilled the well-known Booth’s gin.
Conspicuous spots were running low but Bernier named Brodeur Peninsula
at the northwest corner of Baffin Island and remembered the Minister’s
birthplace by naming an island Beloeil.
The next notable Arctic prober was Vilhjalmur Stefansson. He travelled the
coast from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Victoria Island, 1908-12, and then led the
Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913-18. Stefansson Uved off the land, travel-
hng vast distances over the ice through the western islands and out on the
Beaufort Sea. He supported men and dogs by hunting, and he made the last of
the world’s land discoveries on the far fringes of the western Arctic and
Queen Elizabeth Islands.
Stefansson wrote of the Arctic as a region to be lived in, used, and devel-
oped. His was the vision of a “Polar Mediterranean,” a world crossroads. If
exploited and controlled, he said, it would make Canada a great power.
Stefansson was erratic and controversial, and, like most prophets, he was
reviled by many in his time.
Captain Bernier took Arctic north again after the Great War, then other
mariners with other vessels continued the yearly patrols until 1940. There
was little thought about the land or the hardy, resourceful native people who
Hved on it. The RCMP patrolled the islands and channels each year with small
vessel and dogs. Their famous little schooner St. Roch, commanded by Staff-
Sergeant Henry Larsen, was the first ship to sail the Northwest Passage from
west to east, in the years 1940-42. She wintered twice en route. Then, in 1944
she did the full passage for the first time ever in a single year, from east to west
through Parry Channel and Prince of Wales Strait.
LABRADOR IN THE ARCTIC

In 1954 Canada’s navy was at last properly in the Arctic. At the end of July
Labrador steamed up Lancaster Sound and anchored off Resolute Bay, Corn-
wallis Island. An airstrip and a weather and scientific station had been there
since 1947. The ship’s company did the first survey, set up beacons, and so
255
opened Resolute to resupply by heavy ships. Labrador's draft of thirty feet

made her the deepest ship ever in great areas of these sketchily surveyed
waters. Captain Owen Robertson needed a full combination of ancient seafar-
ing sense and modern technical skill. He, his Executive Officer, Commander
Mac Leeming, and his Navigator, Lieutenant Tom Irvine, had those in full.
In her first season, supply tasks took Labrador well north in Kane Basin. On
that stretch she had a howling, yowhng deck cargo of seventeen dogs belong-
ing to RCMP Special Constable Ariak. The ship dehvered him, his family, and
his dogs along with the cargo of coal to Alexandra Fiord. She rescued a
Boston dragger called Monte Carlo from a losing gamble with the ice. Then she
headed west through Parry Channel and joined the USN’s Beaufort Sea
expedition - she surveyed and collected hydrographic, oceanographic, and
scientific data through Prince of Wales Strait, Amundsen Gulf, and the
Beaufort Sea.
Finally, she passed south through Bering Strait to the Pacific during the last
week of September. HMCS Labrador thus was the first warship and first large
ship of any description to complete the Northwest Passage. Home to Halifax
via Esquimalt and the Panama Canal made Robertson’s Labrador second only
to Larsen’s little St. Roch to circumnavigate North America. More than this,
she had shown herself the finest Arctic vessel in the Western world. Manned
by an outstanding ship’s company, she was ready for any challenge the North
could provide.
THE DEW LINE

The Soviets had the atomic bomb and a growing strategic bomber force by
1949. Four years later they exploded their first thermonuclear device. With
the spectre of Armageddon over Arctic seas, Canada and the U.S. agreed to
build the Distant Early Warning line along the Arctic coast and islands. Work
started in 1955. The gigantic sealift task fell to the U.S. Navy’s Military Sea
Transport Service. Labrador, with a year of hard experience, was ready. She
was turned over to USN operational control and flew the only Canadian flag
in a huge flotilla. But her lone representation of Canada in the northern seas
was no mere token.
Captain Robertson was given command of the Eastern Arctic Task Group
with twenty-three ships. For staff he had his own ship’s officers, one addi-
tional USN officer, and a U.S. Army colonel in charge of3,000 soldiers. Their
challenge was to land enormous loads of construction equipment and materi-
als by landing craft over Arctic beaches. Often these had first to be charted and
cleared. Robertson’s opposite number in the western Arctic, a USN rear admi-
ral, had some seventy ships and a staff of thirty.
The giant DEW line construction job employed 25,000 people, and it was
done with amazing speed. By 1957 twenty-two radar stations, mostly on
256
CGS Arctic in the ice of Baffin Bay, 15 August 1906. Under command of Captain J.-
E. Bernier the little vessel, less than 800 tons with a 50-horsepower steam engine,
surveyed and placed navigation marks over thousands of miles of Arctic coastline. In
1909 Arctic’s Bernier planted Canada’s formal claim to all the Arctic archipelago.
HMCS Labrador, the navy’s first and only Arctic patrol vessel, is dwarfed by an ice-
berg near the entrance to Lancaster Sound. Beside the helicopter hangar is “Pogo, ”
the rugged little launch that helped Labrador accomplish so much survey and hydro-
graphic work during her four brief Arctic seasons in naval hands. (National Archives
of Canada)
Vice Admiral E.B. “Whitey” Taylor, USN (Commander Anti-submarine Forces
Atlantic), is flanked by Air Commodore W. Clements (Commander Maritime Air
Command) and Rear Admiral Kenneth Dyer (Commander Canadian Maritime
Atlantic) at a briefing at Greenwood Air Station by Group Captain Ralph Gordon
(commanding the station) in October, 1961. A year later such close personal liaison
paid off and these were the key people in the smooth and effective co-operation
between American and Canadian forces in the Cuban missile crisis. {Department of
National Defence)
HMCS Mackenzie arrives in Halifax from the builders, Canadian Vickers Limited,
Montreal, m October, 1962. The Mackenzies, like the Restigouches, have the British
3-inch 70-calibre rapid-fire twin gunmountmg forward. It was highly complex and
only the RCN fitted it m small ships. Exceptional standards of skilled maintenance -
by this time common throughout the navy - kept it working. {Department of National
Defence)
Hoisting the Canadian Ensign, hauling down the White, 15 February 1965.
Bonaventure's ship’s company parades on the flight deck in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to
say a nostalgic good-bye to the White Ensign, under which the navy had served
since 1910, and to honour its replacement with the new Canadian flag. (Department
of National Defence)
A Sea King ready to land on Assinihoine in 1964. Starting with sea trials in 1956 the
RCN achieved what no other navy would try - flying a full-sized anti-submarine
helicopter from a small ship in all weathers. The original St. Laurents lost some
armament and got a split funnel to squeeze in the hangar. The square on the flight
deck is the “beartrap, ” which clamps around the helo’s probe and holds it firmly on
the rolling deck. At the stern is the handling equipment for the Canadian-designed
Variable Depth Sonar. (National Archives of Canada)
HMCS Okanagan, one of three British-built “O” class diesel-electric submarines that
commissioned 1965 to 1968. The key anti-submarine role of submarines was re-
demonstrated in the Cuban crisis of 1962. These exceptionally quiet boats were
outstanding in that role but fell increasingly behind the improvements and quiet
running of nuclear-powered submarines. (Department of National Defence)
Soviet Hotel-class nuclear-powered submarine, photographed by a Maritime Com-

mand Argus, lies disabled in heavy weather 600 miles northeast of Newfoundland
in 1973. She spurned Canadian and American offers of help and was eventually
towed home by this Soviet tug. She carries three nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in
her sail. (Department of National Defence)
HMCS Bras d’Or, the world’s first ultra-high-speed open-ocean warcraft, “flies” at
63 knots off Halifax in 1970. The 200-ton ship was more comfortable at 40 knots in
ten-foot seas than a destroyer was at eighteen. Ever-decreasing navy budgets and
government reluctance to finance research and development sank Bras dÔr at the
time of certain success. (Department of National Defence)
Preserver, commissioned in 1970, the last of three operational support ships, fuels
Assiniboine (to starboard) and Margaree in the Caribbean in 1971. The OSS can pro-
vide everything a ship needs to stay indefinitely at sea in fighting trim - ship and
aviation fuel, ammunition, provisions, essential spare parts, extra helicopters.
(Department of National Defence)
Iroquois, the first of the four new Tribals, fires a Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missile off
Puerto Rico in 1976. She was the first all gas-turbine propelled ship in the NATO
navies and the first frigate to fly two all-weather helicopters. She has an Italian
rapid-fire 5-inch gun forward, American Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles with
Dutch radar control and Canadian handling system, Dutch warmng radar, Cana-
dian beartrap and helicopter handling system, and Canadian variable depth and
hull-mounted sonars. {Department of National Defence)
Iroquois rides high on the new “synchrolift” marine railway in Halifax dockyard,
December, 1986. Dwarfed by her near 4,000 tons is thirty-four-year-old Skeena. A
big modern ship repair and maintenance complex and an up-to-date operations and
administration building were added to this dockyard in the eighties. Such facilities,
though not obvious when counting ships at sea, are vital assets in national and alli-
ance terms - as their near-total lack at the start of two world wars attests. {Depart-
ment of National Defence)
Marching off the old Queen’s Colour,
1979. This Colour was presented to
the RCN by her Majesty in 1959 (dur-
ing her visit to open the St. Lawrence
Seaway) to replace the King’s Colour
presented by her father in 1939. She
presented her new Colour, suitable to
the change of ensign, in 1979 to a
naval parade in Canadian Forces
green. The Guard for the old Colour
was dressed in old navy uniform,
though the petty officer second class
on the right is wearing a moustache.
Before unification, sailors wore full
beards or nothing. {Maritime Com-
mand Museum)
The Standing Naval Force Atlantic (Stanavforlant) in close “photo-op” formation

off Gibraltar. Iroquois is third from the left. {Department of National Defence)
Kootenay rides herd on a Soviet Kara-class cruiser 100 miles off Vancouver in 1982.
The Soviet navy sent this powerful ship plus one Kashin-class and an oiler to moni-
tor North American surveillance systems. Kootenay's anti-submarine outfit is visible
aft: the box-like Asroc rocket-launched anti-submarine torpedo mounting; the two
wells for her six-barrelled anti-submarine mortar Mark 10; and her VDS right at the
stern. (Department of National Defence)
Women went to sea for trial in the diving tender Cormorant in 1980. In 1989 they
were accepted in seagoing billets in all ships but submarines. (Department of National
Defence)
THE NORTHERN GATE
Canadian soil, stretched their web from western Alaska to Baffin Island. The
U.S. paid the bills and employed Canadian companies and labour; Canada
kept ownership of the Canadian sites.
Labrador, by then commanded by Captain T.C. Pullen, worked the eastern
DEW line again in 1956. The pace was off a little but ninety-five ships still
landed 250,000 tons of dry cargo and three milHon barrels of fuel. Pullen,
First Lieutenant of Ottawa when she was sunk, had a wealth of experience, a
wide-ranging intellect, and the right balance of sound judgement, initiative,
and drive. He came of a naval Hne: his older brother was a rear admiral; their
forebears had explored these very waters, as attested on the charts. Pullen’s
executive officer was Tony Law, who had commanded motor torpedo boats
through many gunfights in the Channel. Quick of mind and soft-spoken.
Law led with a sure and subtle hand. Here he followed his work as a war artist
by recording remarkable images of the Arctic.
Pullen observed in a report: “The Americans have operated thin-skinned
ships in all areas of the Arctic, thus gaining much knowledge. They have done
more pioneering, surveying, charting, oceanography, and exploring in Cana-
da’s northern waters than in all history.” Canada was back in the starting
blocks, and Labrador and her company had much to learn, but they did learn
and they did contribute in important ways.
Besides their sealift duties, Labrador's people made major revisions to ten
charts and produced twelve completely new ones, opening innumerable har-
bours and channels to deep-draft ships. In her last two seasons under Pullen
she navigated and charted Bellot Strait for the first time, discovered a deep
channel into Frobisher Bay, and surveyed and erected beacons around Foxe
Basin. That made a huge area newly safe for navigation. Oceanographic
observations were taken by the thousands. Meteorological data piled up.
The exploits of earlier mariners cast long shadows in the Arctic sun. Read-
ing of their trials and tragedies and achievements brought more than passing
wonder to the ship’s company, travelling as they did in such relative luxury.
Specially memorable to Tom Pullen was anchoring off Beechey Island in
Erebus Bay precisely where HMS North Star anchored 104 years before. His
great uncle. Commander W.J.S. Pullen, RN, had been in command, and the
Master was another great uncle, an earlier T.C. Pullen. North Star, on the
Franklin search of 1852-54, spent two years trapped in ice that Labrador could
have shrugged off with a few turns of her screws. She was a far cry, too, from
Bernier’s little Arctic. In his 1911 report Bernier wrote, “The wind dimin-
ished, the ice slackened, the Engineer got up steam . . . and an attempt was
made to force the Arctic through the ice with the aid of boathooks.”
Boathooks! Things had advanced a fair bit in forty odd years.
The fund of data compiled by Labrador added enormously to the safety of
surface navigation. It prepared also for the onset of submarine passages
257
beneath the ice. A new major piece was about to come into play on the
strategic chessboard of the world.
UNDER NORTHERN WATERS

World War Two U-boats operated in the ice-infested Kara Sea off northern
Russia. In 1946 USS Atule, with developing instruments, crept half a nautical
mile under the ice in Kane Basin. The next year USS Boarfish ran thirty miles
beneath the pack in the Chukchi Sea. In 1952 Redfish spent nine hours below
the great revolving mass of ice west of Banks Island called the Beaufort Gyre.
Advances came with new sonars to detect icebergs and keels projecting
downward from the pack; the inertial navigation system, a gyroscopic device,
kept a very accurate position underwater, though it had to be ahgned every
few days with a peek at the stars through the periscope. But the major leap
came with nuclear propulsion. USS Nautilus came very close to the Pole in
1957, then the next year crossed the top of the world from Pacific to Atlantic
beneath the ice the whole way.
A submarine that doesn’t have to surface can cruise indefinitely under the
Arctic ice and thread through several of the channels in the Canadian archipel-
ago. USS Seadragon, under Commander G.P Steele, made the first submerged
transit of the Northwest Passage via Parry Channel and M’Clure Strait in
1960. He had Commodore Owen Robertson aboard. Once past the historic
point the submarine turned north and popped up in a polynya a mile from the
Pole. It was almost old hat, but still it was something to celebrate, so on a
warm, sunny 27th of August the crew had a rousing game of baseball on the
ice.
In the cheerful horseplay, though, Robertson had a sense of deep chagrin.
Canada’s navy was out of the Arctic. HMCS Labrador, two years back, in 1958,
had been turned over to the Department of Transport.
PULLING OUT
Even if surface warships were strengthened for ice, movement was too Hmited
to do much against enemy lodgements or submarines. A government direc-
tive put top priority on fighting ships, and there was no denying that Labrador
lacked a direct military function. NATO commitments were honoured in those
times and the Labrador crew could man another ocean escort. Cabinet ordered
spending cuts for 1958-59 and didn’t see the long-term importance of keep-
ing the navy in the Arctic. Transport would run her more cheaply.
It is fair to say that Labrador, in her four short seasons in the navy, contrib-
uted more to knowledge of the Canadian Arctic than any single ship had in
this century. Naval officers are reared to lead, to take the initiative. They learn
to handle complex operation orders and act on them in endlessly varied
situations. They’re taught to grasp the overall aim of their commander, inter-
258
THE NORTHERN GATE
pret it according to the situation at hand, and get on with what has to be done.
They’ll take responsibihty for action on the spot and don’t need to ask for
further orders.
Transport’s officers were very capable seamen and icebreaker captains.
There’s a great difference, however, in being brought up in the merchant
service, where ships are far less versatile and the stress is on safe passage from
A to B. Joseph Bernier turned back from a clear passage to the Beaufort Sea
because he had no orders; William Parry had seized his moment and driven
on. Merchant seamen are skilled in their own jobs and self-sufficient like all
who follow the sea. But a merchant. Transport, or Coast Guard ship’s com-
pany carries nothing Hke the range of technical skills of a naval ship.
In four brief seasons under the outstanding leadership of Captains Robert-
son and Pullen, Labrador and her company delivered brilliantly on all counts.
Had government come up with enough to keep her in the navy she certainly
could have brought a lot to science, hydrography, and oceanography. As well,
she would have been invaluable in training and in shaping concepts for
operations in an area of looming importance in the world. In addition, there
would have been an ongoing exchange with the USN. Navies talk to navies
when there’s valuable information to trade and recognized experts do the
trading. Canada might then have faced far earHer the meaning of the new
submarines and found ways and means to exert control and uphold sover-
eignty in Canadian waters. She might have some bargaining chips in hand
rather than be left to lean helplessly on her southern friend and neighbour to
make the running in the North.
In 1969, when Arctic oil and minerals boomed in world importance,
Exxon Corporation sent the supertanker Manhattan through the Northwest
Passage. The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker John A. Macdonald helped her
through. The icemaster on Manhattan's bridge was Captain Tom Pullen. He
was retired from the navy and in a second career as the leading expert on
northern marine operations. That voyage turns another chapter in the open-
ing of the seas beyond the northern gate.
259
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BRINK
OF WAR
PRESIDENT KENNEDY SPOKE ON TELEVISION AND RADIO AT 6 P.M. ON

Monday, 22 October 1962. What he had to say electrified the world. The
Soviet Union had medium-range nuclear balhstic missiles positioned in Cuba
that could vapourize Washington, Panama, or Mexico City. Sites were being
built as he spoke for intermediate-range missiles that would reach 2,200 miles
- to any city in the eastern two-thirds of North America. And he said: “ ... to
halt this offensive build-up a strict quarantine on all offensive military equip-
ment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound
for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of
offensive weapons, be turned back.”
“Quarantine” - to go into effect at 10 a.m. on 24 October - was another
word for blockade. Ships were heading for confrontation on the high seas.
America’s Strategic Air Command was airborne on full alert with nuclear
weapons in the bomb bays. So, certainly, was its Soviet counterpart. Six U.S.
nuclear submarines somewhere under the trackless sea had their Polaris balhs-
tic missiles programmed for cities in the Soviet Union.
Around the world people hung on Kennedy’s words and their world hung
by a thread. The awful fear that had lurked deep in their minds for ten long
years burst to the surface. Suddenly, the world they knew could be snuffed out
in a suicidal nuclear exchange. The United States and the Soviet Union were
on a colhsion course to war.
THE READINESS BUSINESS

Soviet missiles and arms - the dramatically visible ones - were stunningly
new in the Western Hemisphere. Their submarines, though, had been prob-
ing and pushing in the northwest Atlantic for years and that was very much
260
THE BRINK OF WAR
the daily business ofRear Admiral Kenneth Dyer, Flag Officer Atlantic Coast.
In the NATO structure, Dyer was Commander Canadian Maritime Atlantic
under the Supreme Commander Atlantic, Admiral Robert Dennison, USN. In
his headquarters in Norfolk, Dennison was also the U.S. Commander-in-
Chief Atlantic. One of his key officers was Vice Admiral E.B. “Whitey”
Taylor, who commanded anti-submarine forces in the Atlantic.
Day in and day out, besides the NATO connection, the two navies worked
hand in glove under the Canada-U.S. defence agreements that had been in
place for years. Ships exercised together regularly and so did staffs. Dyer and
Taylor between them kept tabs on Soviet submarines. The SOSUS monitoring
stations at Shelburne, run by RCN Wrens, and the USN station at Argentia
were part of the Atlantic underwater surveillance net. They could detect
snorkelling or surfaced submarines at very long ranges and identify them
with varying success.
In 1962 the Soviet surface fleet was growing fast but still was no match for
the U.S. Navy. In submarines, though, they were formidable; in 1960 they had
about 500 of all types. The first post-war home construction, the Whiskeys
and Zulus, were high-performance diesel-electrics modelled on the German
Type 21s that could do fourteen-sixteen knots submerged. From the mid-
fifties their ocean-going attack fleet stayed around 220 boats, adding new
improved classes like the Romeos and Foxtrots and tucking the old into
reserve. Their torpedoes could carry nuclear heads, expensive against mer-
chant ships but very dangerous for fleet units.
The Soviets had moved much faster than the West in anti-ship guided
missiles. Cruisers and destroyers bristled with them and some Whiskey sub-
marines could fire missiles from the surface by the late fifties. Soon ranges
went to 250 miles with targeting data by an aircraft at long range. For
propulsion, some Zulus tried the Walther high-test peroxide method, but
there were safety problems. Nuclear propulsion was a much better bet, and
some November-class torpedo-armed nuclear-powered attack boats went to
sea in 1958. The nuclear-driven Echo II attack boats clattered along at a noisy
twenty-five knots by 1961 and carried eight surface-to-surface missiles.
Their targets were the carrier forces.
The Soviets were well behind the Americans’ underwater-launched long-
range Polaris strategic nuclear missile, but already some Zulus had been
armed with surface-launched ballistic missiles - range 300 miles - with
megaton heads. Golf-class diesel-electrics and Hotel nuclears with the same
ballistic missiles were in service by 1962. They weren’t Polaris, but sitting off
the eastern seaboard they were nightmare weapons that could strike New
York, Boston, Washington, Norfolk, Halifax with a fraction of the flight time
of bombers over the Pole, or even missiles from Cuba.
261
The idea in the navy’s day-to-day Cold War was to keep the opposition
under pressure, define and analyse his operations, and work out ways to
handle them. Taylor had a standing carrier group called Task Group Alfa that
developed anti-submarine tactics. The Joint Maritime Warfare School in HaH-
fax kept right on top of tactics and techniques and worked out new ones. The
navies exchanged intelligence, and direct phone lines joined HaUfax and
Norfolk.
If Shelburne got a submarine contact, for instance, out would go an Argus
from Greenwood. It might get a radar contact on a conning tower or snorkel,
or it could sow a wide field of special sonobuoys to pick up the submarine’s
engines. Then it would sow more sonobuoys and narrow down the contact.
Ships might go to the scene. Between ships and aircraft they’d hold and track.
Ships had their sonars, much improved. The aircraft would use MAD,
improved on wartime’s “magnetic anomaly detector,” to keep tabs. In a real
war, the plane would have dropped a homing torpedo, developed from war-
time’s “Fido,” using MAD. In the USN, if nuclear war was on, the plane could
drop a nuclear depth charge. A peacetime hold-down used no weapons, but it
was still the old wartime “hunt to exhaustion.” They’d hold contact if they
could until the target had to come up and breathe. In any event, it was a lot
better for practice than a friendly “Mechanical Mouse.” Besides, they could
claim Saclant’s case ofJack Daniels whiskey for their trouble if they won.
Regular patrols flew from Canadian and American bases. When submarine
activity was high, ships stayed out on station. Every Soviet ship, from trawler
to supertanker to submarine, was part of their total navy. Their fishing fleets
on the Grand Banks and George’s Bank off Cape Cod had to be watched with
care. Tucked among legitimate fishermen, some Soviet trawlers were fitted for
“Elint” - electronic intelligence gathering - and they could be communica-
tions hnks with submarines and could tamper with the transatlantic cables,
still vital Hnks with Europe. Soviet factory ships were sources of supplies and
fuel. Surface ships with similar diesel engines could mask a transiting subma-
rine’s sound signature. They had to be monitored; the pressure must be
kept on.
Dyer had thirty-nine warships in his command. Ten were in regular refit,
docking, maintenance, or repair. That made twenty-nine available for oper-
ations in October, 1962. Of those, Bonaventure and five destroyer escorts
were in U.K. waters. Two or, better, three Restigouches with their improved
sonar, anti-submarine mortar, and homing torpedoes could handle a Soviet
conventional diesel-electric. Give them helicopters and, give or take the
thousand and one imponderables of ASW, they could probably kill a nuclear-
powered boat. But this enemy could pack a nuclear punch in torpedoes or
missiles against the Canadian ships’ high-explosive mortar bombs. Besides,
no Canadian ship had a weapon that would shoot down a guided missile. If
262
THE BRINK OF WAR
it came to a shooting war, Canadian destroyer captains had some food for
thought.
If Soviet activity in the northwest Atlantic increased at any time, it was up
to Dyer to react. In early October submarine activity was increasing - at
exactly the same time the situation was coming to the boil in Cuba. On 11
October Dyer boosted his air surveillance with more and longer Argus
patrols.
READINESS IN ACTION
On 17 October the extra vigilance paid off. An Argus from Greenwood got a
sohd submarine contact 225 miles southeast of Nova Scotia called Bravo 27.
On the same day a U.S. Navy aircraft far to the east spotted the Soviet navy
oiler Terek. She was fitted for refuelling submarines and this was not her usual
beat. The next day a U.S. military tanker sighted a submarine in the Caribbean
130 miles off Venezuela. More patrols and photo recce flights took off from
Canadian and U.S. airbases. Special targets were the fishing fleets. The known
Ehnt trawler Shkval was spotted and shadowed.
On the 21st Terek was seen again, northwest of the Azores and heading
toward the Caribbean at fifteen knots. Then an aircraft caught her fuelling a
Zulu over her stern. The photos showed the submarine’s fouled hull. She had
been on patrol with a lot of submerged time for quite a while. Her sound
signature matched with an earlier track off the eastern seaboard. Now she was
topping up in the Atlantic, which the Soviets didn’t normally do, so it
appeared she was going back on station rather than rotating home. The
balhstic missile boats were out and they were forcing the pace. How many
were on station?
On 22 October, with SAC bombers on airborne alert and blockade orders
out to his Atlantic fleet. President Kennedy made his speech and all the U.S.
forces went to Defence Condition 3. The submarines on Dyer’s plot could
oppose the U.S. blockade and could threaten any U.S. strike and assault forces
around Cuba. Or they could just lie quietly disposed for action against fleet
units and shipping if and when war began. And should that happen, some of
them were part of the Soviet nuclear strike force.
Whatever way Dyer looked at it. North America was under direct immedi-
ate threat. That included Canada. All the long-standing arrangements and
government-to-government agreements said if one partner boosted its
defence condition, the other followed. Ottawa, of course, was fully posted.
The operations room in Ottawa, under Rear Admiral Jeffry Brock, Vice Chief
of Naval Staff, showed the essential picture. The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice
Admiral Rayner, was in close touch with the Minister, Douglas Harkness.
Dyer now expected the message from Ottawa at any moment. It would be
the Alert State of Military Vigilance, the Canadian equivalent to Defcon 3.
263
Then all aircraft would take off with war loads, live torpedoes. Ships would
get out on special stations under war conditions. Alternate operational head-
quarters and communications would be manned. Maintenance ships, shore-
based aircraft, and logistic support would be dispersed. War, nuclear war if it
came, would flash in an instant. It was terribly, overwhelmingly close.
The clock ticked, but nothing came. Dyer phoned the Chief of Naval Staff,
but Rayner’s hands were tied. He couldn’t do what everything in his cool,
precise, professional mind was telling him. He couldn’t signal the alert with-
out permission from his political masters. In this most perilous crisis that had
ever faced the world, the Prime Minister of Canada, the man who must take
the vital decision, would not make up his mind.
POLITICAL PARALYSIS
A few hours before Kennedy’s speech, presidential envoy Livingston Mer-
chant flew into Ottawa with photos of the missile bases. He briefed Prime
Minister John Diefenbaker, his Secretary of State for External Affairs,
Howard Green, and the Minister of National Defence on what the President
was about to say. Douglas Harkness recorded the Prime Minister telling
Merchant that “in the event of a missile attack on the United States from
Cuba, Canada would live up to its responsibilities under the NATO and
NORAD agreements.” Waiting for the first strike would render the decision
futile but, as the spectre of nuclear annihilation hung overhead, Diefenbaker
refused to make that key decision to put Canada’s armed forces on alert.
Within minutes of Kennedy’s broadcast, the chairman of the Chiefs of
Staff, Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller, told Harkness that all U.S. forces were
on Defcon 3. He asked for authority to order the Canadian forces - especially
the NORAD component of the RCAF - to the same level. The air forces, unlike
the navies, were under a single command for continental air defence and
having the Canadian part of it at lower readiness was impossible. Harkness
had to ask the Prime Minister, and Diefenbaker wouldn’t decide without the
cabinet. But because the House was sitting, he refused point-blank to call a
meeting until morning. Morning! Harkness, a wartime fighting soldier with
a level head and orderly mind, could scarcely believe it. All he could do was
tell Miller to go to maximum preparedness short of an alert.
On the morning of the 23rd, Soviet ships were seen heading for the
blockade Hne. At the cabinet meeting Diefenbaker and Green were against an
alert. The Prime Minister said it would unduly alarm the people. He and
Harkness had hot words. Harkness believed he refused “because of a patho-
logical hatred of taking a hard decision.” There was another factor. Diefenba-
ker mistrusted President Kennedy. Underlining that, he and Howard Green
had backed a UN move for an inspection in Cuba to confirm the missiles were
actually there.
264
THE BRINK OF WAR
The Minister met the chiefs again. They trusted Harkness and he trusted
them. They were equally appalled. There was no alert but the Minister said to
go ahead with all necessary measures “in as quiet and unobtrusive a way as
possible.” They spoke to their senior commanders by phone. Harkness kept
the Prime Minister posted on the escalating events. At last he got him to call a
cabinet meeting for the 24th - they met but weren’t unanimous, and again the
Prime Minister refused to decide himself.
Then Air Chief Marshal Miller reported that SAC and some U.S. naval
forces were at Defcon 2: “Immediate enemy attack expected.” With this the
Prime Minister agreed to an alert for the Canadian component of NORAD
forces only. There was no mention of the navy.
In the House of Commons that day, S.P. Ryan, MR, questioned the Minister
of Defence. Was Canada assisting in any way in the “poHcing” of the Atlantic
to prevent entry of weapons into Cuba? Were we assisting in “some ancillary
fashion?” Harkness answered “no” on both counts. In fact, the mutual
defence operations already taking place at sea were of very real “ancillary”
help to the United States. Dyer had set his command in motion as for Alert. If
the Minister did know any of the details, he hardly could have answered
otherwise.
The following afternoon, 25 October, the Prime Minister said in the House
of Commons: “ . . . all Canadian military forces have taken necessary precau-
tionary measures to improve their readiness to meet any serious develop-
ments. The Canadian component of the NORAD forces have been placed on
the same level of readiness as the American forces under NORAD operational
control.” Long leave and movement of forces dependants overseas was sus-
pended, he said, and “the government approved the measures that the forces
would have to take in the event that the present crisis leads to a more serious
situation.”
All very consoling to the populace . . . But if one kept half an ear to the
radio or half an eye to TV, one knew the palpable fear that gripped the world.
Diefenbaker’s “more serious situation” could only be war itself. The world
was on the brink, and officially only the NORAD component of Canada’s
armed forces was on alert. It had taken two days for the Canadian government
to get its trousers up to its knees. But the navy’s Atlantic command was
moving briskly and effectively.
NAVAL ACTION
The Naval Board had met twice on 24 October. It sedately initiated the
“Discreet Level of Military Vigilance” for Headquarters only. This simply
meant running through the check-off list of plans, communications, and
security arrangements and setting up interdepartmental liaisons and other
administrative matters. Although long leave had been suspended, to avoid
265
public alarm those on leave weren’t recalled. Bonaventure and her destroyers
were ordered back from Portsmouth, but “at economical speed.” At no time
did the navy or the maritime air component of the RCAF go officially to any
higher degree of vigilance than “Discreet.”
Rayner could say nothing more to Dyer than “do what you have to do.”
But he knew his man. Quite apart from honouring commitments to an ally,
what sea commander since Pearl Harbor would let his ships be caught in
harbour with war in the wind? Best, too, if Rayner didn’t know in any detail
what Dyer was about; he might be asked and he was a man of utmost probity.
So the quick and simple solution was “exercise.” Dyer could run what
exercises he liked without bothering Headquarters at all.
A Canada-U.S. convoy exercise was due in late October. The USN had
understandably pulled out but Dyer put ships and planes to work on substi-
tute “national exercises.” That is what the press, quite dehberately, was told.
But the forces were disposed to meet a threat that was chillingly real. The
emergency plans for dispersal had been exercised two weeks before. They
were repeated, in earnest. Cornwallis, the training base in the Annapohs Valley,
became the alternate headquarters. Admiral Dyer stayed in Halifax because if
he had cleared out it would have been hard for Rayner to explain. Sydney and
Shelburne became alternate naval ports. Short-handed ships were brought up
to scratch by puUing people from shore courses. Greenwood air base dis-
persed some aircraft to Saint John. Ships in maintenance, trials, and work-ups
were pushed forward. Fuel, ammunition, stores, and dockyard services were
available around the clock.
THE SUBAIR BARRIER

Operations plans under Defcon 3 called for a “Subair Barrier” across the
Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gaps. Intelhgence on Soviet submarines moving
down was vital; but with such heavy U.S. involvement to the south, HaHfax
and Norfolk jointly decided to pull the barrier closer to home. On the 24th,
while Diefenbaker dithered, the Argentia Subair Barrier went into force. It
stretched from Cape Race, Newfoundland, some 600 miles southeast to a
point about 300 miles from the Azores and was 100 miles deep. Across this
great arc were disposed ten USN submarines and the two RN submarines
based in Halifax under Canadian operational control - HMS Alderney and
Astute. Seventeen USN Neptunes were sent to fly out of Argentia. The
twenty-four operational Argus aircraft from Greenwood, which had been
hard at it for two weeks, were divided between surveillance and barrier patrol.
Eight more joined from the training squadron at Summerside.
The Soviets’ rather noisy diesel-electric boats were vulnerable to detection
while snorkelhng or running on the surface toward their stations. Some were
picked up first by the SOSUS net in the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gaps. The
266
267
THE BRINK OF WAR
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

17 October — 12 November 1962
Disposition of Forces by
Commander, Canadian Maritime Atlantic
object of the barrier was to track them as they moved south, feeding informa-
tion into the plots ashore and afloat, so they could be picked up by hunter-
killer forces stationed behind the barrier.
Barrier submarines, running slow and silent, were the on-line hstening
posts. The long-range patrol aircraft laid lines of sonobuoys, monitored them
on each successive sweep, and replaced them when they reached the end of
their limited life. They listened on their radar search receivers and searched in
short bursts of active radar for snorkelhng or surfaced boats. They checked
out surface ships, too, that could be making for Cuba.
The Maritime Command Arguses were key players from the start. They
had a much longer radius than the U.S. Navy’s Neptunes. They could cover
the far southeast end of the barrier - 1,000 nautical miles from Greenwood -
with plenty in hand for patrolling and developing contacts. Three of them
were constantly on station - six hours out, eight on station, and six back -
twenty hours per flight. Dyer used every available aircraft and burned aircraft
hours at the full wartime rate.
And they carried full war loads - 8,000 pounds in depth bombs and MK 43
acoustic homing torpedoes. The torpedo batteries were charged and ready for
instant use. That was irreversible and expensive, only carried out before a
practice drop, or in war. They sowed hundreds of sonobuoys, and stocks ran
low. A phone call to Whitey Taylor and the USN flew in an extra 500 - no
charge. Canadian ships and aircraft didn’t have nuclear anti-submarine weap-
ons but the U.S. Navy did. If they were used the tactics were common
doctrine.
CRISIS RISING
By the 24th the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic fleet assessed at least
three Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic that “could reach the quaran-
tine line in a few days and could be a substantial threat to that force . . . and
. . . could be a deliberate counteraction by the Soviets against quarantine
forces.” He ordered Task Group Alfa - ASW carrier Randolph and a destroyer
squadron - south to protect the strike carrier Independence. On the blockade
front on 25 October, twelve of twenty-five Soviet ships heading for Cuba
turned back. The next day a Soviet-chartered freighter was stopped by a USN
destroyer, searched, and allowed to proceed.
Now an Argus detected another submarine 450 miles south-southeast of
Cape Race. This was Bravo 28. It popped up again later and was tracked
heading south. The same day off Cuba the strike carrier Enterprise heard a
Soviet submarine’s radar. It could be snapping a range for firing torpedoes.
Her destroyer screen made sonar contact, then lost it. The strike force drew
smartly back into shoal water south of Jamaica to make things tougher
for the subs.
268
THE BRINK OF WAR
Admiral Taylor had more on his plate than he could handle. Thus, begin-
ning on 25 October Restigouche-class ships of the 5th Canadian Escort
Squadron covered the George’s Bank, off Cape Cod. This was a critical and
difficult area. Missile-firing Zulu submarines in range of Boston and New
York could sit on the bottom and take advantage of the difficult sonar condi-
tions, the heavy "surface traffic, and their own support vessels among the
fishing fleet. The area needed air cover as well as ships, but Taylor badly
needed the Neptunes from Quonset Point Naval Air Station down south. On
the 26th Dyer took their patrol area over, too, and assigned Argus cover.
The maintenance ship Cape Scott moved to Shelburne, which became the
5th Escort Squadron’s dispersal base for support and fuel. Captain Patrick
Nixon, DSC, the squadron commander, who had three U-boats to his credit
from 1944, stayed at sea. When the ship he was riding had to go in to top up he
and his staff swung to the next by jackstay. They ranged from George’s Bank
to Sable Island in some filthy weather, checking shipping, chasing electronic
intercepts, searching for submarines, ready to move to contact areas. Nixon
had six Restigouches available. Mackenzie, the latest addition to the fleet,
commissioned in Montreal three weeks before by Commander Tony Ger-
man, raced through equipment trials and work-up to get ready.
Trackers from Shearwater swept the inshore areas and fishing banks. A
detachment swiftly deployed to Sydney, while Torbay, Newfoundland,
became an advanced airbase. The two available older destroyers of the 3rd
Squadron patrolled offshore Nova Scotia with one of the 5th. Nine of the
high-endurance Prestonian-class frigates of the 7th and 9th Escort Squadrons
backed the Subair Barrier.
Dyer was “in hourly touch with Whitey Taylor in Norfolk. Mark you, he
didn’t know much that was going on [off Cuba] because Kennedy kept
butting in, speaking directly to the forces himself.” In the U.S. the time-
honoured chain of command was cut. With such astronomic stakes, the split-
second pace of events, and the awesome responsibility on the President, the
urge to take direct charge was overwhelming. Modern communications gave
him the means. He and his staff talked to destroyer captains on the blockade
hne directly from the White House basement. Short-circuiting command
meant that key people like Taylor were often in the dark. It caused friction and
confusion and a highly charged collision between the Secretary of Defence
and the Chief of Naval Operations right in the Pentagon’s Flag Plot.
Commodore J.C. O’Brien, the Canadian naval attache in Washington,
knew that heavy American commitments in the Mediterranean and Pacific
meant Canada “had more ready forces in the ASW business in the Atlantic
than the Yanks did.” All Washington knew the Canadians had dragged their
feet on NORAD and still hadn’t put their navy on alert. Knowing Ken Dyer,
O’Brien knew he’d be doing all he could to help, but as nothing was official he
269
was in the dark. He got into UNO’s Flag Plot. Sure enough, their dispositions
showed no Canadian identity. O’Brien saw it was vital that the top of the USN
knew exactly what Canada was really doing. He asked Headquarters in
Ottawa for a message spelHng it out to the Chief of Naval Operations. Vice
Admiral Rayner sent a personal communication but it was disappointingly
unspecific.
In the vacuum left by no higher direction, the right things were being done.
Dyer’s Chief of Staff, Commodore James Pratt, flew to Norfolk for Admiral
Dennison’s morning briefings as they were piped simultaneously to Wash-
ington. He was back in HaUfax to brief his own Admiral at noon. Dyer kept
Rayner in the picture by telephone and with copies of operational summaries.
He had Rayner’s word on the telephone that he’d back him if Hghtning struck
from aloft. That was enough. They knew each other from a long time back;
also, Rayner knew Harkness would never let them down. And Harkness
knew Diefenbaker. The key was not to raise the matter of the navy with the
Prime Minister at all or he’d Hkely give a petulant “no.”
Tension mounted. Work on the Cuban missile sites went on. On the 27th
another Soviet ship closed the blockade line. A U-2 reconnaisance plane was
shot down over Cuba; another strayed into Soviet airspace. HaHfax harbour
was all but empty. The nuclear-war tote board coldly called it a second-strike
target. But Boston certainly was first strike, and fallout from Boston would
blanket Nova Scotia in a day. HaHfax looked to its civil defence. Navy men
went off to sea with the nightmare of their families snuffed out in the
onslaught while they Hved on fighting - for a time.
Then, on 28 October, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev seemed to back
down. He agreed to withdraw the missiles from Cuba if the U.S. pledged not
to invade. The world breathed - except for those who knew. Words from
Chairman Khrushchev were one thing, deeds another. He faced a humiHating
defeat. Could he keep control of his own country or forces? How would the
Soviets react? The U.S. suspended the blockade but kept all ships on station to
watch and wait at full alert.
Under the sea there was no letup. That same day Task Group Alfa caught a
Soviet Foxtrot submarine on the surface. A defect stopped her from submerg-
ing. She was kept under tight surveillance and finally taken in tow by a Soviet
tug. On 30 October, Rayner noted to Naval Board that “while there had been
a temporary relaxation in political tension over Cuba, there was, as yet, no
indication of improvement in the general miHtary situation.”
On the 31st another Foxtrot was forced to the surface by the USN after
thirty-five hours of sonar contact; on 1 November Admiral Taylor summa-
rized for Dyer: on their plots were seven positive submarines, one probable,
five possibles, and at least one replenishment ship. There had never been such
270
THE BRINK OF WAR
activity before. Taylor asked for increased surveillance. He expected to keep it

up indefinitely with U.S. forces at near-wartime levels.
There was no letup by Dyer’s forces either. The Arguses did the lion’s share
of the 120 air hours per day on the Subair Barrier, and they did area surveil-
lance and additional patrols up Davis Strait to Frobisher Bay. The elint trawler
Shkval and another suspect, Atlantika, were shadowed continuously by Cana-
dian ships and aircraft. Ships rotated to the alternate harbours from their
patrol areas for fuel and provisions and headed straight back on station. The
barrier submarines stayed silently on watch.
Bonaventure got into HaHfax on 2 November. Her consorts, five older
destroyers of the 1st Escort Squadron, topped up and sailed to bolster the
patrols. The carrier fuelled, stored, ammunitioned, loaded more aircraft, and
sailed for a point northeast of Bermuda, at about the latitude of Philadelphia.
With five ships of the 5th Squadron, she was immediately behind the Subair
Barrier astride the most direct route for submarines making for the Carib-
bean. Like George’s Bank and Quonset, this let another U.S. task group move
further south and so strengthened the American hand near Cuba.
Commodore Robert Welland flew his broad pennant in Bonaventure. He’d
taken over from Bill Landymore as Senior Canadian Officer Afloat while the
ship was in Portsmouth. Captain Fred Frewer was in command and Com-
mander (Air) was Bob Falls, one of the first fighter pilots to land on Warrior in
1946. It was an experienced, well-honed team that ran five days of sustained
operations. Eighteen Trackers and nine hehcopters flew constantly, the Track-
ers around the clock. The navy’s first replenishment ship. Provider, wasn’t due
in service for a year, and the USN’s were too busy, so “Bonnie” had to keep her
own consorts fuelled and count her days on station.
Before she ran out of fuel herself, on 12 November, the crisis was over and
the whole naval operation wound down. The Subair Barrier was folded. Ships
returned to harbour and dropped back to peacetime routine. Sailors and
airmen caught up on precious time with the families they thought they might
never see again. None would forget that war could happen. None would forget
that the job they’d done 2,000 miles from the blockade line was part and parcel
of the total readiness that had stopped aggression in its tracks; or that their
Admiral, Ken Dyer, was a courageous leader who had done what had to be
done when Canada’s pohtical leadership had so shockingly failed the test.
RETROSPECT
There were twenty-nine established submarine contacts in the western Atlan-
tic during the crisis. Some were lost, then picked up again and identified by
their sound signatures. Some were followed for many hours and some for
days by permutations of the shore, ship, and airborne detection and classifica-
271
tion systems. There was the ever-improving SOSUS; sonobuoys picked up

underwater sound and relayed it to aircraft, who sorted it out in systems with
names like Jezebel, Lofar, Codar, and Julie; sonar, radar, radar search receivers,
HF/DF probed and searched; the well-peeled human eyeball was as essential as
it ever was. Six submarines were actually sighted near the Cuban operations.
A tally was made by the RCN’s ASW operational research team of “exposure
contacts” of Soviet submarines in the western Atlantic. It included contacts
obtained by the various ship, submarine, and airborne detection methods, but
not SOSUS. In 1958 there were four contacts; 1959 had nineteen; 1960,
twenty-one; 1961, twenty-two; 1962 (23 October to 15 November only),
136. As their side got busier, ours got better.
There is no question that Canada’s navy played an effective role. Admiral
Dyer deployed twenty-two speciaHzed anti-submarine ships, two subma-
rines, Bonaventure with her twenty-eight aircraft, twelve more Trackers flying
from shore, thirty-two Arguses out of Greenwood and Summerside. That
made twenty-flve ships and over seventy Canadian aircraft out on ASW plus
the maintenance ship, tenders and auxiHaries, and six minesweepers getting
about their important business in harbour approaches. The whole force was
manned by highly trained professionals. Ken Dyer recollected in 1986, “We
had a neat little force there.” A neat little force indeed.
War did not happen. But to those who were directly involved on, over, and
under the sea and in headquarters ashore, it could have burst into searing fury
at any time. The crisis was played with all the stops pulled out. Taylor issued
no orders to Dyer. Nor did Rayner. For different reasons, neither could. But
for the same reason they didn’t need to. That “band of brothers,” Nelson’s
basic way of running things at sea, by mutual understanding and a firm grasp
of the basic aim, was ahve and well in North America in 1962. The navy, with
Maritime Air Command, honoured Canada’s duty to stand by her North
American ally, without one scrap of paper, memo, minute, or message, or one
public announcement to give it direction or approval.
BRAVO ZULU
The Organization of American States - Canada only became a member in
1990 - had unanimously backed the U.S. stand over Cuba. Two Argentine
and two Venezuelan destroyers got to Trinidad by 8 November. With a USN
destroyer they formed Task Force 137 and sailed on 12 November, the day the
crisis passed, “in special formation for aerial photos” to patrol the Antilles
Passages for eight days. The Dominican navy sent two escorts to San Juan,
where they were found unfit for sea.
Americans are ever generous with their thanks. At ceremonies in San Juan
and Trinidad, each officer and man got an American Certificate of Participa-
tion, Dominicans included. The patrol ships got commemorative brass plates.
272
THE BRINK OF WAR
Admiral Dennison’s account said, “The contribution of the Latin American

navies was noted in the world press. . . . CNO hailed the Latin American
participation as an historic milestone in hemisphere relations and personally
thanked his counterparts.”
Dennison’s Historical Account of the Cuban Crisis had no summar y of Cana-
dian forces or operations and only four passing mentions of Canadian units.
Latin American involvement got five pages. Those few who really knew what
had been done by the Canadians also knew very well it lacked political
authority. Like Whitey Taylor, they thanked their Canadian counterparts
most sincerely - but in classified messages and personal calls alone - a public
backslap from the U.S. Navy and the heads of their good friends could roll.
Certificates and brass plates for doing one’s duty were not avidly sought by
Canadian sailors. But the simple naval flag signal BZ - Bravo Zulu, Well Done
- from the highest masthead always was, is, and will be a treasured accolade.
What they had done was just an exercise called “Cubex.” No one, other than
individual commanding officers, said to their men, “Well done.”
Canadians, as reflected in the press, were as appalled at Diefenbaker’s
indecision on NORAD as they were horrified by the spectre of nuclear
onslaught across the Pole. All thought was to the air. No newspaper or
commentator, then or later, even speculated on the navy’s actions in the crisis.
No question, other than Mr. Ryan’s, was raised in the House of Commons,
even to pry into excess expenditures. A year later Admiral Rayner said simply
to the House Special Committee on Defence that the Cuban crisis “proved to
be a most realistic test” and the navy was brought, “as quickly as possible, to a
high state of operational readiness.” Still no one asked, “How high?”
In the democratic tradition, military action stems from government policy
alone. By that token, perhaps one Minister of the crown and two Canadian
admirals were wrong. But they acted in line with defence agreements in place
since 1940. What the navy and maritime air did should have stirred the hearts
of their countrymen in a time of national shame. It should have brought the
unbridled praise of the highest in the land. Had it been generally known in the
U.S. it would surely have cleared the sour American memory of Diefenbaker
and of a Canada dragging her feet when the chips were down. It would have
left a grateful memory of sharing the defence of the continent when it
counted. Too, it would have shown Canadians right across the land, like
nothing else, just what a navy was.
But no one spoke. The Minister couldn’t without saying he’d defied the
Prime Minister. The admirals couldn’t without hurting the Minister who had
run interference at risk of his political life. The Soviet navy knew, of course,
but had no reason to speak. The service, as always, stayed silent.
And the rest of the country didn’t know enough to ask.
273
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FLYING
HIGH
“BONNIE”
BONAVENTURRS OCEAN AREA IN THE CUBAN CRISIS GOT CLOSE ATTEN-
tion around-the-clock for five days and she could have kept it up a good deal
longer. Sustained operations were well-oiled routine. Captain Fred Frewer had
taken over command from his classmate, John C. “Scruffy” O’Brien, in mid-
1961. Frewer, with five wartime years on the convoy lanes and a couple of
destroyer commands of his own, had been Executive Officer in Magnificent five
years back.
“Bonnie” was really too small, too slow, and too crowded. Designed for the
RN in the early forties, she was buht for hammocks and RN-style messing. The
conversion to bunks and dining halls was less than ideal, and Hving spaces were
tight with small lockers and Uttle room for relaxing - even chief petty officers
were stacked four high. With time, the ship bulged with new equipment and
men to run it. She was cold in winter and brewed up Hke an oven in the tropics.
She wasn’t nearly as Uvable as the Cadillacs but there was strong, experienced
leadership and a spirit that bespoke pride from top to bottom in doing a tough
job well. “Bonnie” was a happy and efficient ship.
The spring of 1961 was quite typical. In March she searched the Emerald
Bank for fishing vessels in distress in a severe storm. Three of them, out of
Lockeport, Nova Scotia, were lost with all hands. The ship’s company made a
big contribution to the Lockeport Relief Fund for the sixty children who had
lost their fathers. The same month they sent a fat cheque to the Salvation Army,
the Red Cross got 457 pints of “Bonnie” blood, and a special fund was raised to
help a petty officer from Iroquois who lost five children and was badly burned
trying to get them clear of his blazing house. Bonaventure's men were ever-
generous and warm-hearted.
274
FLYING HIGH
Her calling card in foreign ports was the children’s party. The invitation always
went in advance, especially for disadvantaged kids. In Portsmouth, Trinidad,
Stockholm, Hamburg, Belfast, Rotterdam, Toulon, wherever the ship was
alongside to draw breath between exercises, out came the clown and pirate
costumes, the miniature merry-go-rounds and the mock-up airplane rides and
the train hauled by the flight deck tractor. Enthralled youngsters swarmed over
the ship and the airplanes, ran races on the flight deck, gorged themselves on
gallons of ice cream and soft drinks, mountains of hamburgers. Sailors who saw
too little of their own children eryoyed the parties as much as their young guests.
At 20,000 tons with twenty-two knots, Bonaventure fell far short of U.S.
Navy standards. The Americans held that their wartime Essex class at 40,000
tons was the bottom limit for any carrier. It was distinctly in American
interests to see Canada’s navy properly equipped, and after Cuba they offered
fuUy updated Essex-class carriers with the latest equipment for the knock-
down price of $4 milhon apiece. The offer stayed on the table for a year.
Bonaventure was due for a mid-hfe refit in 1966 that would cost twice that. But
the big carrier would mean more aircraft and more men, and the fiscal Hd was
on. Naval Staff put on no campaign to buy. As it turned out, Bonaventure's refit
ran to $17 million - the price of four ready-fitted Essex-class carriers with
change.
The government’s money belt stayed tight but gains came with energy and
initiative. Jezebel, for example, was a new submarine detection and identifica-
tion system developed by the U.S. and Canada that used a special sonobuoy to
pick up low-frequency underwater sound and send it to the parent aircraft for
analysis. The airborne equipment was for large shore-based aircraft only, but
squadron electronics officer Lieutenant Gary Crosswell fixed that by putting
together receiver-transmitters from Heathkit parts and fitting them in the
Trackers to relay Jezebel data to Bonaventure.
Under Commodore Welland’s direction in a Can/Brit exercise in 1963,
Lieutenant Commander Ben Oxholm and his Trackers used the lash-up
Jezebel with dramatic success, getting excellent probabihty areas on RN
“enemy” submarines in a mysterious way quite unknown to the RN. For Bob
Welland it was a nice switch. From being miles behind the British with
equipment in the war, he couldn’t even tell them what he had because the U.S.
hadn’t cleared it for anyone else.
Keeping up the standard kept Bonaventure very busy. In an average year she
took 2,500 deck landings and steamed 42,000 nautical miles - nearly twice
around the world. That took about 180 days at sea and she was away from her
home port a good deal longer than that. Weather was always a factor. The
Canadians earned the reputation for being steadily on task when bigger
carriers hunkered down. Winter training might take place off sunny Puerto
275
Rico but business-like NATO exercises were on the harsh ocean long famihar
to Canadian sailors.
LOOKING AHEAD
In 1961 the Ad Hoc Committee Report on Naval Objectives (Rear Admiral
Jeffry Brock, chairman - it was called the Brock Report) made a series of far-
reaching and imaginative proposals for the future shape of the navy. Rather
ahead of conventional thought, Brock said the navy must handle not just
general nuclear war but the whole range through conventional conflict to
brushfire wars and police action. The navy, therefore, should broaden its
capability from the narrow focus on ASW.
A series of general purpose frigates should follow the Cadillacs. In concep-
tual design, they would each carry a heHcopter and be able to support forces
ashore. They would have good anti-submarine capability but be much
stronger in air defence than the predictably vulnerable state of even the most
modern Canadian ships. Next, all the new destroyer escorts should be con-
verted to carry anti-submarine helicopters. There should be more operational
support ships to multiply the effectiveness of fighting ships by extending
their time on station. Six American diesel-electric anti-submarine boats
should be built in Canada with six nuclear-powered possibly to follow. It
might have been remembered that Canadian Vickers in Montreal had suc-
cessfully built American H-boats during the Great War. As a future vehicle the
hydrofoil should be pursued.
The report, as a blueprint for the future, was very favourably received by
government in 1961, and the Cuban crisis proved the points on submarines
and support ships. What the country would pay for remained to be seen.
SUBMARINES
Only in the late 1950s did the navy conclude it must have its own submarines
for more than anti-submarine training. Post-war training needs had been
inadequately met by borrowing from the RN and USN. Then, from 1954,
three boats of the RN’s 6th Submarine Squadron were stationed permanently
in Halifax, under Canadian operational control. In return the RCN paid
operating and maintenance and kept about 180 volunteers for submarine
service in Britain, training and serving in RN boats. West coast ASW training
depended on borrowing from the USN at their convenience until an old
American boat on permanent loan was comrnissioned with a Canadian crew
as HMCS Grilse in 1961.
It was clear, however, that the most potent addition to Canada’s anti-
submarine armoury would be submarines. Best in the long run would be
submarines with nuclear power. Commander R. St. G. Stephens (an engi-
neering officer, son of the notable wartime Engineer-in-Chief) was the first
276
FLYING HIGH
Canadian involved in nuclear propulsion in the U.K., where the RN was

developing its first boat using American power-plant technology. By 1960
Stephens was involved in a series of technical studies with Captain S.M.
Davis, which concluded American-designed nuclear boats could be built in
Canada. The cost, about $65 miUion each, was twice the price of a new
Cadillac. By 1960 a Canadian submarine service was approved. The question
of which boat wasn’t decided, though Admiral De Wolf certainly favoured six
conventionals for the price of one with nuclear power.
In 1963, in spite of the Cuban crisis the year before, the Brock Report’s
proposal for six American conventional boats proved too rich. Government
approved three boats only, and for the lowest price they would be RN
Oberon-class and built in Britain. The Oberons were very quiet, capable,
diesel-electric anti-submarine boats, and there were plenty of well-trained
submariners by now, thoroughly versed in British equipment.
UP AND ON
Provider, the first Canadian operational support ship, had commissioned in
1963. She carried fuel for ships and aircraft, ammunition, stores and provi-
sions, and had a flight deck and hangar to carry three Sea Kings. Previously
the navy had to borrow such ships from the USN or RN. In 1964, new Sea
King helicopters, built in Montreal to RCN specifications, flew aboard
Bonaventure. All-weather, all-up machines, with sonar, radar, and homing
torpedoes, they gave a huge boost to ASW, and within two years Sea Kings
began to fly from nine converted destroyer escorts.
Operating big helicopters from small ships was a new dimension. Shoe-
horning all the new hardware into the St. Laurents and Annapohses was a
ship-construction naval-engineering aviation marvel. Flying that Sea King
on and off the tiny, gyrating flight deck day and night in all weather was
feasible only with the Canadian-designed “beartrap” deck handling equip-
ment. New techniques, new tactics had to be developed. Operational limits
had to be tried and extended. Deck handling and maintenance had to be
managed in far wetter, saltier, tighter, and tougher conditions than anyone’s
navy had ever tried before.
Eight general purpose frigates were approved by cabinet in 1964 to replace
the last of the wartime destroyers. HMCS Ojibwa, the first of the new subma-
rines, was due to commission in 1965. Thus, coming on stream in 1964 was an
evolving navy, leaps ahead even of Dyer’s “neat little force.” Hearts were
high.
ILL WIND
In early 1964 the new Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, spent a
couple of days’ familiarization in Bonaventure off Bermuda. With him was
277
Vice Admiral Herbert Rayner, Chief of Naval Staff Captain Robert Timbrell
was in command of the ship.
This was the Minister’s first and only trip to see the navy at work and he
was among as fine a group of sea and air anti-submarine experts as he’d find
anywhere, and an exuberant lot of naval aviators. Gently reminded of his
brief, landbound RCAF service during the war, Hellyer was kitted out and
coaxed into a Tracker co-pilot’s seat for a catapult launch. The pilot, he was
assured, would be the most experienced in the navy. When the pilot appeared,
white of hair, patch over one eye, he tottered across the flight deck with a cane
and poked blearily at the aircraft’s innards. The deck crew hfted him,
quavering inanities, reverently to his seat. If naval aviators have a faihng it is
perhaps in thinking everyone has their slapstick sense of humour. In fact, they
were deaHng with a man who had no sense of humour at all. History cannot
confirm that Hellyer harboured special ill-will toward naval aviation as a
result, but within five years it was all but destroyed.
A JOB TO BE DONE
There was always a job to be done at sea. In the winter of 1964 Bonaventure
carried Canada’s contingent for the UN peacekeeping force to Cyprus, as
Magnificent had done to Suez in 1957. Not to be caught with his ASW trousers
down. Captain Timbrell squeezed twelve Trackers in with the fifty-four army
vehicles and 400 tons of stores. After he offloaded in Famagusta and paid a call
on Archbishop Makarios, he got on with a carrier’s regular business.
The Soviet submarine and surface fleets were growing and getting more
aggressive. In the Baltic, to and from a flag-showing visit to Stockholm,
Bonaventure was shadowed by a Riga-class destroyer; she was buzzed by
Blinder aircraft and East German MTBs. Everyone’s game, of course, was to
startle an intruder into transmitting on gadgets he wanted to monitor. Back
outside the Skagerrak the Trackers spotted a Foxtrot submarine. Progres-
sively, more “uninvited guests” turned up among the submarine contacts
scored on exercises.
Around the world, while Bonaventure was in Cyprus, three west coast ships
were in a major Commonwealth exercise in the Indian Ocean. Indonesia’s
President Sukarno had been rattHng his sabre at Malaysia from across the
Malacca Strait, and this hve show of sohd Commonwealth naval strength
carried a powerful message. Tun Razak, deputy prime minister of the bur-
geoning Malaysian federation, told the Canadian captains just how much
their country’s tangible presence meant to his country.
Mackenzie, Fraser, and St Laurent worked with carriers, frigates, cruisers,
and submarines from Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, and Britain. To
this professional band of brothers, all rooted in the same naval tradition, the
most intriguing ship of all was St. Laurent, with her new flight deck, hangar.
278
FLYING HIGH
and bear trap. She’d been converted in Esquimalt and was heading the long
way around to Hahfax to start helicopter operations. Mackenzie and Fraser,
returning to Esquimalt via Hong King and Japan, effectively boosted Cana-
da’s trade and relations along the Pacific rim.
The tight Httle navy of20,000 men and women stood on its own merits in
1964, running at full stride and with the very best, and it capably represented
its country’s interests on the international stage. But while all this was going
on across the oceans, Paul Hellyer tabled his 1964 White Paper on Defence in
the House of Commons. As Mackenzie and Fraser made their way back to
Esquimalt and St. Laurent went west to Halifax, the word came through. No
one really understood what was going to happen. But the fact was that the
navy, flying at its highest ever in peacetime, was about to endure the unhap-
piest upheaval in its history.
279
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
INTEGRATION
AND UNIFICATION
FACED WITH RISING COSTS OF ARMS AND COMPETING SOCIAL PRIORITIES,

Lester Pearson’s Liberal government tabled a White Paper on Defence in
March, 1964. Tucked blandly away on page twenty-three was this:
Following the most careful and thoughtful consideration the Government

has decided there is only one adequate solution. It is the integration of the
Armed Forces of Canada under a single Chief of Defence Staff and a single
Defence Staff. This will be the first step towards a single unified Defence
Force for Canada. . . . Sufficient savings should accrue from unification to
permit a goal of 25 percent of the budget to be devoted to capital equipment
being realized in the years ahead.
That short statement led to the most revolutionary change in the armed forces
of any developed country in this century, effectively abohshing the navy,
army, and air force and forming a single new service. It was a unique process,
especially in a country that has always moved cautiously in reforming its
institutions. And in that process, the navy was the most embattled and the
most deeply wounded of the three.
At Headquarters, while the navy steamed hard, it had trouble keeping up.
Its equipment needs were always more complex and more costly than those of
the other two services. That was the nature of navies. But it was the smallest of
the three and it kept a higher proportion of its officers at sea and in operational
posts - which, by and large, is where they wanted to be.
Technical officers found Headquarters a challenge for their particular pro-
fession but most executive officers looked to seatime for professional devel-
opment and promotion. To many, their stint in Ottawa was a penance to be
avoided. The RCAF was lushly complemented. Air force pilots finished opera-
280
INTEGRATION AND UNIFICATION
tional flying with many years left for staff training and duties. A peacetime
army always has a surfeit of well-trained staff officers.
The army and air force were also big enough to have their own staff
colleges. Some naval officers attended them, and a few went to the United
States. But the main staff training mecca for RCN officers was the Royal Naval
Staff College, Greenwich, England. It offered good higher naval education
and produced capable operations officers for fighting a war. What was badly
needed was skill in the machinations of Canadian politics and public adminis-
tration to win the peace. The small Naval Staff had to deal with the convolu-
tions of over 200 interservice committees, and in the Headquarters battle for
dollars the navy was invariably outranked and outnumbered, and quite often
outwitted.
CUTTING COSTS
The momentum of the vigorous naval programs of the fifties wasn’t rein-
forced in succeeding budgets. Cutbacks began with recession beginning in
1957. Manpower shortages led to high sea/shore ratios. Equipment costs
spiralled as hardware got more complex and inflation took hold. Keeping the
hd on budgets meant spending on equipment dropped. In 1954 over forty-
two cents of every defence dollar had gone to buy equipment. By 1963 it was
fourteen cents and falling. The navy, as always, was the most capital-intensive
of the three, spending over 25 per cent of its portion on equipment.
Then John Diefenbaker’s government fell on the issue of nuclear weapons
in February, 1963. In the April election campaign Lester Pearson promised a
Liberal government would honour Canada’s nuclear commitments to her
allies, then negotiate a non-nuclear role. He also made a not unexpected
promise of a searching review of defence policy. Pearson squeaked in with a
minority. His Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, approached his task
with energy, single-minded purpose, and considerable ability - with knife in
hand.
Cutting the administrative fat, streamlining the department, eHminating
waste and overlap and thus releasing money for equipment had been sound
objectives pursued with mixed success for years. The first post-war Minister,
Brooke Claxton, reform-minded as he was, had pushed the reluctant services
into tri-service colleges, common pay scales, equivalent rank structure and
legal services, and a standard code of discipline. Then he established a Chiefs
of Staff Committee with a permanent chairman, though each Chief still had
direct access to the Minister to represent his service’s views.
The army had provided dental care to all of the services for years. Later, the
medical, postal, and chaplain services were amalgamated. There was one
school for musicians and for basic flying training. In Headquarters the per-
sonnel functions of the three services were put in one building, operations in
281
another, supply and technical services in a third. A veritable jungle of interser-

vice committees developed. The organization creaked.
AIMS AND AMMUNITION

In 1963 a royal commission on government organization chaired by J. Grant
Glassco said DND suffered' administrative confusion, with triplication of
effort in some fields. The maze of interservice committees, Glassco said,
tended to obfuscate and procrastinate, not expedite. It seemed to a lot of
officers that the Glassco Commission was right on many counts. On the face
of it a great deal of money could be freed up for operational use by amalga-
mating budgeting, supply, accounting, civil construction, and general admin-
istration. Smaller overheads in Ottawa meant more ships and aircraft out at
sea. A good housecleaning could certainly have done a power of good, but no
particular initiative had come from the Chiefs of Staff. To Paul Hellyer, the
Glassco Report was ready ammunition.
The Department of National Defence was, in fact, a graveyard for poHti-
cians - too httle patronage to purvey; too much spent with no apparent social
benefit; endless questions of cost overruns. It was seen as the money-eating
ogre that Canadians wished would go away. Also, it was very hard to control.
In other departments one professional deputy minister reported to his elected
minister; in Defence six powerful people could knock on the Minister’s door
- the chairman, the three service heads, the chairman of the Defence Research
Board, and the deputy minister. Inevitably, there was conflicting advice. It
was an enormously demanding ministry with a minimum return to its pohti-
cal head.
Hellyer saw that the chance of personal pohtical capital in this wilderness
lay in some starthng innovation, getting a name for dynamism. He had
publicly run down the navy before the election, saying in effect that it
couldn’t find modern submarines and its principal role should be supporting a
mobile force for brushfire wars and peacekeeping. Early in his reign as Minis-
ter he made the classic move of taking control of public communications.
Wing Commander WiUiam Lee, the RCAF Director of Pubhc Relations (Air),
moved into Hellyer’s office. Lee’s exceptionally effective RCAF directorate, the
army’s Directorate of Public Relations, and the tiny Directorate of Naval
Information were cut down, amalgamated, and made responsible to the
deputy minister rather than to the service heads, and thus up the Hne to the
Minister (via Lee).
Hellyer thus harnessed a big professional team to promote his singular
views. At the same time he had pulled the teeth of the Chiefs of Staff in case
they were of a mind to work up public support through the press.
Lee, a skilled hand with the media, was also a long-term advocate of
unifying the forces, an idea that was raising debate in Britain and elsewhere.
282
Whatever the source, toward the end of 1963 Hellyer grasped the idea of a
single service under a single Chief Unification would be achieved via the
intermediate step of integrating Headquarters and the commands on func-
tional hnes.
The White Paper was Hellyer’s own. Historian Daniel P. Burke recorded
that the draft was. “written in longhand by Hellyer in eighteen days in late
November and early December 1963 with scant input from his personal staff
and none from the officers and civihan officials who had traditionally per-
formed this function.” He then got Prime Minister Pearson’s own approval
during the Christmas recess without a word to the Chiefs of Staff or his
cabinet colleagues.
His mid-January visit to the fleet at sea off Bermuda was his first and only
exposure to the navy on the job, but he had already made up his mind. In his
view the highly trained career professionals he saw at work could be made
interchangeable with equally specialized people from the other services by
reorganizing things his way. In HaHfax he was briefed by the Flag Officer
Atlantic Coast, Rear Admiral Jeffry Brock. Two such determined, egocentric
men were bound to tangle. Within six months they met head on.
Hellyer discussed his White Paper with the Chiefs of Staff in early Febru-
ary before he took it formally to cabinet. All of them supported the principle
of integration (though they didn’t know the details). Unanimously, they
opposed unification into one service. The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral
Rayner, was the most vigorous in his objections. He urged the Minister,
without success, to strike all reference to unification.
Rayner was a thoroughly professional sea officer with a fine record of
command. He was held in respectful regard by those who served under him
for his quiet competence and deep concern for his people. He was a man of
strong religious conviction and utmost probity. Such a professional gentle-
man could not believe that something so fundamental as dismantHng and
restructuring the armed services of Canada could become government policy
without the concurrence of the Chiefs. But he was not dealing with someone
hke himself, and Hellyer had set his course already. His tacit stance was that
the Chiefs could do his bidding or resign.
Other than this key issue, the White Paper had no great content. It shuffled
the priorities for defence. Peacekeeping was placed at the top in deference to
Mike Pearson’s international outlook; there was stress on mobility to help
deal with “brushfire wars”; Canada would stay in NATO (Pearson, of course,
had had a major hand in its beginnings) and would keep its place in NORAD;
the navy would continue its ASW role; Bomarc anti-aircraft missiles, fighter
and strike aircraft, and Honest John missiles in Europe would keep their
nuclear tips. Procurement would concentrate on: re-equipping the army as a
mobile force; air and sealift for its deployment; new tactical aircraft; and
283
maintaining “a relatively constant improvement in Maritime anti-submarine

capability.” There was not much encouragement for the navy in that. The
new construction program had been on hold since the change of government.
Making the case for reorganization, integration, and ultimately unifica-
tion, Hellyer drew heavily on the Glassco Report, but cabinet wasn’t particu-
larly interested in the details.' Hellyer could do what he wanted so long as he
saved money. With Walter Gordon, the Finance Minister, he agreed to a
budget of $1.5 billion per year with 2 per cent for inflation. As inflation was
already running at 3.5 per cent, that meant a steady decrease in funding, and
when it climbed the Defence allocation decHned even further. Succeeding
cabinets were quite happy to perpetuate the trend.
INTEGRATION
Hellyer’s first step, integration, came quickly. In July, 1964, Parhament abo-
hshed the chairman and three Chiefs of Staff and replaced them with one
Chief of Defence Staff. The first was Air Chief Marshal Frank Miller. On 1
August Vice Admiral Rayner, the last Chief of Naval Staff, was prematurely
retired. Rayner unquestionably fought to his limits as he saw them for the
ultimate preservation of the navy. He worked strictly inside the department
and within all the rules of propriety, and he made no pubhc statements until
he voiced his measured opposition to the House Standing Committee on
Defence in 1967. But that was too late.
With Rayner’s retirement the Royal Canadian Navy had no head. The
senior sailor was the highly regarded Vice Admiral Kenneth Dyer, Chief of
Personnel in the integrated Headquarters, but he could speak officially only
for the “personnel function,” not for the navy. In the integrated NDHQ the
small naval component was all but submerged. “Integration” was going to be
difficult enough to manage, but it wouldn’t reach beyond the command level
and hit the sharp end - the people out at sea. No one knew, though, what
might lurk beneath the surface of “unification.”
Dyer and the rest of Headquarters tried vaHantly to reorganize along with
HQ personnel cuts of 30 per cent. Expertise and direction crumbled. The
Naval Air Staff, for example, was slashed and found itself reporting to an
RCAF Wing Commander who answered to a Group Captain, neither with
any carrier experience. The naval Commander developing requirements for
gun and missile systems for the general purpose frigates became responsible
to a Brigadier - a fine field soldier who readily confessed no knowledge of the
subject. He could only rubber-stamp policy proposals en route to the desk of
a Major General who was no better informed. Expertise, experience, mature,
informed professional judgement, leadership - all gave way to cure-all con-
cepts of management. If the “organigrams” defined things neatly, then things
must work.
284
Two navy coast commands, four army geographic commands, and five air
force functional commands were put in the pot. Out came seven functional
commands: Maritime (the navy, with Maritime Air, headquartered in Hahfax
with the deputy commander in Esquimalt); Mobile (combining army and
tactical air headquartered at St. Hubert); Air Defence (at North Bay); Air
Transport; Training (in Winnipeg); Communications; and Materiel (in
Ottawa).
On pubhcation of the White Paper in March, Rear Admiral Jeffry Brock
had made his disagreement quite plain. Integration, he said, meant that no
navy senior officer would now have access to the Minister, and ultimately the
Prime Minister, on important naval matters. This was precisely what Walter
Hose said when he dug in and saved the navy in 1922.
Brock spoke forcefully to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Defence in Hahfax in late July. Hellyer called him to Ottawa in August and
summarily fired him, then told the House he’d retired him for economy. Back
in Hahfax, the ships and dockyard people gave their Admiral a rousing send-
off. When his final retirement date passed he was busy in Ottawa advising the
opposition fighting unification in the House. His successor in the Atlantic
Command was Rear Admiral William Landymore.
Landymore, as Maritime Commander Atlantic and Commander of the
NATO Atlantic Sub-Area, had to keep ships and aircraft effective. But the new
Maritime Command was losing control over the dockyards, repair facihties,
and logistic support of the fleet to the integrated Materiel Command in
Ottawa. He was also losing the fleet schools on the coasts to Training Com-
mand headquartered in Winnipeg. As was so clear in the war, shore support
and training were essential parts of fighting effectiveness at sea and had to be
in the Admiral’s hands. In the meantime. Bill Lee built his Minister’s image as
the man-in-charge and service people got the latest information not through
the chain of command but via the press.
In November at a senior officers’ briefing the Minister announced that
unification was on the way. He didn’t define what it meant, but it was coming
- regardless. Landymore told Hellyer he couldn’t accept any plan that meant
demolishing the navy. In his professional opinion, economy and proper
command and control could be achieved by integration alone. Unification
was unnecessary and highly unpalatable to the vast majority, he said - and
Landymore knew his people. He simply couldn’t believe that it would, in the
final analysis, come to pass.
In December the five-year equipment program was announced. The eight
general purpose frigates were dropped. The navy would get four larger
helicopter-carrying destroyers (the new Tribal DDHs), two more operational
support ships, conversion of seven Restigouches to carry anti-submarine
rocket torpedoes rather than helicopters, twelve more Sea Kings, and updated
285
ASW equipment for the Trackers, Arguses, and Neptunes. Also, Bonaventure
was to get a mid-life refit. At the same time there’d be deep cuts in personnel.
Through 1965 many elected to go. Where retirement served economy they
left with a separation allowance, early pro-rata pension, and a handshake.
Many more had their services simply terminated.
MATTERS OF MORALE
In the spring of 1965 the Minister suddenly announced to a senior officers’
conference - still without defining what unification meant - that there would
be a single walking-out uniform and the same rank names in all services by
Canada’s Centennial on 1 July 1967. Dyer, the Chief of Personnel, had no
prior notice or consultation. The first word the services had was in the
newspapers.
Bill Landymore, head of Maritime Command and thus of the operational
navy, was a tough-minded, tireless professional and a first-rate leader, but in a
single year, morale had plummeted from the heights to a slough of uncertainty,
frustration, and fear. Too many trained, experienced senior people were leaving.
Recruiting was falling short by 40 per cent. The navy was a tough enough Hfe as
it was. Who wanted to face such uncertainty? All of this stemmed from Hell-
yer’s personal decisions. But numbers and morale were very much the Admi-
ral’s problems. He was the one who had to keep the fleet effective.
Landymore’s was by far the biggest operational command in all the serv-
ices. He was by custom a frequent visitor to the ships and spoke to men of all
ranks and he was gravely disturbed by their concerns. In late June he wrote to
the CDS, saying that “the choice seems either to Hve with a service which will
have no heart in its work for years to come, or pursue integration with all its
benefits leaving the matter of identity totally intact. I most strongly urge the
second alternative. It is requested the Defence Council be made aware of the
foregoing observations.” He received no reply to his letter.
To shore things up Landymore spoke that summer to closed meetings of
heutenant commanders and above. He told them that forming a single service
would take an Act of Parhament and he was sure good sense in the House
would prevail. He personally saw no merit in taking away the navy’s identity,
but he would represent their viewpoint, whatever it was. After discussion he
asked them to indicate their agreement or disagreement on five points; first,
he would represent their views; second, they could speak openly about their
own views in and out of the service until the law was changed by Parhament;
third, they would not consider loss of identity inevitable and become apa-
thetic; fourth, they would not ask to be retired because they couldn’t accept
the theory of unification (he pledged that if their viewpoints were ignored he
alone would take appropriate action in protest); fifth, for the information of
286
others the meeting had discussed morale. Of 367 officers at the meetings,
three didn’t fully agree. Landymore reported what he’d done and the views of
his officers to the Chief of Personnel.
TWISTING THE TRUTH

Hellyer heard about the meetings and considered disciplining the Admiral for
brooking critical discussion of government poHcy - Landymore had put
himself legally on thin ice - or simply firing him as he had Brock. But two top
operational commanders in a year? And Landymore had been made inte-
grated Maritime Commander by the Minister himself. Besides, there weren’t
enough admirals around to convene a court martial.
For months the commands were entirely in the dark about unification.
There was no definition, no study of what the consequences might be. In
February, 1966, Landymore sent his own appreciation to Ottawa, saying
again, “integrate, don’t unify.” On 14 April a Globe and Mail article quoted a
Defence Department spokesman “that naval officers still retain to some extent
an above decks, below decks mentahty .... Sailors don’t just scrub decks and
set sail now, they’re skilled men and the old attitude of officers just doesn’t fit.
We’re trying to change that.” It was a gratuitous, unfounded attack, attemp-
ting to deflect blame for sagging recruiting and re-engagement away from the
spectre of unification. The spokesman was “Leaky” Lee, as he’d been dubbed
by now. Landymore officially requested a denial or a public apology and got
nowhere. The Minister’s men could fire at the navy at will. There was no way
to fight back.
Then, in June, Landymore was called to Ottawa to give evidence on Naval
Estimates to the House Standing Committee. Before the meeting he submit-
ted his report to the Minister and two fundamental points were cut out by
Lee. The Admiral had shown statistically how numbers had run down since
early 1964 to a shortage of 3,500 men and how slumping re-engagement of
the vital chiefs and petty officers was cutting into the hard core of the fleet.
This seriously affected his ability to meet operational commitments. The
second point was a warning about the aging fleet. Building only four new
ships instead of the eight frigates previously approved meant he wouldn’t be
able to do the job the government required.
Landymore, beheving he had no choice but to obey his Minister, choked
down his disgust and deHvered the report as changed. Hellyer had effectively
stopped expert evidence key to the defence of Canada from being heard by
Parhament. Questioned by the committee, Landymore said that morale was
bad; there was a great deal of unrest; the navy as a whole was against unifica-
tion; identity was vital for servicemen and the uniform a most important part
of it.
287
The Minister sent for Tandy mo re in late July. He would make not a single
concession on naval identity even though he had recently agreed that High-
land regiments could keep their kilts. Army regiments and corps could still be
“Royal” but not the Royal Canadian Navy. Landymore repeated he could not
support any move that destroyed naval identity. Hellyer asked for his resigna-
tion. The Admiral chose to be fired. Outside the Minister’s office he ran into
Rear Admiral M.G. Stirling, who had come from his west coast command
quite independently to tell the Minister he couldn’t support unification and
would resign. Hellyer accepted on the spot. Admirals Dyer and Welland were
retiring prematurely, too.
The only thing Landymore could do now was see the Prime Minister, and
the only way he could get to him was through David Groos, Liberal MP for
Esquimalt, retired Commander, RCN, and chairman of the Parhamentary
Committee on Defence. Groos agreed to arrange the meeting only if Landy-
more wouldn’t raise the matter of the altered testimony. Landymore had to
agree. He told Pearson of his firing and of the early retirements of three other
admirals. Pearson said he agreed with the integration poHcy. He didn’t know
what Hellyer intended about unification but he reaffirmed what he himself
had said on a visit to Saskatchewan's ship’s company: the government wouldn’t
interfere with naval traditions.
DECAPITATION
In a few weeks retirements were announced: Air Chief Marshal Miller (CDS),
Vice Admiral Dyer (Chief of Personnel), Lieutenant-General R.W. Moncel
(the Vice Chief), Lieutenant-General Frank Fleury (Comptroller General),
and Rear Admiral Welland (Deputy Chief of Operations). Miller was the only
one who had reached retirement age. All left by choice or under stress, quite
unable to deflect the course of events. Dyer, for one, still didn’t know what
Hellyer intended by unification and had told the Minister he couldn’t go on.
The new CDS was General Jean-Victor Allard, an ebuUient field soldier who
enthusiastically endorsed the new direction, whatever it might be.
In July, 1966, only two of the top thirteen officers in the Canadian forces
had held their appointments for more than a month. In two years the six
senior admirals - Rayner, Brock, Dyer, Landymore, Stirhng, and Welland -
had gone before their time. The press coined the phrase “Admirals’ revolt.”
But there was no collusion: each acted quite independently; each was equally
convinced that eHmination of the navy in favour of a single service was dead
wrong; each tried to deflect a rigidly determined man from his arbitrary,
single-minded course; each suffered early retirement. Only Brock, then Lan-
dymore after he was fired, spoke out publicly. Revolt it never was.
Back in HaHfax, Landymore read the message stripping him of his com-
mand. When the Minister released his story the Admiral gave his own to the
288
press. Hellyer countered that if the government backed down they would
have to get a new Minister, and Landymore went down with guns blazing.
To the navy, Bill Landymore was a hero. With his wife he was given a send-
off from the HaHfax dockyard such as never seen before. Ships’ sides and
roadways were Hned with cheering sailors and civiHan employees. Every ship in
harbour flew signal flags spelling Landymore’s name; above them flew flags
BZ: Bravo Zulu: “Well done, Landymore.” There was nothing else to say.
UNIFICATION
Hellyer sent for Commodore O’Brien, Senior Canadian Officer Afloat, and
offered promotion and the Atlantic Command. O’Brien got assurance from
the Minister, General Allard, and Defence Council that the shipbuilding and
aircraft programs would go ahead, that there would be no further reduction in
the size of the fleet. Specifically, it would be maintained at the level of the
modernized Bonaventure, twenty-four destroyers (including the new Tribals),
sixty-eight Trackers, thirty-two Arguses, sixteen Neptunes, and all the new
Sea Kings and the support ships. Further, the Maritime Commander would
report directly to the CDS. There was no agreement on uniform or ranks.
O’Brien took the job. Within three years a good portion of those undertak-
ings, and the Prime Minister’s personal pledge, went down the drain.
In September, Hellyer visited HaHfax for the first time in over three years.
Answering a question from the floor on the subject of uniform at an all-
officers meeting, he commented that the navy seemed to think their uniform
was ordained by God. The response was a full-throated roar of outrage.
Admiral O’Brien had to jump in and order silence. This outburst by a group
of career officers at their Minister was absolutely without precedent. The
question had been asked, respectfully but pointedly, by Lieutenant Com-
mander Nigel Brodeur, whose father and grandfather had played such leading
parts in the history of the RCN. Feelings in the navy ran very deep. Hellyer had
learned nothing. In spring, 1964, a CPO asked him pubHcly why, if unification
was the answer, Canada should be the first in NATO to try. His reply: our allies
were worried that while reorganizing they’d lose operational effectiveness -
but with us, it doesn’t matter.
He only hardened. He bore on implacably, against advice from his staff and
colleagues to ease off. He was on his own flight toward the party leadership
and he had to win, and win hands down. The next step was the Unification
Bill. In the debate the Minister was assailed for tampering with Landymore’s
testimony. When the bill went to committee it was a marathon. In 1944,
Chairman David Groos had commanded Rest{qouche in the hurly-burly battles
off Brest. He had also been in command of Crescent in Nanking in 1949. Now,
the unification battle sent him to hospital with a heart attack before the
committee hearings were over.
289
Landymore systematically documented the Minister’s alterations to his

earlier testimony. He called for setting unification aside or, if it was inevitable,
at least scrapping the common uniform and army ranks and allowing those
who disagreed to have an honourable release without losing their pensions.
When Hellyer was pressed for his reasons for firing Landymore, he said it
was for “eighteen months of consistent disloyalty to the people he was paid to
serve.” It was a shocking charge. He added that the Admiral, since November,
1964, had been working against government policy by holding anti-
unification meetings with officers. Landymore again documented his actions.
Hellyer grudgingly conceded. Without condoning the Admiral’s actions, he
accepted his statement “that there was no disloyalty to his service or his
country.” Other than serving officers, the great majority of witnesses -
Generals Moncel, Fleury, Simonds, Foulkes, Air Marshals Miller, Curtis,
Hendricks, and Annis, Admirals Rayner, Landymore, and Brock - called
unification seriously in question. But the Liberal-dominated committee
passed the bill back to the House substantially unchanged.
The Prime Minister throughout had exercised neither leadership nor
constraint. Now his enthusiasm waned with the controversy. It took two
threats of resignation from Hellyer to keep it on the order paper. Finally, the
Liberals invoked closure on third reading to ram it through. That happened
on 25 April before the House recessed for the gala opening ofExpo ’67. That
summer Canadians were treated to a splendid travelling tattoo put on by the
three traditional services, still in their own uniforms. In return Canada’s
Centennial gift to her armed forces was destruction of their time-honoured
institutions and a new, undefined service that few wanted or even
understood.
The last legality came on 1 February 1968, when amendments to the
National Defence Act ended the life of the Royal Canadian Navy, the army,
and the RCAF and roUed them into the Canadian Armed Forces. The common
green uniform displaced navy blue, Hght blue, and khaki in 1970.
For his own poHtical ambitions Paul Hellyer decided on a massive, entirely
theoretical restructuring of the armed services that he and close personal
advisers conceived. He never defined it, never examined it, never Hstened to
the counsel of his legally appointed professional advisers. He flouted ParHa-
ment. He rammed unification through and left others to figure it out, and
experimented recklessly with the careers of 120,000 people, reducing the
defence establishment to impotence for a long time. In the process, the navy
suffered a deep and lasting wound.
Certainly, it was the service most strongly opposed to unification. The
navy goes to sea. It is a very distinctive, uncomfortable, and demanding way
of hfe, and it’s not for everyone. A navy cook is not only a cook and a baker;
he’s also a sailor who tends to ship’s duties. He goes into action as part of his
290
ship’s fighting team. He must deal with fires and flooding, handle ammuni-
tion, save Hves. A naval officer follows the ancient and demanding profession
of navigating the sea as well as that of arms. Everyone who goes to sea in the
navy has to be a “J^ck of all sea trades and a master of one.” The navy, so
different as a profession and a way of life, had the most to lose.
EVISCERATION
The opposition had made hay in the House of Commons and scored heavily
on Hellyer. But by then his purpose was beyond recall, hardened no doubt by
Brock and Landymore, abetted by a skilfully handled press. The services drew
small support from Canadians overall. In the public’s eye the navy dragged its
feet: the admirals revolted because they and their navy were too set in ancient
ways. They drew the barbs of cartoonists, not the rationale of thoughtful
editorials. The pubHc focused throughout on the obvious symbols like uni-
form and rank and found them picayune. Deeper issues, such as operational
effectiveness and the real meaning of morale, were simply not understood.
Brass-bashing was always a popular sport. The country watched, with deri-
sion if anything, but not with any concerted outrage as three Canadian
institutions disappeared. And certainly there was no wide feeling that in
military affairs one politician could possibly be wrong and every one of his
senior professional advisers right. Paul Hellyer, and Bill Lee, had called the
shots right. To a point.
He moved from Defence to Transport, taking Lee along, and they contin-
ued pursuit of the real aim, the Liberal leadership. But from the time of
Landymore’s stand it began to come through that Hellyer had taken his iron-
willed image too far. Before the Liberal leadership conventionMaclean^s maga-
zine noted his “reputation for arrogance . . . Hke a teacher who says ‘yo^
speak out of turn boy and out you go.’ ” On the convention floor in March,
1968, he ran to form. After the third ballot he rejected all advice, including
Lee’s. He refused to release his delegates to try and stop Pierre Trudeau and
became his own cheerleader, shouting “Go, Paul, go!” Trudeau won on the
fourth ballot.
Watching Paul Hellyer sink himself gave sour satisfaction to many. But the
havoc he had wrought for his own ambition was only the softening up. The
services were gutted of experienced leadership, and too many more took their
energies and ambitions elsewhere. Integration on its own could have achieved
such benefits as did accrue. Certainly some did, though the promised 25 per
cent for new equipment never materialized. Scaled up to the other services,
sailors got better housing, social services, and benefits. They got sea-pay,
personal flights on service aircraft, and the Canex retailing outlets. But num-
bers shrank - the navy to half its former size - and equipment aged without
replacement. Par from Hellyer’s prediction, no other country followed suit.
291
The Canadian Forces became the best-paid, best-fed, and, as time went on,
the worst-equipped armed forces in the Western world.
The next fifteen years under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau would see
steady erosion of the nation’s defence. The navy, which Paul Hellyer had
savaged, dwindled over the ensuing years to a shadow of its lusty self.
292
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CLIPPED
WINGS
WHILE ADMIRAL LANDYMORE WAS FIGHTING TO KEEP THE NAVY ALIVE

and sorting out integration in the new Maritime Command, the Cold War
kept up its persistent demands. The threat, indeed, increased. In 1964Janets
Fighting Ships reported baldly that “The Soviet Navy has the most powerful
submarine fleet the world has ever known.” Each year their attack fleet
improved and more of them had nuclear power. Then within three years they
added twenty-five nuclear-driven Yankee-class “boomers” carrying nuclear-
tipped strategic missiles that could be fired submerged. In that department
they were fast catching the USN and posed a major direct threat to North
America.
In the fall of 1966 Bonaventure went to her major mid-life refit at Lauzon,
Quebec. Costs cHmbed sharply as the refit ran its course. The ship was out of
action for eighteen months and the squadrons meantime flew as guests in
American carriers to keep in shape. Flying back aboard “Bonnie” again in
October, 1967, they found her flight deck awfully small.
Captain Bob Falls was now in command and another ex-fighter pilot.
Commander Allan “Smokey” Bice, was XO. For that winter’s training
around Puerto Rico the carrier took the two new Canadian submarines,
Onondaga and Ojibwa, and Provider for underway replenishment and support.
There were fewer escorts now. War-built destroyers and frigates were disap-
pearing without replacement.
The aviators always played the game to the hilt and, as always, there was
risk. In “Maple Spring 69” in the Caribbean a catapult strop broke on takeoff.
The Tracker couldn’t get airborne, flopped over the bow, and was literally run
over by the carrier. Somehow the crew got clear and they actually bounced
along the bottom of the ship. Two of them passed right through the turning
screws and popped up in the wake.
293
Sub-Lieutenant Real Dubois, flying Pedro, the rescue helicopter, was over
in seconds to pluck Lieutenant Jack Flannagan from a crimson pool of his
own blood, his leg sheared off by the screw. These were shark waters but
Leading Seaman Cameron jumped straight in. With the hoist operator he
got Flannagan aboard and they put pressure on the spurting leg. Moments
meant life and Dubois got him straight to the flight deck, then picked up co-
pilot Chuck MacIntyre and Leading Seamen Bill Smith and Bob Winger.
Flannagan was back flying Trackers in a year with an artificial leg; then he
flew Sea Kings in destroyers. MacIntyre and Dubois were soon outside as
Air Canada pilots.
Professionalism doesn’t stop accidents entirely. In the first ten growing
years of Canadian naval aviation there were sixty-two deaths; in the last
twelve years, from 1957 to 1969, there were thirty-five. In that second period
the numbers of airborne hours and deck landings in round-the-clock all-
weather operational flying had far more than doubled.
TRUDEAU TURNS AWAY

The Soviets’ iron hold on Eastern Europe was dramatically confirmed when
their tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the move toward
hberalism called “the Prague spring.” The following spring Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau made a major change in Canadian defence policy. Suddenly,
top priority was protecting national sovereignty. Canada’s support for NATO
was cut by almost half. The aim in Paul Ffellyer’s 1964 White Paper “to
maintain a relatively constant improvement in Maritime anti-submarine
capabihty” went down the drain. In September, National Defence Headquar-
ters announced that Bonaventure, rejuvenated though she was, would be
retired. With budget constraints and social-political priorities, she was
deemed too costly to keep afloat.
During “Bonnie’s” last crack at the exercise circuit the message came to
disband the Tracker squadron, VS 880. There was rage, disgust, sadness for the
end of a tight, top service and questions about their own future. But they
swept all that to the backs of their minds. For the last time they flew in the
rough stuff, logged more hours than anyone else’s aircraft, and pressed on
“kilhng” submarines when the others had stopped flying. At one stage they
spotted fifteen Soviet submarines escorted by three Kresta-class destroyers.
One of the Krestas glued herself dangerously close to “Bonnie” and gave
Captain James Cutts, who was a cool and expert shiphandler, some bad
moments. The year before Bob Falls had had to go full astern to avoid a KotHn
that got too close. Such events were getting common. But as the Soviets
waxed bigger and tougher and flexed their muscles at sea, Canada was puUing
in her horns.
294
CLIPPED WINGS
THE END OF NAVAL AVIATION

Earlier the Auditor General had noted that the cost of Bonaventure's refit had
doubled over the estimate. Estimating for a refit is imprecise at best. New
defects always come to hght when plating, piping, hull fittings, and machin-
ery are opened up for inspection and repair. An allowance is always made, but
Bonaventure was wartime construction, more than twenty-three years old, and
had never had a full overhaul.
Questions were hurled about the House. The press focused on titillating
refit trivia like luxury items in officers’ cabins and the cost of moving furni-
ture. Parliamentary committees puffed around the ship and huffed as they
never did on the real defence issue of the day, namely Canada’s retreat from
her long-time alhances. Bonaventure became a synonym for mismanagement,
which caught the public’s imagination as the ship and her sailors, her aircraft,
and those who flew them never did when they were at sea serving their
country’s needs. The fault was not in overspending but in underguesstimat-
ing. The damage was in faiHng to justify the higher costs logically and
publicly. The implication was ineptness by the same kind of barnacle-bound
admirals who had fought unification. The navy got no media or political
defence, and the cartoonists had a field day. Ridicule always wins.
Only one wartime destroyer and one converted frigate remained. The three
new submarines were running on the east coast. Protecteur and Preserver, the
new operational support ships, were due in 1970. The four Tribal DDHs were
under construction for 1972-73. There were seventy-one updated Trackers
and forty Sea Kings in service. The limited equipping plan to which Hellyer
had agreed in 1966 was coming along. But now the numbers in the unified
Canadian Forces were being cut again and something had to go.
Naval aviation en bloc - carrier and aircraft and people and shore support -
was a juicy chunk of the budget. Carrier sailors could man the new ships. All
the Bonaventure flack blurred the basic issue: Trudeau’s drastic cutback on
Canada’s commitments to her allies. Politically, it was easy to retire Bonaven-
ture, and that put an end to Canadian naval aviation. The operational core of
Canada’s seagoing contribution to NATO and continental defence was gone.
Twenty-three years of struggle built an esprit and capability in naval aviation
that was second to none. Pop Fotheringham was one who could say with calm
certainty and justifiable pride that “it all combined to produce the finest and most
professional group of aviators in any man’s navy, anywhere.” Fotheringham had
flown from RN and USN carriers Warrior and Magnificent and had made the first
deck landing on Bonaventure. On 12 December 1969 he made the last.
THE LAST FLY-PAST

As Bonaventure came back to Halifax from her last operation all aircraft flew
295
off to Shearwater except four Trackers, one Sea King, and the rescue heHcop-
ter. They were to launch in a farewell to the city as “Bonnie” steamed up-
harbour. Then they would join the final all-up fly-past with the Maritime
Commander, Vice Admiral O’Brien, taking the salute.
But the wind was wrong and at the crucial time the catapult broke down.
That meant the last Trackers would have to go ashore by hghter. But going out
with a whimper was simply not for VS 880, for Bonaventure, or for the navy.
Captain Jim Cutts and Squadron Commander Dave Tate conferred. Cutts
took the ship past the dockyard into Bedford Basin. Then he rang up engine
revolutions and raced the bulky lady around the basin like a destroyer, helm
hard over, nearly nicking the shoal buoys. He gave Tate and his boys seventeen
knots of wind along the deck. The final four roared the full length of it to take
off. Then they gave their favourite bird-farm one final beat-up and joined the
last fly-past.
Another kick at the old “cracking show”? School-boy games? Bravado?
No. These were seasoned professionals. They knew exactly what they were
doing. They were flying top-class airplanes maintained and handled by the
best of naval airmen. They had never lost the old press-on spirit from the early
days, and they had always pushed the Hmits. But they did not press on
regardless.
Lesser aviators, run-of-the-mill sailors, poHticians who airily toss away
hard-won traditions, the land-bound who have never known planes and
people and ships at sea would hardly understand. But the ghosts of Bedford
Basin - the seamen of those convoys of a thousand sail and a hundred
steamships that had gathered there in wars over 200 years - they would off-
caps and cheer. So would Walter Hose, Leonard Murray, Chummy Prentice,
John Stubbs, Alan Easton, Hammy Gray, Harry DeWolf, the thousands who
toughed it out in the little ships in the great Battle of the Atlantic. They would
have done the same thing themselves.
296
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHANGE ON
CHANGE
UNHAPPY TIME
WHEN THE NATIONAL DEFENCE ACT WAS AMENDED ON 1 FEBRUARY 1968
to end the legal life of the Royal Canadian Navy, four years of controversy and
a lot of bitterness had already left their mark. The pride the navy had built in
itself, by itself, had been hard hit. This unhappy, unsettled time led right into
an era of more cuts. To the navy, the country didn’t seem to care about the
dwindling fleet or alhance commitments. At the same time, people had to
swallow change upon change upon change.
When Admiral O’Brien took over as Maritime Commander from Admiral
Landymore in 1966, he was the right man to steer the service through another
sickly season. He had an agile, inventive mind, a strong, buoyant personality,
and a reputation as a sea commander who knew his business. Ships still must
go to sea; planes must fly; thejob had to be done with what there was at hand.
Headquartered in Halifax, he ran the west coast, too, through his deputy in
Esquimalt. Operations scaled down as the wartime escorts and Bonaventure
disappeared, but there was one major gain; all Maritime Air was now part and
parcel of Maritime Command.
In Ottawa the tri-service committee thickets were slashed. Economies,
pretty well completed by the end of the integration stage in 1967, had badly
thinned out expertise. The senior naval officer at Headquarters, Vice Admiral
Ralph Hennessy, was the Comptroller for the Forces but not the navy head
because theoretically there was no navy. De facto, the boss was O’Brien, who
was soon a Vice Admiral, too. Headquarters, he found, was pretty much of a
shambles until 1970, but Rear Admiral Terry Burchell, who had headed Naval
Technical Services, was the key man there. The navy had the only core of
highly trained technical officers and systems engineers who had run sophisti-
297
cated programs. Whatever the organization charts said, Burchell and com-
pany got the most they could for O’Brien from the shrinking pot.
Putting the naval dockyards and ship repair units under Materiel Com-
mand in Ottawa had been one of the unwise and unworkable moves. Dock-
yard support and ship repair were essential parts of front-hne fighting
readiness, as so clearly seen in war. O’Brien ran a determined fight and finally
got them back.
Initial training, education, and interchangeable trades training could cer-
tainly be run by a separate command. But the ships needed the fleet schools in
Hahfax and Esquimalt for technical and team training to keep themselves
efficient. School staffs had to stay in touch with ships to keep their training
right to the point. Finally, the instructors themselves were part of the sea/
shore ratio. Training was as important to fighting efficiency as dockyard
support and it belonged to the operational commander without a fifth vcheel
in Winnipeg. After another long fight the fleet schools came back under
Maritime Command in 1971.
THE HIGH-SPEED HYDROFOIL

One bright spark in the gloomy turn of the seventies was the navy’s open-
ocean hydrofoil, HMCS Bras dÔr. She was Canadian to the core. Lieutenant
Barry German watched Alexander Graham Bell’s hydrofoil skimming Cape
Breton’s Bras d’Or lakes back in 1917 and reported “she went like smoke” at
an incredible sixty knots. After the war the navy helped Bell with high-
speed towing behind the destroyer Patrician, but there wasn’t a cent in the
navy’s budget for development. Then in 1943 the Canadian army asked for a
high-speed smoke-laying craft to cloak amphibious landings and reduce
slaughter on the beaches as had happened at Dieppe. The Naval Research
Establishment in Halifax recalled Bell’s invention and worked on a hydro-
foil solution with a V-shaped “surface-piercing” foil. It went on the back
burner in 1945.
In the early fifties, trying to find ways to beat the high-performance
submarine with Hmited sonar, tacticians spht on big sophisticated escorts
versus small, cheap, and many. NRE scientists had meanwhile plugged quietly
away at their hydrofoil design with test craft. By 1959 they had enough
confidence to propose a 200-ton open-ocean hydrofoil as a practical proposi-
tion for anti-submarine work.
By this time the dazzhng speed of the nuclear submarine was shouting for
novel solutions. Britain was working hard on hovercraft. The USN had a
hydrofoil using different submerged-foil techniques. NATO urged Canada to
press on with her surface-piercing project. Naval Board, stimulated by the
Brock Report of 1961, approved development work. Light aluminum struc-
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ture looked the best bet and in 1963 a design contract went to De Havilland
Aircraft of Canada.
Shipbuilding was a pretty conventional industry and De Havilland
brought a lot to it that was completely new. The prototype fast hydrofoil
escort was built at Marine Industries Ltd. in Sorel and was the first warship
ever constructed upside down. It might offend the seaman’s eye but it made
for better welding. Marine Industries was tops in aluminum welding through
building the St. Laurents. This was Canada’s first marine powering by an
aircraft type gas-turbine engine and the experience fed forward into the Tribal
class. Technical mastermind was marine/air engineer Captain Dudley Allan.
An accidental fire in the yard unfortunately set completion back about a
year. But NRE scientist Michael Lames - the man who made the variable depth
sonar run - had done his hydronamic work brilliantly. Add innovative design
and imaginative engineering and the project paid off. By the summer of 1969
HMCS Bras d’Or was gloriously riding high on her foils off HaHfax with a
naval crew under Commander Constantine Cotaras.
But Bras d’Or was on borrowed time. The delay and cost of the fire told, and
the deep cuts in the Defence budget had the Forces on the ropes. Exotic
activities, however promising, were the first to draw the jaundiced eye and the
budget-cutter’s knife. The opposition sniped at such a high-profile project;
the government side of the House, backing off defence, questioned navy
management.
In the next year, though. Bras dÔr met aU the Naval Staff targets. Running
hull-borne on her slow-speed diesel she handled twelve-foot waves as ably as a
destroyer. The foils deep under water made her steadier than a destroyer. With
her powerful gas turbine turning two propellers the foils Hfted the hull and she
“flew” actually clear of the water - at sixty-three knots in four-foot waves. In
big ten-foot waves she cruised at a remarkably stable, steady forty-five.
In 1970, with green uniforms and army ranks. Bras d’Or’s new CO was
Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Edwards. He had joined as an ordinary seaman in
1948 and served in Korea in Athabaskan. Commander Bob Welland was ever
alive to the potential of his men and Edwards was picked from the lower deck
for air officer training. He flew fighters - Sea Vixens, Sea Furies, and Banshees
- from British, Canadian, and American carriers, was Operations Officer in a
destroyer, XO of a frigate, and capped that with three years in command of
Assiniboine. He brought to Bras d'Or a fighter pilot’s dash, a seaman’s steady
eye, personal flamboyance, and a sense of fun and adventure that swept things
along, difficulties be damned.
In heavy weather Bras d'Or literally ran rings around the destroyer
Saguenay. She was more comfortable at forty knots in ten-foot seas, so
Saguenay’s captain observed, than his own ship was at eighteen. Edwards
299
proved out fuelling and storing under way with support ship Preserver en
route to Bermuda. Flying in the winding channel at fifty knots past the coral
heads and dropping down Hke a great sea bird off the Princess Hotel was the
kind of flourish Edwards loved - and had the skill to carry off
He took her over to Norfolk and blazed past a startled USN destroyer
squadron in historic Hampton Roads at forty knots, then eased alongside for a
couple of days of show and tell. There were many problems to solve, certainly.
But her breathtaking performance proved out what Alexander Graham Bell
started on Cape Breton over fifty years before. Canada had the only proven,
ultra-high-speed, open-ocean warcraft in the world.
She needed some engineering modifications and her suit of fighting equip-
ment, already developed, had to be fitted. Then she was to do full ASW trials.
The idea was to cruise quietly, hull-borne, sweeping with her VDS and
electronic warfare detectors. On getting contact she could move at “jump
speed,” working with another unit to contain even the fastest submarine and
attack with homing torpedoes. Analysis showed two hydrofoil escorts about
equal to one frigate. At $28 milhon per copy she cost less than half a Tribal,
and she carried one-eighth of a Tribal’s crew. With guided missiles she would
make a potent surface striker. She could carry an automatic gun for policing,
cover big surveillance areas fast, and safely handle the worst of North Atlantic
weather. Science and seamanship had combined to create quite an addition to
the naval armoury.
But in late 1971 Defence Minister Donald Macdonald stopped the work
after $52 milhon had been spent, including the fighting system at about $10
million (and the fire, which added $6.5 miUion). It was a bargain, especiaUy as
it had also paid for pulling Canadian shipbuilding right into the computer
age, brought in sophisticated quality assurance, developed the marine use of
exotic steels and aluminum structures, and introduced gas-turbine marine
propulsion.
Another $6 million would have fitted the fighting equipment, done an
operational evaluation, and wrapped the whole thing up. There was potential
for offshore sales if not for Canada herself. Unfortunately, there were no
marks for fuelHng the economy, and Macdonald’s 1971 White Paper sheered
away from ASW. Maritime Command had far too little money for running its
conventional fleet alone. The budget was frozen, and the Tribals were nudg-
ing up in cost. Faced with the choice, operational commanders preferred the
devil they knew.
Canada has shown great talent for R&D but small courage. There is a certain
parallel with the Avro Arrow fighter, ditched by John Diefenbaker in 1959
after costing over $400 milhon. Bras dÔr, at one-tenth the cost, was just as far
ahead of her field in her time. But unlike the Arrow, there was no clouded
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CHANGE ON CHANGE
question-mark on her design and her engineering problems were defined and
clearly fixable.
Bras d’Or was gutted. Government refused to put good money after good,
and she ended her days standing sadly on her foils Hke a stranded water spider
at the Bernier Marine Museum at 1 ’ Islet-sur-Mer, Quebec. Alexander Gra-
ham Bell would surely have applauded the naval vision and advanced tech-
nology that she represented just as warmly as he would have condemned the
lack of guts to go the distance. Tactically and technically, Canada’s navy could
run with the very best, but it had to give up the risks and rewards of innova-
tive ventures. In the shrivelled seventies, survival was the order of the day.
DOWN THE DRAIN

Meanwhile, replacements for the Arguses, as well as new fighters and tanks,
had gone down the drain with Defence Minister Cadieux’s 1969 budget,
frozen at $1.8 billion for three years. The four Tribals continued to completion
but nothing came after that. Capital spending slumped. By 1973 it was at an
all-time low of 9 per cent of the total Defence budget. The Commons
Defence Committee heard evidence that France spent 40 per cent on capital
programs. West Germany 30 per cent, most NATO countries 24 to 30 per cent.
Canada’s lolled around 10 per cent for fourteen years. Pay shot up and
personnel costs ate up two-thirds of budget - almost double that of any other
Western nation. Pay and maintenance together took up 89 per cent. The
United States was worried when pay and maintenance combined at 46 per
cent.
Western nations were still trimming defence, but Canada had long since
dropped below what all the rest took as prudent hmits. Yet the country wasn’t
poor. Gross Domestic Product, increasing steadily, more than doubled in
constant dollars between 1963 and 1985. Of sixteen NATO nations Canada
ranked a steady fourteenth in defence spending as a percentage of GDP. Below
her stood Luxembourg and then Iceland, which kept no armed forces at all.
The navy lay becalmed at 9,500 all ranks, the lowest since the doldrums of the
late forties.
RESERVES
The Naval Reserve had stood at an authorized 4,600 all ranks in the early
sixties under its own command in Hamilton. In 1964 it was chopped below
3,000. The idea was that a big war would be nuclear, with no time to mobilize.
The concept of conventional war accepted in 1961 was conveniently forgot-
ten. It would only be the “brushfire” type in the Third World, gun-boat stuff
to be handled by a small force of professionals. Direction of all Reserves was
unified in Ottawa, which virtually orphaned the Naval Reserve from the
301
active force. O’Brien launched another campaign and in 1969 the whole
Naval Reserve came to Maritime Command, with its own Headquarters in
Halifax, but it stayed as small.
In the meantime, the University Naval Training Division died. After
twenty-five years of producing well-trained junior officers for the Reserve
(and many for the permanent force) it was rolled into the unified Reserve
Officer University Training Plan in 1968. People missed identification with
the service of their choice, and Naval Reserve divisions, cut as they were, ran
short of qualified officers. A strong naval link across the country dissolved.
In the late sixties NATO accepted the doctrine of “graduated response”: as
in the Brock Report, war without immediate nuclear devastation was on the
cards; much stronger conventional forces were needed and Reserves would
have reinforcing roles. The ceihng nudged up to 3,600. Whatever system
might be used to get shipping across the oceans, it had to be pulled under
control, organized, and kept moving right from day one. Maritime Com-
mand needed a trained and ready organization and naval control of shipping
(NCS) became the main role for the Reserves.
FAREWELL TO RUM
One hoary inheritance from the RN was the navy’s tot, the daily free issue in
ships of 2V2 ounces of overproof rum. For junior hands it was diluted in two
parts of water. From the fifties the sailor could supply his own mix - watered
or with Coke and ice cubes, it was still a rousing belt - or he could draw two
cans of cold beer or take a Httle money instead.
It was a merry old institution. The Coxswain and the supply petty officer and
the witnessing officer officiated every noon at the brass-bound rum tub suitably
emblazoned “The Queen God Bless Her,” pouring each man his measure to be
drunk on the spot. Cheering though it was, rum was rife with problems. Men
hid and hoarded it, bartered and binged on it. It was a time-consumer and an
administrative headache, at the root of countless breaches of discipline. And
certainly it slid many good men down the alcoholic’s slippery slope.
Officers had protected the rum issue as much to preserve their privilege of
duty-free liquor in the wardroom as for the men’s enjoyment. But such a one-
element privilege could never survive unification. The alternative: authorize
bars on board. Now, Hke his officers, the sailor could buy an alcohoHc drink at
regulated hours and have it in the cafeteria or the comfort of his mess. It
enhanced the ship as his home. It was the sensible answer for civilized people,
and it wasn’t abused.
UNIFORMS
The big symboHc change - green uniform for all - appeared in ships in 1970.
Now all hands wore the same uniform, distinguished only by rank stripes
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and, for officers, gold leaf on the cap. Apart from looking like soldiers, the
distinction was gone between the navy’s working hands, who had worn the
traditional seaman’s rig, and the petty officers first class and the chiefs, who
ran the show. The new uniform was certainly Canadian, which was appropri-
ate. Overall, though, it was simply no match, in both navy and civihan eyes,
for crisp blue andwhite and gold, bell-bottoms, and the universal nautical cut
that marked a man a sailor - and proud of it - anywhere in the world.
Generally indigestible though the new uniform was, it hardly matched the
heartburn that came with foisting soldiers’ ranks on sailors. An admiral
became a general, a leading seaman a corporal. It rubbed more salt in the
wound to lose the honoured, battle-tried title “Royal Canadian Navy” while
mere units of the “land element” - Royal Canadian Artillery, the Royal 22nd,
the Royal Canadian Regiment, et al. - kept their “Royal” as well as their
traditional ceremonial uniforms. In any event, a more sensitive Minister,
Maurice Lamontaigne, restored a modicum of naval self-respect by giving
back the old ranks in 1971 and uniform gradually subsided as an issue.
NAVAL AIR
After losing Bonaventure in 1970, the aviators themselves made a determined
drive to keep the Tracker squadron for coastal patrols from shore, and there
were the shipboard heHcopters to fly. Still, a lot of naval aviators left the
service. Others found their way to the Argus squadrons or moved to Air
Defence or Mobile Command. Naval air and ground crews, in fact, formed
the core - particularly in the helicopter units - of Mobile’s growing Tactical
Air Group, and as time went on ex-naval air people filled most of their senior
positions.
Then, in 1975, a new Air Command gathered all aviation under its wing
and supplied its “customers,” Maritime and Mobile, with aviation as
required. The helicopter sea detachment was the toughest challenge in Cana-
dian forces aviation. Flying off that gyrating Httle deck, skimming the wave-
tops in all kinds of weather, and living a seaman’s life in a stomach-churning
ship were challenge and adventure. But it was less than appealing for those
not bred to salt water. Only a year later there was a shortage of pilots and
maintenance men for the ships and Headquarters broke a pre-unification
pledge, pressing ex-RCAF people to go to sea.
The naval officer aviators and their seaman-trained air and deck crews,
who had played such a strong role in getting the Canadian navy to its prime
place, would be no more.
THE HARD SEA TRADES

When unification got down to detail there was little in common between
most naval seagoing trades and those of land and air. A ship must operate
303
completely on her own and sailors have to maintain unique complex equip-
ment as well as operate it. The “hard sea trades,” as they were called, made up
around 85 per cent of a ship’s company. The rest were the interchangeable
ones - medical, finance and administration, stores, victuaUing and catering
trades. Sea drafts for interchangeable tradesmen from the other commands
were volunteer at first, but with shortages some had to be pressed. All had to
learn about ships, and it was costly in people, effort, and time.
The four new Tribals at sea from 1973 brought in a whole new age. Gas
turbines drove them, soUd-state electronics were in, and pretty well every-
thing was run by state-of-the-art digital computers. All this required a special
service centre ashore with a complete Tribal-class computer system to
develop software, test and repair components from ships, and train the pro-
gramming officers and computer technicians. It was better to take an experi-
enced sea officer and teach him programming than try to teach naval tactics to
a programmer, and the training was first rate. The techs’ intense three-year
course was unmatched anywhere in Canada.
Yet, no new ships were in sight so the old “steamers” would be in service
indefinitely. That meant new men still had to train as well in antiquated but
complex systems built before they were born. Vacuum-tube technology lived
on in Canada’s navy, and the only source of tubes was behind the Iron
Curtain.
WOMEN IN THE NAVY

With unification most Wrens lost their naval connection. Treatment of men
and women certainly hadn’t been equal. Until the late sixties, women had to
leave the service on marriage, and not until the seventies could they stay if
they got pregnant. A lot of marriages were in-service. “Career managers”
who dealt with people’s destinies from Ottawa did their best to keep couples
at least in the same geographical area. In 1980 women at last got into the
military colleges.
Going to sea appealed to the adventurous and women began training with
the Naval Reserves in coastal craft in the seventies. Combat duty for regular-
force women was hotly debated, and from 1980 the diving support ship
Cormorant included a dozen females for trial. Most enjoyed it as a one-time
adventure. Not one volunteered for a second draft.
In 1987 operational support ships and non-combatant vessels were opened
to women. Privacy in crowded ships and strength and endurance for heavy
duties and emergencies were studied. Should women, for example, be trained
in the hard sea trades? Certainly they could acquire the skills, but it was more
expensive because far fewer women than men re-engaged and a very small
number went the full career. Female hull technicians - the modern equivalent
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of the ancient trade of shipwright - were in training in 1988. Should they

share the sea/shore ratio? In 1989, ready or not, all ships but submarines were
opened up to women under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“CIVILIANIZING” THE FORCES

In 1972 National Defence Headquarters was “civihanized.” In the demo-
cratic tradition, of course, elected politicians control the miHtary. That could
be nerve-wracking, as it was during the Cuban missile crisis; it could be
baffling, enraging, and destructive, as it was during unification. Political
control was routinely frustrating for senior officers, reared in a precise profes-
sion, who had to deal with a succession of partially informed masters as the
political winds shifted through the ten years it took to bring a new ship-
building program to fruition. But it was democracy and it was right.
Politicians and the miHtary are uneasy bedfellows at best. The sixties bred
deep suspicion and Prime Minister Trudeau’s anti-miHtary attitude didn’t
help. Delays and cost overruns in major projects were easy to blame on senior
officers’ mismanagement. The navy wasn’t alone, but Bonaventure's refit stood
out. So did the money spent (it was too easy to say “wasted”) on the hydrofoil
project. Then there were cost overruns on the four new Tribals.
Bras d’Or and the Tribals were the most advanced surface vessel design and
engineering projects in the Western world. But in Canada, rather than praise
for remarkable achievement, they drew unfocused criticism for high cost. The
political reaction was to increase civiHan control. In 1972 a huge reorganiza-
tion melded the Canadian Forces Headquarters with the civilian Department
of National Defence. The deputy minister was put on the same level as the
Chief of Defence Staff. Large sections, even the strictly military ones, came
under assistant deputy ministers, either serving officers or civil servants. This
was not the traditional overall civiHan control but actual direction by civil
servants of many aspects of naval and miHtary affairs.
Admiral Landymore’s basic point that decisions about sailors and the sea must
be made by sea-experienced officers was buried even deeper. In addition, the civil
service had changed. A professional bureaucrat no longer spent a productive,
continuous career in one department cHmbing increasingly famiHar ropes. The
smart ones hopped from one department to another, bent on fast promotion.
Expertise was dissipated. All departments cost more and produced less.
Servicemen of skill, dedication, and experience were leaving disenchanted.
Pay, it was thought, might do the trick. In 1972, the Forces went on par with
the pubHc service and got an immediate 12 per cent boost. But here were the
seeds of silliness. Big public service pay hikes through the seventies sucked at
the federal budget; that meant less for defence. But Forces pay, now out of the
Forces’ control, kept pace. That meant even less for equipment.
305
As well, in the civilianizing, Forces ranks were equated with civil servants;
for bureaucratic balance, shoals of service people were promoted quite
unneeded. By the mid-1970s there were 106 admirals and generals, and,
overall, one officer for every 4.5 in the ranks - the most by far in any
developed country in the world.
Civilians blossomed at the working level, too. By 1978, with uniformed
personnel down to 78,000, the civiHan employees of DND had chmbed to
37,000. Immovable civil servants proHferated. Sailors perforce spent even
more time at sea.
BILINGUALISM
The Official Languages Act of 1969 meant historic change in Canada that had
to be reflected in the Forces. It was an obvious place to start: units were spread
across the land; a highly developed training and education system was in
place; people in the forces did what they were told and there were no unions to
argue the toss.
A country’s armed forces should be a unifier, but in Canada the historic
reluctance of most Quebecois to rally to what they generally viewed as
foreign wars was stuck in the country’s psyche. The beginnings of a navy had
been bitterly fought by Henri Bourassa in 1911 and Laurier lost power. The
conscription issue of two wars had been wrenchingly divisive. A number of
French-Canadian army units had outstanding battle records, and the only
permanent French regiment, the Royal 22nd, the famous Van Doos, had as
gallant a history as any unit anywhere. But the language of the army majority
was Enghsh, and in the navy and air force, one worked in EngHsh across the
board. Enghsh was also the communications language of NATO.
French Canadians who had joined the navy - a few in peace, many in war -
toughed out the language barrier on their own. From the fifties, the French
new entry got systematic help with Enghsh. So did the cadet at Venture and
College Militaire St. Jean. After that, though, it was sink or swim in the
English sea. When they formed famihes they had to hve in an Enghsh miheu,
so the young French Canadian needed more than the average flexibihty and
determination to stick with it and succeed.
The aim, for a national institution, was fundamental and right. Working
toward it brought all the stress of any kind of affirmative action. In the sixties
27 per cent of new recruits were French but the dropout rate was very high.
The first move was for more French-language units hke the Van Doos. The
destroyer escort Ottawa, based in Hahfax, became the first navy FLU in 1969.
The cherished criterion of merit for promotion was bent to fih some bihets
according to mother tongue. In 1970, 28 per cent of ah ranks was earmarked
Francophone. Some Anglophones were certainly hurt in the process, and
some Francophones found their well-merited promotion treated with scorn.
306
CHANGE ON CHANGE
And for every genuine case of unmerited promotion, imagined grievances

were legion. Then came objectives for bilingualism. All Francophones in the
navy were biHngual but few Anglophones spoke French. In six years, came
the edict, 40 per cent of commanders and above and 35 per cent below were to
reach “biHngual level four.” By 1980 it was to be 60 per cent and 55 per cent.
Tremors ran through the Anglo ranks and they queued up for language
courses.
To the open-minded this was an opportunity their schooling hadn’t given
them. As well as being vital to a top-level career in a two-language country, it
offered a valuable new cultural dimension. To others it was an imposition to
be endured. For those who just couldn’t grasp a second language, career
prospects narrowed.
The goal was right but the taste was sour. The expense was legitimate
because of the nature of the country, yet it was hard to swallow when there
was no money for fighting equipment. The government, which had made
such drastic cuts, gave no manpower margin to fulfil the language guideHnes.
Hence, there was less time for the technical training that people needed to get
ahead and to cope with the spiralling maintenance problems of an aging fleet.
It all hit the Maritime Commander and Canada’s defence where it hurt - in
readiness at sea.
Eventually, language training got built into the system and two workable
languages became part of a vigorous officer’s or senior sailor’s kit. Certainly
the navy was a long step ahead of L.R Brodeur’s frustrated attempt of 1910 to
allow French applicants to write their cadetship exams in their mother
tongue. And a Canadian navy could not help being the better for that.
TRAINING OFFICERS
In the early sixties all junior officers went to sea after service college, univer-
sity, or Venture to qualify both on the bridge and in the engine room. Their
obligation after full free university education was only five years’ service. The
shrinking navy was hardly an enticing place for an ambitious young man, and
far too few stayed on. Naval officers spHt again into two career streams, the
upper deck, called Maritime Surface and Subsurface or MARS, and the Mari-
time Engineer or MARE. There was no bar to engineering officers command-
ing ships if they qualified and reaching top operational command.
Back in 1968, while Training Command was all-powerful, HMCS Venture
was closed and all Canadian Forces officers entered together. Their initial
training was a good filter and a start on leadership, but the unified training
after that was inadequate for junior naval officers and Venture reopened in
1976. It was named the Naval Officer Training Centre and belonged to
Maritime Command. All junior naval officers from colleges and universities
went through it. There weren’t enough from these sources, so Venture ran
307
one-year courses for high school graduates with plenty of hands-on sea
training. Over half the naval officers of the early eighties came from this
program. If they didn’t have degrees - and many picked them up later - they
could still run with the very best at sea.
In the dirt-poor times of the seventies and eighties the Maritime Com-
mander invested all he could in officer training. He put four part-manned
Mackenzie class, six of the old Bay-class minesweepers, and a flotilla of yard
craft into the West Coast Training Squadron. The Squadron Commander ran
the whole Naval Officer Training Centre, Venture, ships and aU. Out came a
stream of first-class junior sea officers with skill in practical seamanship and
navigation, a grasp of practical engineering, and good aU-round naval knowl-
edge. About half had degrees, and close to a third of the university graduates
went on to higher degrees. The staff colleges linked the services at the higher
level. Headquarters staffs were better armed for the bureaucratic battle, and
when the dust had settled great steps had been made in professional develop-
ment. The system that evolved worked for the country and produced a well-
educated and thoroughly trained officer corps.
And nothing disturbed or changed the irreplaceable part of the naval
officer’s endless training that is passed from senior to junior, from old hand to
seasick neophyte, from Captain to his watchkeeping officers and down the
hne. Year after year, generation upon generation, by example, by coaching, by
being given the job to do, by quiet conversations in the long watches of the
night, the most essential training of aU continued as it always had. Change
there might be, but through long frustrating times the heart of the basic navy
stayed the same.
BACK TO NAVY BLUE

Joe Clark’s Progressive Conservative government, which won the election of
1979, set up a task force on un-unifying unification. Its chairman was George
Fyfe, who had survived sinking as a DEMS gunner in merchant ships, retired
from the navy as an Ordnance Commander, and became a senior civil servant.
People in the service were cautious with their evidence. With all the traumas
over the previous fifteen years they had worked things out reasonably well.
The three services weren’t really unified, just Headquarters was. They didn’t
want to open wounds. What they needed was money to rebuild. When
Trudeau’s Liberals came back in February, 1980, Fyfe’s unfinished work went
into the wastebasket.
Then, in the campaign of 1984, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conserva-
tives promised a few thousand more people and restoration of separate service
uniforms and traditions. Once in power the Tories boosted manpower mod-
estly and the Defence Minister, Nova Scotian Robert Coates, announced new
uniforms for 1985, the navy’s seventy-fifth anniversary.
308
CHANGE ON CHANGE
Canadian navy blue, when it came to it, was actually black. The old eight-
button jackets for officers, six-button for chiefs and petty officers, and square
rig for junior ranks were no more. All hands from admiral to ordinary seaman
got the same six-button fore-and-aft jacket made of the same issue cloth. The
distinctions were in rank stripes and the gold leaf and badges on the caps. The
air force had theif light blue, the army kept the green, and the interchangeable
administrative trades could choose the uniform they preferred. Penny-
pinchers and curmudgeons be damned, for the navy it was a breath of fresh
sea air. The fact is that, except for uniforms, unification according to Paul
Hellyer never came about. Sea, land, and air remained distinct, as they always
would.
Out of all these years of wracking change came a well-integrated Head-
quarters. It was heavily bureaucratic, huge for the size of the fighting end, and
it moved with glacial caution. But logical planning and procurement meant
each service’s priorities got a fair share of the meagre pot. Shared services and
facilities were working economically and well. What were badly needed,
however, were new ships, aircraft, and equipment to fill the ever-widening
gap - and many more people to man them. The part of the Tory promise about
restoring traditions wasn’t required. Navy traditions, the ones that counted,
never died.
309
CHAPTER TWENTY
TROUBLED
TIMES
DEFENCE IN THE SEVENTIES

IN THE LATE SIXTIES BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND THE US. SEETHED WITH INTER-
nal strife. In Canada there were mailbox bombings, riots and looting in
Montreal during a police strike of 1969. In 1970 came the FLQ “state of
apprehended insurrection” in Quebec and Prime Minister Trudeau invoked
the War Measures Act and called in the troops. Internal security became, in his
view, a serious concern.
Defence Minister Donald Macdonald’s 1971 White Paper Defence in the
70^s, spelled out the course the Prime Minister had set when he halved the
NATO forces in Europe. Top priority now was protection of sovereignty.
Defence of North America came next, then NATO, with peacekeeping at the
bottom. The White Paper assumed continued mutual deterrence between the
superpowers, growing detente, arms control, and negotiated reduction in
nuclear and conventional forces. It noted the growing global range of Soviet
naval power and the great increase in missile-firing submarines. The only
direct threat to Canada was seen as a nuclear attack on North America.
Astonishingly, though, there would be less emphasis on anti-submarine,
which meant the U.S. must carry an even bigger share of North American
defence.
This inward-turning view came right in the face of a strong NATO appeal
for more and better anti-submarine forces and replacement of over-age ships.
Failure to cover Canadian ocean areas on both coasts was a tacit invitation to
the U.S. Navy to take over - a fundamental aspect of sovereignty that the
White Paper had not chosen to address. On the other hand. Maritime Com-
mand’s coastal surveillance task grew as inexorably as its resources shrank.
In 1970 the traditional three-mile territorial Hmit was extended to twelve
and the Arctic Waters Pollution Act set a hundred-mile control zone around
310
TROUBLED TIMES
the Arctic islands. In 1974 Canada joined the International Commission for
Control of the Northwest Atlantic Fishery to combat flagrant overfishing. By
then the Maritime Commander, Rear Admiral Robert Timbrell, had twenty-
four ships on paper, but with their advancing age and too few people he could
only sail twelve. Then, in 1977, Canada pushed her offshore fishing and
economic zone to 200 miles, thus charging Marcom with active surveillance
of 5.8 miUion square miles. Far from more ships, planes, and people for a
vastly bigger job. Vice Admiral Douglas Boyle, the Maritime Commander
who reheved TimbreU, had a fraction of the forces his predecessors had ten
and twenty years before.
Since the fifties every Flag Officer had worried about the huge East bloc
fishing fleets. Among them were snoopers - electronic and oceanographic
inteUigence gatherers. They could cover and even supply Soviet submarines at
sea. Rear Admiral Fiugh Pullen sent single destroyers and aircraft on random
patrols starting in the late fifties, when submarines were spotted alongside
factory ships on the Grand Banks. Fishing vessels masked submarine move-
ments, visually, electronically, acoustically. They hauled enormous catches,
too, and fished where they chose.
Soviet vessels visited Halifax and St. John’s freely for suppHes and repairs.
Some were well kitted out with monitoring gear. Navy techs couldn’t tune
their radar or sonar sets with them about. As computers and radio data Hnks
multiphed, so did the dangers of electronic inteUigence gathering. Commer-
cial telephone microwave services Unked the logistics computers in Halifax,
Ottawa, and Borden. Information plucked from the air could draw a tidy
picture of operational readiness.
There was no curb on the Soviet movements and the problem grew and
grew. In 1977, Admiral Boyle noted there were 300 to 400 vessels in his east
coast area of surveiUance on any day - 20 to 50 per cent were Soviet. Policing by
unarmed government vessels has Hmited effect without naval muscle on caU to
back it up, but it was ridiculously expensive for a frigate to carry a couple of
fishery inspectors around the Banks; or, as happened in 1976, for the 4,200-ton
Iroquois to chase three Cuban vessels spotted fishing iUegaUy from the air.
Fisheries did pay for the fuel, which helped keep the parched fleet going.
Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, the builder of the modern Soviet Navy, said in
1976 that “maritime transportation, fishing, and scientific research on the sea
are part of the Soviet Union’s naval might.” Gorshkov understood history
well and was forging a massively potent total maritime weapon. Vastly
beyond the needs of defending the homeland, it aimed plainly at projecting
Soviet power worldwide. East bloc merchant services, at highly subsidized
rates, were carrying more and more of the world’s cargoes while free world
shipping rusted. Gorshkov’s fighting fleet grew steadily in size and effective-
ness. It challenged U.S. and allied strength in the Mediterranean first, then
311
reached progressively around the world. The Soviets were getting into air-
craft carriers when smaller NATO navies were dropping theirs. They were
steadily adding more strategic missile submarines and more nuclear-
propelled boats to their largely conventional attack fleet.
Their nuclear attack submarines were now slipping through the Canadian
Arctic islands into Baffin Bay and straight down to the hinge of the North
Atlantic trade route off Newfoundland. Thus they sidestepped the surveil-
lance in depth strung across the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gaps. Against Arctic
intrusions Boyle could deploy two Argus patrols per month. He had no way
of knowing what passed beneath the ice.
Boyle had inherited the Maritime Command from a disillusioned Tim-
brell. Ferret-like, he pursued economy in every conceivable cranny. He can-
celled gunnery practices, opted out of NATO exercises and fleet training,
restricted use of staff cars and trucks, reduced speed of ships and aircraft. He
even descended to the minutiae of ordering all letters typed on both sides of
the paper and half the light bulbs removed from shore-side offices - his own
included. A smile rarely softened his tight-pressed hps or eased the intensity
in his eyes. He drove himself even harder than his people, with nothing to
offer but more of the same.
A HANDFUL OF SHIPS
Here and there a light did shine. Canadian sailors could be as proud of their
four new Tribals as the previous generation had been of their Cadillacs. These
were fine ships, the centre of attraction and open admiration wherever NATO
(and Soviet snoopers) gathered. It was a real boost to be running state-of-the-
art equipment. By 1977 they and their hehcopters were proven in all sea
conditions. They were “first among the finest ships in NATO” and remarkably
trouble-free. The best equipment is only as good as those who run it and their
crews led the pack with their helicopter/frigate combination. They ran with
real flair, innovation, and operational savvy.
The new support ships Preserver and Protecteur were also top of their class.
Replenishment at sea or RAS had been a spirited game at the receiving end
since those record-shattering runs in Korea. Provider, though, was the first
Canadian entry in the supplying field. She went to sea in 1963 with that fine
experienced seaman. Captain Tom PuUen, in command. Home-grown inno-
vations led the way to Preserver and Protecteur being the best naval supermar-
kets afloat.
The “O” boats ran their quiet operations smoothly and efficiently, but the
underwater business in the real world was leaving them way behind. The old
steamers, with their single helicopter and a core of long-term navy hands,
were good, too, at the anti-submarine game. But they lagged progressively in
communications and data links and suffered chronically from age.
312
TROUBLED TIMES
Boyle had no option but to continue squeezing. Training for fighting gave
way. He cut operations by a third in 1974. The annual spring exercise off
Puerto Rico was cancelled for the first time in most sailors’ memories to save
fuel - for sovereignty patrols. Northern surveillance flights were cut out for
three months until outcries in the House forced their resumption in January,
1975 - at one per month. MPs were easily satisfied.
That same month Defence Minister James Richardson announced more
cuts with the statement that they would “not impair to a significant degree
our ability to continue to ensure the maintenance of our sovereignty in the
North or any region in Canada.”
THREE SERVICES AGAIN

To meet Richardson’s cuts Boyle was told to lop off 590 positions. New
aircraft had top priority over ship replacements. That had been the recom-
mendation of Boyle’s predecessor, Rear Admiral Robert Timbrell. The Argus
was very long in the tooth and running out of spares and several of the
original thirty-six had been stripped to support the rest. So Boyle shut down
one Argus squadron, cut the 590 positions out of administrative overhead,
and kept all twenty-six aircraft flying.
That stirred a hornet’s nest. It crystalhzed the old air force resistance to the
navy having Maritime Air. Pressure came on Richardson from the retired
network and as a result Air Command was formed. The navy lost direct
control of all its aviation but thus came the tacit return to three services. A nice
paradox. Maritime Command also had to shut down the forward facilities at
St.John’s and Frobisher Bay, a blow to operational flexibility in peace or war.
To meet the payroll Boyle drained his fuel account, and ships got ninety days
rather than 120 days at sea each year.
BOILING OVER
In the spring of 1975 Admiral Boyle briefed a caucus meeting of Tory MPs in
Halifax and his frustrations overtook him. His resources, he said, were inade-
quate and “if we can’t put up then we should shut up and surrender our
sovereignty to the Americans.” Soviet activities in Canadian waters were
increasing at an alarming rate, while he had to keep ships alongside for lack of
fuel. The government, he said, was “falHng down on defence commitments to
allies.”
Reporters, as well as opposition MPs, were at the question/answer session,
and Boyle’s words were widely reported. He was quickly on the mat in front
of the CDS, but MPs praised his briefing in the House. Defence Minister
Richardson actually commended the Admiral’s “excellent statement . . . the
kind of factual information that should be more widely known by the Cana-
dian public.” Boyle was, after all, the senior adviser to government on naval
313
operations, charged with the responsibility of meeting its commitments at

sea. Public criticism of major government pohcy, on the other hand, is unac-
ceptable in a serving officer. But Richardson certainly didn’t want another
Landymore or Brock. As he shrewdly guessed, the public took httle more
than passing note. No one ralhed. There was no outcry, no action. Canadians
*
didn’t want to know about their navy.

By 1977 Boyle had stretched the time between refits from twenty to forty-
eight months to save money. For aging ships this was pushing the Hmits of
safety. Helicopter crews were so short that flying operations were curtailed
again. For Springex ’77 the professional ranks were fleshed out with 250
Reservists and Sea Cadets - teen-aged, one-night-a-week cadets - so that one
more ship could get away from the wall.
Even in this wretched state Maritime was the biggest Command in the
Forces. Marcom’s responsibihty was awesome: he had direct responsibihty for
maritime sovereignty on three coasts; he co-operated, with what Httle he had,
with U.S. forces in defence of North America; he was NATO Commander of
the Canadian Atlantic sub-area; he was Canada’s Eastern Regional Com-
mander responsible for aid to civil power, pollution control, and support of
other government departments; he was head of the Naval Reserve in nineteen
divisions across the land. Topping it off, he was responsible for the Canadian
Rangers, a scattering of native people in the Far North who provided recon-
naissance as they got about their travels on the tundra and the icepack. In fact,
the Rangers were the only “system” in Maritime Command that by some
bizarre chance - perhaps while seal hunting through the ice - might actually
detect a submarine passing through Canadian Arctic seas.
Boyle spoke again and again at pubHc meetings and service club luncheons.
His message was the growing Soviet threat and the shrinking Canadian
capabihty. He told everyone who would Hsten that the St. Laurents would be
thirty years old in the eighties. Without immediate replacement, Canada
would fall ever further from its dishonoured NATO commitment. When he
said bluntly and publicly that the Soviet build-up was leading to open confhct
in the eighties, he overstepped the bounds - and the incoming and first naval
CDS, Admiral Robert Falls, had to muzzle him. Boyle dechned to take a desk in
Ottawa to do an economic impact study and resigned eighteen months before
retirement.
A few months later, retired Admiral Timbrell went on the record with an
assessment close to Boyle’s. Meeting commitments, he said, called for thirty-
six destroyers, a dozen minesweepers, ten submarines capable of under-ice
operation, four supply ships, and thirty-six LRPAs. That meant 22,000 sailors
and 6,000 airmen all told. But Admiral Falls said six patrol frigates were being
considered - that was the government fine, and that was that.
314
TROUBLED TIMES
Vice Admiral Andrew Collier, who won his DSC navigating Jeffry Brock’s
squadron up to Chinnampo in the Korean War, was Boyle’s successor as
Maritime Commander. This first Royal Roads graduate to reach Flag rank took
over a starved, storm-savaged navy. There was little but the spirit of the few to
keep it afloat, Httle an Admiral or anyone could do - other than resign - but
lash himself to the wheel and ride it out.
BAND OF BROTHERS
There was one strong leading-Hght in this gloomy passage. In 1968 NATO’s
Supreme Commander Atlantic had pulled a half-dozen destroyer-sized ships
of the different nations into a combined squadron called the Standing Naval
Force Atlantic (Stanavforlant). The Commodore came from each country in
rotation for a year.
The squadron worked on operational efficiency and tactics, especially in
ASW. It showed NATO soHdarity to the world and gave Saclant a force of his
own for surveillance and for monitoring Soviet exercises. It was a ready
squadron for emergency; it could go straight to the vital northern flank off
Norway in time of tension, for example. Finally, it was a worked-up nucleus.
Around it a bigger NATO force could quickly form.
The Canadians’ helicopter operations quickly became a centrepiece and an
example. So, in spite of the limits of the old Cadillacs, did their capable round-
the-clock, ever-ready shiphandHng and seamanship. Canadian operational
support ships often were along, and they were the best in the game.
Canadian Commodores Douglas Boyle, Dan Mainguy, and Gordon
Edwards had notable stints in command of the Standing Naval Force. For
example, Edwards had twenty-seven NATO ships in rotation in 1978-79,
averaging seven at a time. Iroquois, Huron, and Algonquin took turns as flagship
as the Tribals were by far the best fitted for thejob. U-W and U-14 - fine small
submarines of the reborn Federal German Navy - joined for exercises, and a
new generation matched wits with U-boats. This time it was the Canadians
on the North Atlantic who had the best ships and equipment and the best-
trained crews, but there were far too few of them to have much impact on the
alhes’ cause.
Come wind or weather and around the clock, there was one heUcopter out
on task from a single spray-lashed Tribal’s deck; and the second was most
hkely at short notice, set to go. Ship for ship, man for man, they held the lead.
Stanavforlant, for twenty years, had a great deal to do with keeping the tiny
navy tails-up in troubled times.
315
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE EIGHTIES
AND ONWARD
MAKE DO AND MEND

THERE WAS A CHANGE IN THE WIND IN THE EIGHTIES AS A DISILLUSIONED
Europe turned from detente. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In
the Canadian election campaign that year both Liberals and PCs promised
4,700 more people for the Forces and 20 per cent of the defence budget for
capital spending. In Europe a huge modern Soviet tank army towered over
NATO’s run-down forces. Western Europeans were deeply worried. They
badly wanted help.
NATO’s top Defence Planning Committee needed a maritime strategic
framework on which to judge proposals for major new naval systems and
equipment. They looked to Saclant, Admiral Harry Train, USN, who turned
to his Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, Rear Admiral Dan Mainguy. Thus it
was a second-generation senior Canadian naval officer who wrote NATO’s
definitive “Concept of Maritime Operations.” From 1980 it guided major
NATO decisions and was largely adopted by the U.S. Navy. That same year a
truculent Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. President and directed a massive
build-up in American arms.
Changes in the world at large seemed to be registering on Canadians and
their leaders. In 1983, even with galloping inflation and a huge deficit, the
Liberal government moved. The new Aurora LRPAs were aloft and Air Com-
mand had its F-18 fighters and the army its Leopard tanks. It was high time for
some ships. The Minister of Defence had said in 1977 that the first of six new
patrol frigates would go to sea in 1985. But no funds were provided. Now,
after years of delay and climbing cost, six were approved, with the possibility
of a dozen to follow. This was scaled down sharply from the twenty-four
urgently proposed for the navy in 1974. They would cost $3.9 billion and the
first would go to sea in 1992.
316
THE EIGHTIES AND ONWARD
In the 1984 election campaign, even the New Democratic Party’s leader, Ed
Broadbent, deplored the navy’s near-demise. This was the first new construc-
tion approved in nineteen years, and the superlative navy ship design and
system engineering expertise was long gone. Now Defence Headquarters had
to put itself in the hands of industry, as the air force always had for planes. But
along with navy expertise the Canadian industrial base had eroded. Various
consortia set up their shops in Ottawa and competed for the frigate contract.
They were fronted by Canadian companies but masterminded elsewhere. A
surprising number of old navy hands were working for them in civilian
clothes, but top management and policy were American.
It would be nearly ten years before new ships were at sea, and that forced a
“Destroyer Life Extension Program” to keep sixteen old steamers going into
the nineties at a cost of some $24 milHon each. Even that would take four
years and it was little more than a charade. The ancient vessels got a lick and a
promise, and updated detection, communications, and electronic warfare
equipment. “Delex,” as it was called, gave them a semblance of performance.
They could fill surveillance slots and do fishery patrols, deploying one heli-
copter each. But with the weapons of the fifties they were incapable of
defending themselves against air attack and were noisy sitting ducks for
submarines. Even with their Delex they wouldn’t have a prayer in a war like
the one the Royal Navy fought over the Falkland Islands in 1982. Five ships
were hit then, and three of them sunk, by French-made Exocet missiles.
Guided missiles had been around a long time. The first Athabaskan was hit
by a guided bomb in 1943. Athabaskan the second went to the boneyard in
1966 with armament that could have done no better against Soviet missiles.
One fired from an Egyptian gunboat had sunk an Israeli destroyer the year
before. The third Athabaskan had Sea Sparrow missiles intended in the early
sixties for the general purpose frigates. They could hit attacking aircraft but
couldn’t touch the wave-skimming Exocets that any Third World country in
the eighties could buy straight off the shelf.
A “Tribal Update and Modernization Program” was also announced in
1983. The Tribals would become anti-air warfare ships, keeping a good ASW
capability. The new Canadian patrol frigate would be the other way around -
ASW primarily with one helicopter, and self-defence weapons against aircraft
and missiles. As well, they would all have American Harpoons, proven
guided missiles that could hit a surface target over the horizon. The “O”
boats, the quiet, slow-paced hunter-killers from the early sixties, began
cycling through an update, too.
In the early eighties the Arguses were replaced by eighteen new Auroras; at
$1.03 bilhon it was the biggest peacetime defence contract in Canada’s history.
They were much better equipped than the Argus and easier to maintain and
keep in the air, but for actual flying performance they were no giant leap ahead.
317
And there were fewer of them. Resources still had to be rationed among
territorial surveillance (Arctic included once in three weeks), covering subma-
rine activities in the Canadian ocean areas, training with Canadian ships and
submarines, and periodic NATO exercises. None of these got enough.
The remaining Trackers clattered faithfully into the air carrying the bare
equipment for inshore surveillance but they had no place in modern ASW. Sea
King detachments rotated to the ships from two Air Command squadrons at
Canadian Forces Base, Dartmouth. By the mid-eighties, after twenty years of
extraordinary service at sea in wind and foul weather, the Sea Kings were in the
same geriatric state as most of the ships from which they flew. In 1989 they
were still flying off those Httle decks and had not had a single fatal accident in
twenty-five years - remarkable airmanship and seamanship combined.
PACIFIC RIM
Vladivostok was the historic Russian naval base in the Pacific. Now the
Soviets had a huge new base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Their Pacific fleet
by the mid-1980s had two ASW carriers, eighty-five major and 354 smaller
warships, 134 submarines, and 500 naval aircraft. This vast fleet straddled the
key routes of Pacific trade.
Vancouver was now the largest exporting port on the continent, handHng
more tonnage than Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, and Toronto combined. Arc-
tic slope oil - one-fifth of the U.S. supply - moved in a vulnerable parade of
supertankers from Valdez in Alaska to Puget Sound through the Maritime
Commander Pacific’s ocean area. He had no submarines and Httle more than
half a basic training squadron to do his job.
THE NORTH
Huge mineral, gas, and oil deposits had been found in the Canadian Arctic in
the sixties and Manhattan's voyage proved they could be transported by sea.
Lead/zinc mines at Nanisivik, north Baffin Island, started producing in 1977,
then the Polaris mine at Little CornwaUis Island in 1982. In 1985 the first
cargo of crude oil was tankered from Cameron Island. Economics would
dictate when shipping would begin in a major way.
After 1960 American and then Soviet nuclear-powered submarines moved
between the deep Arctic Basin and the Atlantic using the Parry Channel and
the Ellesmere Island/Greenland route. They found their way, too, through the
Canadian islands by way of Hell’s Gate andjones Sound. In September, 1985,
the press reported that Canada was experimenting with a submarine listening
system in Lancaster Sound. If not, it was long overdue. However, it wasn’t the
Soviet threat that tweaked the public’s interest that year but a run through the
Northwest Passage by the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea without
Canada’s permission. UnHke submarines, which only another submarine
318
could detect up there, Polar Sea was large as life. Citizens’ groups and environ-
mentahsts flew north, dropped flags, and shook their fists. Arctic sovereignty
was an issue. The Americans held this was an international waterway and
Canada had no jurisdiction. By September, though, Canada had drawn
straight basehnes around the whole archipelago and extended Canadian law
to the Arctic offshore.
The Polar 8 icebreaker the Liberals had talked about and shelved was
dusted off and ordered for the Coast Guard. She was to be a huge vessel
capable of year-round Arctic operation. She’d provide presence. She’d be
invaluable when oil and mineral activity stirred. But real clout was up to the
navy, and in the Arctic it had none.
Canada’s claim to her Arctic waters is shaky on historic grounds. But, says
Donat Pharand, leading Canadian expert in the law of the sea, “The North-
west Passage is a Canadian national waterway since its enclosure by straight
basehnes, without any right of innocent passage; however, if adequate control
measures are not taken, it could become an international strait and the new
right of transit passage would eventually apply in favour of all ships, including
submarines.” Adequate control measures? Submarines? Only a needhng from
south of the border ever turned Canada’s attention seriously to her own
North - at the turn of the century it was the whalers; in the fifties the potential
for nuclear exchange; in 1969 it was Manhattan; in 1985, Polar Sea.
Yet at the northern gate lay a frozen arena roved by the submarines of the
superpowers, where the fate of the world could be played out. To know what
went on underneath the ice was the first step toward controlled reduction of
forces in polar waters. If self-preservation, national sovereignty, and the
lessons of history were heard, Canada must do something serious about
Arctic naval defences or someone else most surely would. Historically,
though, Canada has never been the keeper of her northern gate. Today she
does not even have a turnstile to count the deadly players passing through.
SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS A NAVY

When the navy, past and present, gathered to celebrate its seventy-fifth anni-
versary in the summer of 1985, there was a Review of the Fleet in historic
Bedford Basin. NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic was there in interna-
tional strength, eight fine modern frigates. More came from France, Britain,
Italy, Brazil, Sweden, and Finland. Thirty-four warships anchored in precise
ranks in the Basin.
Added to this modern fleet was HMCS Sackville, the last of the brave little
corvettes that had fought the great Battle of the Atlantic. She had been
lovingly restored to 1944 fighting trim by old navy hands. There she swung
at anchor in pale North Atlantic camouflage with the old green maple leaf and
the Barber Pole stripes on her funnel and the White Ensign proudly flying aft.
319
As well as the most up-to-date ASW vessels, the visitors showed the latest in
mine-hunting and anti-missile defences - two items of which Canada’s navy
had precisely none. Other than Sackville, in fact, only thirteen of those ships
were Canadian. Two of the home team were support ships, three were Tribals.
The rest were the ancients that made up most of Vice Admiral James Wood’s
Maritime Command. All told, on the east coast, he had twelve fighting ships,
three submarines, and two operational support ships; out west were four
destroyers and one support ship. Since 1963 his forces earmarked for Saclant
had dropped from thirty ships and forty aircraft to fifteen and fourteen,
respectively. As Admiral Wood said, four-fifths of the ships in his tiny navy
would need protection from other navies to survive.
THE NEW SEA POWER

The awesome growth of the Soviet navy into the eighties wrought, next to
the nuclear bomb, the biggest shift in world power aHgnment since World
War Two. On the strategic side they added the mammoth Typhoon subma-
rines, half again as big as Bonaventure and twice her speed, carrying twenty
missiles with multiple nuclear warheads that would reach 4,500 miles. By
1985 close to 100 Soviet “boomers” prowled the depths of the polar sea,
protected by geography, ice cover, and their massive fleet. The counterpoise
lay in the American and British strategic submarines that roved the open sea.
There were 300 Soviet attack submarines, 100 of which were nuclear-
powered. They included the huge Oscars, 15,000-ton deep diving battleships
with submerged-launch missiles to strike at the American carrier battle
groups. With 1,700 fighting ships the Soviet navy was the biggest in the
world, just outbalanced by all the NATO navies put together.
While they had been so expanding there had been a tremendous increase in
the Western world’s dependence on seaborne trade, Canada’s included. On
any day over 3,600 ships plied the North Atlantic lanes alone - more than the
U-boats sank in all of World War Two - and they were monsters compared to
the ships of the 1940s. They carried the Hfeblood, the economy, the standard
of life, not just of Europe but of the Western world. Thus the Soviets, who did
not have that dependence, had a great new strategic power. They could bring
shipping, almost anywhere in the world, under siege. And if they won on the
trade routes, not only Western Europe would be strangled. A noose would be
drawn around North America’s neck. If it should ever come, the West’s war -
on a worldwide scale now - could be lost at sea; the land-bound Warsaw
Pact’s could not. Admiral Gorshkov had called it right.
THE MERCHANTMEN
In 1987 the army, exercising for a time of rising tension, moved its Canadian
Air-Sea Transportable (CAST) Brigade across to Norway in an exercise called
320
Brave Lion. Four thousand troops flew over, and their equipment, including
2,000 vehicles and heavy guns, ammunition, and combat stores for thirty
days, got there in four chartered foreign-flag merchant ships.
The Norwegians had always agreed to provide the ships for this operation,
but soon after Brave Lion Canada switched the CAST Brigade’s destination to
the Central European front. For sealift now Canada was on its own. No other
nation would commit precious merchant ships for another’s use in emer-
gency, and there were simply no Canadian flag ships to do the job. In fact,
there was virtually no ocean-going Canadian merchant marine.
The merchant fleet begun in the Great War almost disappeared in the
twenties through lack of government policy. For the same reason the substan-
tial “Park” fleet of World War Two faded away. While a respectable number of
Canadian-owned ships sailed the oceans, lack of pohcy pushed them to
foreign registry where they couldn’t be controlled (or taxed) by Canadian law.
European nations and the U.S. all subsidized their merchant fleets, preserving
currency and a vital asset for emergency. On a small but embarrassing scale, in
1989 the Canadian government had to ship a cargo of PCBs to Wales for
disposal - abortively, as it turned out - in a Soviet vessel. A country depend-
ing so greatly on the sea for its trade, its prosperity, its way of life, must
depend on other nations for both the means and the security to use it.
CHALLENGE AND COMMITMENT

When the Progressive Conservative government, elected in 1984, announced
the return to distinctive uniforms the navy took it as a symbol of recognition,
a signal of a rebirth. But a main Tory election pledge had been to cut spending.
The huge deficit, interest on debt, and the enormous weight of statutory
payments left little room for fiscal footwork. Still, Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney said firmly Canada would be a good ally to the U.S. and NATO, and
that surely meant more navy.
When Erik Nielsen became Minister of Defence in 1985 and was briefed on
the plans for new conventional submarines, he asked about a nuclear-
powered alternative. Senior officers said they offered great operational advan-
tages but with the high cost in relation to other needs they didn’t believe the
political will was there. To Nielsen, a tough politician and a strong man in
cabinet, the matter of political will was his business and the admirals should
get on with theirs. In fact, their recommendations had been influenced by
American costs. A year of detailed study showed that a fleet of nuclear-
powered, conventionally armed attack submarines of British or French
design would be cost-effective for a three-ocean navy, would fuel major new
industrial benefits, and was the only answer to naval control of the North.
By the time the study was completed Perrin Beatty was the Minister. His
White Paper ofjune, 1987, opened with a statement by Prime Minister Brian
321
Mulroney that “No Government has a more important obHgation than to

protect the life and well-being of its people; to safeguard their values and
interests. In Canada it is time to renew that commitment.” Called Challenge
and Commitment, Beatty’s White Paper was Canada’s first statement of defence
pohcy since 1971 and the first ever to make a major point of how Httle Canada
did about defence.
That was a political cut at the Liberals’ long regime, of course, but the
figures pubHshed every year by NATO, recording each ally’s defence efforts,
had changed very Httle since 1973. Canada stood eleventh in manpower (at
80,000), second last in Reserve strength (at 20,000), and fourteenth in expen-
diture of Gross Domestic Product (at 2.2 per cent). The United States spent
three times that percentage, the U.K. over twice as much, and Netherlands 50
per cent more. Since 1960 Canadian GDP had risen steadily vis-a-vis Britain,
Germany, France, and Italy. NATO still meant an attack on one was an attack
on aU. Canada enjoyed that benefit but, tops in living standard and with a
network of social programs envied round the world, she was getting very
close to a free ride. Other countries’ taxpayers were carrying better-off Cana-
dians on their backs.
The White Paper got to the nub of it with: “Social benefits, however, are the
fruits of a secure and free society. This Government accepts the preservation
of such a society as its fundamental responsibiHty and will, therefore, provide
the resources necessary to make the Canadian Forces operationally effective
and responsive to the challenges of the 1990’s and beyond.”
Defence priorities now were “maintaining strategic deterrence, credible
conventional defence, protection of Canadian sovereignty, peaceful settle-
ment of international disputes, and effective arms control.” Deterrence
included defence of North America and the abiHty to keep the sea lanes to
Europe open. The Pacific had great new strategic significance, too. More
naval forces were needed there, and the long-neglected Arctic must be seri-
ously attended to as weU. For the very first time in such a poHcy statement the
fact came through that Canada, a maritime nation, must look to the sea - on
aU three coasts.
The old steamers would be scrapped as the new frigates commissioned.
Proposed new forces started with a second batch of six patrol frigates. With
the four revamped Tribals that was sixteen frigates in aU. There would be
several minesweepers. The old story was being retold in the Iran-Iraqi war
with cheap, easy-to-sow mines stopping supertankers in the Persian Gulf.
The small ships would be useful, too, for coastal and fisheries patrol, and
would be manned mainly by the Naval Reserves.
To boost area surveillance on east and west coasts there’d be some towing
vessels with underwater acoustic gear that would send the data to other ships
and shore. A fixed sonar system would be deployed in the Arctic. There’d be
322
six new Auroras, replacements for the Sea Kings, and some old Trackers
would be re-engined and kept flying for their coastal role. But the big grabber
in the whole paper was ten to twelve nuclear-powered attack submarines.
They were certainly the most cost-effective anti-submarine units available.
Each was expected to be worth several conventional submarines and a good
deal more than a frigate. In Arctic waters nothing else would do the job, and in
no other way could Canada ever have prime alliance responsibihty for her
own northern ocean area. NATO, the USN included, had 107 nuclear attack
submarines, so twelve new Canadian boats spelled significant naval muscle.
With that came international influence, naval and political, with NATO, the
U.S., and the world. The doors to the key inner councils of NATO opened to
Canada once more.
But “nuclear” is a word that caught in most Canadians’ throats and there
was an erroneous public notion that nuclear weapons were involved. Canada
had had nuclear-fuelled power stations for years and the record of thirty years
of American and British nuclear propulsion at sea was clean. Still, spectres of
runaway reactors Hke Chernobyl in the Soviet Union were readily invoked.
The price tag came a little later at $8 billion for ten to twelve boats. The
choice was between the British Trafalgar (with power plant based on Ameri-
can technology, which needed U.S. permission) and the French Amethyste,
with no strings. The whole naval program was to spin out over twenty years.
It would be paid, Beatty said, out of “an annual real growth in the defence
budget of 2 per cent per year after inflation. ” That was a lot less than the 3 per
cent real growth averaged between 1975 and 1984. And when you got right
down to it, nuclear submarines and all, the whole program was bare bones for
a giant task. And it would be a very long time before the gap between
commitment and capabihty was narrowed.
The nuclear-powered submarine issue drew far more public attention than
the navy had had for many years. The second batch of six frigates was
approved in late 1987 for delivery, perhaps, before the bottoms dropped right
out of the old faithfuls. Again, even the New Democratic Party agreed with
the strengthening of the navy, too small, ill-equipped, and overloaded as it
was - but nothing nuclear, of course.
There was opposition in the States as well from the USN’s powerful nuclear
submarine navy-within-a-navy. They liked the free hand they’d always had in
Canada’s Arctic. They pooh-poohed the notion of Canadians playing with
the big boys and ran a strong campaign in Congress to block British transfer
of Trafalgar nuclear technology.
GUNS OR BUTTER
Beatty pressed for his program. When the first of the fine new frigates, HMCS
Halifax, was christened in May, 1988, the poUs - the overwhelming factor now
323
in government decision-making - said two-thirds of Canadians felt the forces

should have new equipment and 80 per cent said Canada should stay in NATO.
But when it came right down to it, the bill would have to be paid in social
benefits. Mulroney reversed course. He moved Beatty'from Defence to Health
and Welfare. By the November, 1988, election, cabinet had chosen to choose
neither British nor French technology. Instead, just before dissolution, they
proposed universal day care and edged away from the issue of defence.
In the campaign Liberal leader John Turner said he’d spend the submarines’
$8 billion (offering no naval alternative) on day care and other social pro-
grams. Since President Reagan and Soviet Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met
in 1985, the winds had blown fair. Under the new leadership the Soviets had
pulled out of Afghanistan, progressed mutual reductions in nuclear arms, and
cut conventional forces in Europe. Why would Canada run against the tide?
The Tories won the election and their budget of April, 1989, announced
major cuts in government spending to try and control the deficit. Thirty-
eight per cent of those cuts came out of national defence, which accounted for
less than 8 per cent of total government expenditure, and. the next biggest
chunk came from foreign aid. These two were the only areas where surgery
would cause Canadians no social pain. The biggest item, the submarines,
went overboard with no alternative naval program. Defence spending hit a
dead low of 1.7 per cent of GDR The only pubHc outcry arose over closing
some bases, notably Summerside, P.E.I., where the doddering old Trackers
kept the local economy afloat.
It was another chapter in the same long story. Between 1947 and 1984,
spending on the navy, compared with the total government expenditure, had
dropped by 47 per cent; from 1969 to 1984, it had dropped by 63 per cent.
Canada was in a period of remarkable economic growth. As it got richer, the
less it spent on defence. And the navy, with its day-in day-out responsibiHties
at sea, had consistently trailed the army and air force for funds. The navy was,
without a doubt, Canada’s Cinderella service.
Ironically, there was too little actual spending scheduled in the first few
years of the submarine program to make any serious impact on the deficit. In
the two years since the White Paper there had been no fundamental change in
Canada’s economic strength so it was clear how shallow were her commit-
ments, how pinched and self-focused was her vision of the world. The inner
doors of NATO closed again. Prime Minister Mulroney had given up on
defending his “fruits of a secure and free society.” Canada’s navy lolled in the
backwater, becalmed.
THE NEW WINDS

While the superpowers worked cautiously on arms reductions, eastern
Europe was astir. In Poland, a shipyard electrician. Lech Walesa, had been
324
leading an heroic drive to break the economic chains of the Soviet-backed

regime. Mikhail Gorbachev launched the Soviets themselves on a massive
endeavour to restructure their inefficient, near-moribund economy, crushed
for so long by an omniscient state and the burden of arms. He opened the
government apparatus to participation and allowed freedom of action and
expression quite unknown in their society. In 1989 Poland had free elections.
Hungary followed. Huge popular demonstrations in East Germany forced
the borders open and ejected the East German Politburo. Czechoslovakians
ousted the Communist ruling party and scheduled free elections. The winds
of freedom were blowing hard and the Soviet tanks stayed home. In Novem-
ber, in a height of euphoria, the Berlin wall was breached. Across Germany,
famihes and friends who had not seen each other since 1961 were reunited. By
year’s end the iron-handed regime in Romania was overthrown.
In a few short incredible weeks the Iron Curtain had been drawn aside the
only way it ever could - from the East. Since the end of World War Two the
only possible endings to eternal East-West confrontation were mutual annihi-
lation or the reassertion of basic human freedom inside the Soviet bloc. The
task of NATO for forty years had been to hold the line until, in course of time,
the human solution came to pass. And now the Cold War was over. NATO’s
warriors, two full generations of Canada’s sailors among them, could be
proud indeed of the part they played in the most crucial - and bloodless -
victory in the history of the human race. Hindsight could say that Pierre
Trudeau was right in 1968 to pull back and nurture Canadian society as Soviet
strength grew greater. But politicians postured about NATO and defence and
failed to develop any strategic vision. In the event, Canada at large could take
small credit for the success that crowned those final twenty years.
BACK TO THE SEA?

Canadians, except in time of open war and the raw threat of the fifties, have
turned their backs to their navy and the sea, just as they did with Nelson on his
truncated column in Montreal. Laurier produced the vision but it failed in
1911, then in 1922, in 1946, in 1964, and again in 1989. Except for the brief,
brave times, letting others do it has been the siren-song; Britain first, and then
America and NATO.
But Canada’s history was shaped by the sea. She grew, changed hands, was
nurtured, protected, and finally thrived as an independent nation because of
seapower. The seas brought people, nursed and nourished her. Her oldest
industry, the fishery, time and again needed naval strength to be preserved,
not infrequently from her neighbour. Shielded by others’ navies she has
stayed secure and grown strong on seaborne trade.
Great treasure lies beneath the sea around this longest coast of any country
in the world. Territory, wealth, possessions, and seaborne trade must be
325
defended against the hard reahty of international life. The Cold War is over,
but not the problems of the world. As NATO’s armed might in likelihood
recedes, with its job of forty years well done, Canada stands more on her own,
less shielded in broad world affairs, and indeed more prone to domination by
the United States. In fact, if all NATO nations cut their arms by 30 per cent and
Canada stood pat, she would'remain at the bottom of the heap.
But still, as a wealthy citizen of an ever-changing world, she must contrib-
ute to stability and lasting peace; and that includes the need for even-handed
control of violence with armed strength. Our besieged fishery, global envi-
ronmental problems, and the new membership in the Organization of Ameri-
can States will surely call for new commitments on the sea. Alliances with the
hke-minded are essential. But stripped of an effective navy through neglect,
Canada has little to bring to the reality of a harsh and fast-changing world - a
world in which the sea has the ever-profound influence that history clearly
shows.
Except in wars too remote for most to remember, Canadians have given
httle time, small treasure, and less respect to their seamen-at-arms. But the
remarkable fact remains: in war and peace the people in Canada’s navy have
served this country steadfastly and, quite astonishingly, very, very well. Their
commitment has found no Hmits to the challenge of the sea. And simply, you
will find no better sailors in the world than these.
The boundless ocean that makes our world a gleaming blue jewel from
outer space holds the future of the nations. Indeed, the sea is at our gates. And
the key is in the hands of those who heed its call.
326
Appendix A
Ministers and Service Heads, 1910-1989
MINISTERS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NAVY

Ministers of Marine and Fisheries and the Naval Service
L.P. Brodeur 1910-1911
Rodolphe Lemieux 1911
J.D. Hazen 1911-1917
C.C. Ballantyne 1917-1921
Minister of Militia and Defence and the Naval Service

G.R Graham 1921-1922
Ministers of National Defence

G.R Graham 1922-1923
E.M. Macdonald 1923-1926
Hugh Guthrie 1926
Colonel J.L. Ralston, CMC, DSO, ED 1926-1930
Lieutenant-Colonel D.M. Sutherland, DSO, ED 1930-1934
Grote Stirhng 1934-1935
LA. Mackenzie 1935-1939
N. McL. Rogers 1939-1940
Colonel J.L. Ralston, CMC, DSO, ED 1940
Ministers of National Defence for Naval Services

A.L. Macdonald 1940-1945
D.C. Abbott 1945-1946
Ministers of National Defence

D.C. Abbott 1946
Brooke Claxton, DCM 1946-1954
R.O. Campney 1954-1957
Major-General G.R. Pearkes, VC, CB, DSO, MC 1957-1959
Lieutenant-Colonel D.S. Harkness, CM, ED 1960-1963
Lieutenant-Colonel G.M. Churchill, DSO, ED 1963
P.T. Hellyer 1963-1967
Leo Cadieux 1967-1970
Brigadier C.M. Drury, CBE, DSO, ED 1970 (acting)
D.S. Macdonald 1970-1972
E.J. Benson 1972
J.E. Dube 1972 (acting)
Brigadier C.M. Drury, CBE, DSO, ED 1972 (acting)
327
J.A. Richardson 1972-1976

B.J. Danson 1976-1979
A.B. McKinnon, MC, CD 1979-1980
J.C. Lamontaigne 1980-1983
JJ. Blais 1983-1984
R.C. Coates 1984-1985
Erik Nielsen, DEC 1985-1986
Perrin Beatty 1986-1989
Bill McKnight 1989-
SERVICE HEADS
Directors of the Naval Service (Royal Canadian Navy)
Admiral Sir C.E. Kingsmill, RN (Retired) 1910-1920
Commodore Walter Hose, CBE 1921-1928
Chiefs of the Naval Staff (Royal Canadian Navy)

Rear Admiral Walter Hose, CBE 1928-1934
Vice Admiral R W Nelles, CB 1934-1944
Vice Admiral G.C. Jones, CB 1944-1946
Vice Admiral H.E. Reid, CB 1946- 1947
Vice Admiral H.T W Grant, CBE, DSO, CD 1947- 1951
Vice Admiral E.R. Mainguy, OBE, CD 1951-1956
Vice Admiral H.G. DeWolf, CBE, DSO, DSC, CD 1956-1960
Vice Admiral H.S. Rayner, DSC, CD 1960-1964
Commanders, Maritime Command of the Canadian Forces

(Integrated Forces, fromjuly, 1964)
Rear Admiral WM. Landymore, OBE, CD 1964-1966
Rear Admiral J.C. O’Brien, CD 1966-1968
(Unified Forces, from February, 1968)
Vice Admiral J.C. O’Brien, CD 1968-1970
Vice Admiral H.A. Porter, CD 1970- 1971
Rear Admiral R.W. Timbrell, DSC, CD 1971- 1973
Vice Admiral D.S. Boyle, CMM, CD 1973-1977
Vice Admiral A.L. Collier, CMM, DSC, CD 1977-1979
Vice Admiral J. Allan, CMM, CD 1979- 1980
Vice Admiral J. A. Fulton, CMM, CD 1980- 1983
Vice Admiral J.C. Wood, CMM, CD 1983-1987
Vice Admiral C.M. Thomas, CMM, CD 1987-1989
Vice Admiral R.E. George, CD 1989
328
Appendix B
RCN Ships Lost During World War Two
Date Ship Type of Commanding How Lost Location Remarks
Ship Officer
25 June HMCS Fraser* destroyer Cdr. W.B. Creery, collision with Gironde River
1940 RCN HMS Calcutta estuary
9 Oct. HMCS Bras d'Or* auxiliary Lt. C.A. Flornsby, unknown Gulf of St.
1940 minesweeper RCNR Lawrence
22 Oct. HMCS Margaree* destroyer Cdr. J.W.fi. Boy, collision with North escorting convoy
1940 RCN freighter Port biry Atlantic OL8
26 March HMCS Otter* armed Lt. D.S. Mossman, accidental explosion off Flalifax
1941 yacht RCNR and fire Lightship
19 Sept. HMCS l£vis corvette Lt. C.W. Gilding, torpedoed by North escorting
1941 RCNR 0-74 Atlantic convoy sc 44
1 Dec. HMCS Windflower* corvette Lt. J. Price, collision with Dutch off Grand escorting convoy
1941 RCNR freighter Zypenberg Banks sc 58
10 Feb. HMCS Spikenard corvette Lt. Cdr. H.G. Shadforth, torpedoed by North escorting convoy
1942 RCNR 0-m Atlantic sc 67
7 Sept. HMCS Raccoon armed Lt. Cdr. J.N. Smith, torpedoed by St. Lawrence escorting convoy
1942 yacht RCNR u-m River QS33
11 Sept. HMCS corvette Lt. J.W. Bonner, torpedoed by St. Lawrence

1942 Charlottetown RCNR U-517 River
14 Sept. HMCS Ottawa destroyer A/Lt. Cdr. C.A. torpedoed by North escorting convoy
1942 Rutherford, RCN 0-9! Atlantic ON 127
6 Feb. HMCS buisburg* corvette Lt. Cdr. W.F Campbell, sunk by Italian east of escorting
1943 RCNVR aircraft Dran convoy
22 Feb. HMCS Weyburn* corvette Lt. Cdr. T.M.W. mine off Gibraltar
1943 Golby, RCNR
20 Sept. HMCS St. Croix destroyer Lt. Cdr. A.FI. Dobson, torpedoed by North escorting convoy
1943 RCNR U-305 Atlantic ON 202
21 Oct. HMCS Chedabucto* Bangor Lt. J.FI.B. Davies, collision with cable St. Lawrence serving with
1943 minesweeper RCNR vessel brd Kelvin River Gaspe Force
29 April HMCS Athabaskan* destroyer Lt. Cdr. J.H. Stubbs, torpedoed by north of He serving with 10th
1944 RCN T-24 de Bas, France Destroyer Flotilla
7 May HMCS Valleyfield frigate Lt. Cdr. D.T. English, torpedoed by southeast of
1944 RCNR 0-548 Cape Race
8 Aug. HMCS Regina corvette Lt. J.W. Radford, torpedoed by off Cornwall escorting
1944 RCNR 0-667 coastal convoy
21 Aug. HMCS Alberni corvette A/Lt. Cdr. I.H. Bell, torpedoed by English
1944 RCNVR U-480 Channel
25 Oct. HMCS Skeena* destroyer Lt. Cdr. RF.X. dragged anchor Iceland
1944 Russell, RCN in a storm
25 Nov. HMCS Shawmigan corvette Lt. W.J. Jones, torpedoed by Cabot Strait on independent
1944 RCNR U-1228 A/s patrol
24 Dec. HMCS Clayoquot Bangor A/Lt. Cdr. A.C. torpedoed by near escorting convoy
1944 minesweeper Campbell, RCNVR U-806 Halifax XB139
22 Feb. HMCS Trentoman corvette Lt. C.S. Glassco, torpedoed by English escorting Channel
1945 RCNVR U-1004 Channel convoy
17 March HMCS Guys borough Bangor Lt. B.T.R. Russell, torpedoed by English
1945 minesweeper RCNR 0-878 Channel
16 April HMCS Esguimalt Bangor Lt. R.C. Macmillan, torpedoed by near on independent
1945 minesweeper RCNVR U-m Halifax A/s patrol
'Ships lost by causes other than enemy U-boat action.

Sources: Director of History, Department of National Defence; K. Macpherson and J. Burgess, The Ships of Canada's Nava! Forces.
329
330
Appendix C
U-Boats Sunk by RCN Ships in World War Two
Date U-Boat Ships Commanding Officers
6 Nov. Faa di Bruno Ottawa Commander E.R. Mainguy, RCN
1940 (Italian) HMS Harvester
10 Sept. U-501 Chambly Commander J.D. Prentice, RCN

1941 Moose Jaw Lieutenant EE. Grubb, RCN
24 July U-90 St. Croix Lieutenant Commander A.H. Dobson, RCNR
1942
31 July U-588 Wetaskiwin Lieutenant Commander G. Windyer, RCN
1942 Skeena A/Lieutenant Commander K.L Dyer, RCN
6 Aug. U-210 Assiniboine A/Lieutenant Commander J.H. Stubbs, RCN
1942
28 Aug. U-94 Oakville Lieutenant Commander C.A. King, RCNR
1942 U.S. Sguadron 92
1 Sept. U-756 Morden Lieutenant J.J. Hodgkinson, RCNR
1942
27 Dec. U-356 St Laurent Lieutenant Commander G. Windyer, RCN

1942 CbiHiwack A/Lieutenant Commander L.F Eoxall, RCNR
Battieford Lieutenant EA. Beck, RCNVR
Napanee Lieutenant S. Henderson, RCNR
13 Jan. U-224 ViHe de Ouebec Lieutenant Commander A.R.E. Coleman, RCNR
1943
18 Jan. Tritone Port Arthur Lieutenant Commander E.T. Simmons RCNVR
1943 (Italian)
12 Feb. Avorio Begina Lieutenant Commander H. Ereeland, RCNR
1943 (Italian)
4 March U-87 St Croix Lieutenant Commander A.H. Dobson, RCNR
1943 Sbedlac Lieutenant J.E. Clayton, RCNR
13 March U-163 Prescott Lieutenant Commander W. Mclsaac, RCNVR

1943 Napanee Lieutenant S. Henderson, RCNR
13 May U-456 Orumbeller Lieutenant L.P Denny, RCNR
1943 HMS Lagan

RCAF Squadron 423
20 Nov. U-536 Snowberry A/Lieutenant Commander J.A. Dunn, RCNVR

1943 Calgary A/Lieutenant Commander H.K. Hill, RCNVR
HMS Nene
8 Jan. U-757 Camrose A/Lieutenant Commander L.R. Pavillard, RCNR
1944 HMS Bayntun
24 Feb. U-257 Waskesiu Lieutenant Commander J.P Eraser, RCNR
1944
6 March U-744 Escort Group C4 Commander P W. Burnett, RN

1944 St. Catbarmes Lieutenant Commander H.C. Davis, RCNR
CbiHiwack Lieutenant Commander C.R. Coughlin, RCNVR
Gatineau Lieutenant Commander H.V. Groos, RCN
Cbaudiere A/Lieutenant Commander C.P Nixon, RCN
Fennel A/Lieutenant Commander W.P Moffat, RCNVR
HMS Lcarus
HMS KeniLwortb Castle
11 March U-845 Swansea A/Commander C.A. King, RCNR

1944 St. Laurent Lieutenant Commander G.H. Stephen, RCNR
Owen Sound A/Lieutenant Commander J.M. Watson, RCNR
14 April U-448 Swansea A/Commander C.A. King, RCNR
1944 HMS Pelican
331
Date U-Boat Ships Commanding Officers
22 April U-31I Swansea A/Commander C.A. King, RCNR

1944 Matane A/Commander A.F. Layard, RN
24 June U-971 Haida Commander FI.G. DeWolf, RCN

1944 HMSEskimo
Czechoslovakia Squadron
311
6 July U-678 Ottawa II Commander J.D. Prentice, RCN

1944 Kootenay A/Lieutenant Commander W.FI. Willson, RCN
HMS Statice
18 Aug. U-62J Ottawa II Commander J.D. Prentice, RCN

1944 Kootenay A/Lieutenant Commander W.H. Willson, RCN
Chaodiere A/Lieutenant Commander C.P Nixon, RCN
20 Aug. U-984 Ottawa II Commander J.D. Prentice, RCN

1944 Kootenay A/Lieutenant W.FI. Willson, RCN
Chaodiere A/Lieutenant Commander C.P Nixon, RCN
31 Aug. U-247 Swansea Commander A.F. Layard, RN

1944 Saint John A/Lieutenant Commander W.R. Stacey, RCNR
11 Sept. U-484 Hespeler Lieutenant Commander N.S. Dickinson, RCNVR

1944 Ounver A/Lieutenant Commander W. Davenport, RCNR
16 Oct. U-1006 Annan A/Lieutenant Commander C.P Balfry, RCNR
27 Dec. U-877 St. Thomas Lieutenant Commander L.P Denny, RCNR

1944
16 Feb. U-309 Saint John A/Lieutenant Commander W.R. Stacey, RCNR

1945
7 March 9-1302 LB HuHoise Lieutenant Commander J.V. Brock, RCNVR

1945 Strathadam Lieutenant Commander FI.L. Duinn, RCNVR
Thetford Mines Lieutenant Commander J.A. Allan, RCNVR
13 March U-575 Prince Rupert Lieutenant Commander R.W. Draney, RCNR

1945 uss Haverfield
uss Hobson
Aircraft: uss Rogue
RAF Squadrons 172, 206
20 March U-1003 New Glasgow Lieutenant Commander R.M. Flanbury, RCNVR
Source: Directorate of History, Department of National Defence; K. Macpherson and J. Burgess, The Ships of Caneda's Nava! Forces.
332
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338
CHAPTER NOTES
CANADA’S NAVAL HISTORY HAS RECEIVED FAR LESS ATTENTION THAN THE
very substantial amount paid to the military. Except for Admirals Brock and
Lay, our senior naval officers have contributed no memoirs. Brock’s is a self-
reveahng character study. Lay’s, as he said, was written for his family rather
than the record, but there are some gems among the tennis and cocktail
parties. As noted in Douglas, “FiUing Gaps in the Military Past,” senior
officers put thumbs down on historian Gilbert Tucker’s draft of the official
operational history of World War Tb/o. At last, in the highly capable hands of
Official Historian Dr. W.A.B. Douglas, it will be pubHshed in the nineties.
Until very recently Httle was written about the RCN’s considerable achieve-
ment in 1917-18 in assembUng - on the flimsiest base - a ramshackle but
sizable anti-submarine force. Tucker, official accounts, and general histories,
which are mostly based thereon, largely ignore it and so lose its lessons on
unpreparedness. After the Cuban crisis of 1962, no historical account was
assembled. History - unpalatable or no - if left unpubhshed and hence
unsung, leaves fatal gaps in a navy’s and a nation’s memory.
The following sources for large parts of this book I won’t repeat under each
chapter. Douglas’s “Canadian Naval Historiography” gives a first-rate guide
to the key naval issues and to the sources that illuminate them best. Gilbert
Tucker’s soHd two-volume Naval Service of Canada is the major reference from
the navy’s beginnings to 1945 (except World War Two operations). Essential
throughout is MacPherson and Burgess, The Ships of CanadTs Naval Forces
1910-1981. Desmond Morton’s Military History of Canada, though light on
navy, provides a clear, succinct overall national context. Goodspeed’s official
The Armed Forces of Canada 1867-1967 is a spare, factual account. Prime sources
are the papers published in J. Boutilier’s The RCN in Retrospect, from the 1980
conference on naval history, and in Douglas’s The RCN in Transition, from the
1985 conference. They span the nineteenth century to the 1980s. Below, I wiU
refer to specific articles in them by author’s name as listed in the bibliography.
Chapter 1. The Tides of History

Graham’s Empire of the North Atlantic gives a classic overview of the role of
seapower in the evolution of Canada. McLennan’s Louisbour^ from its Founda-
tions to its Fall, Raddall’s Halifax, Warden of the North, John Leefe amplified by
Fay Kert on Nova Scotia privateers, H.R Pullen’s The Shannon and the Chesa-
peake all illuminate the rousing early days. Cuthbertson’s Freshwater gives a
339
good perspective of the evolution, role, and exploits of the inland waters
navies, French, English, and American. Their important part in the war of
1812 is given human highlights in Pierre Berton’s Flames Across the Border.
Albion’s Sea Lanes in Wartime shows the effect on trade and recalls seagoing
activity and concerns of nineteenth-century Canadians. For alarums and
excursions in the Civil War, see Winks’s Canada and the United States: The Civil
War Years. Melville’s paper, “Canada and Seapower,” is singularly reveaHng
on Sir John A. Macdonald’s naval thought and pohcy and the part played by
Lieutenant Andrew Gordon. The Imperial forces at work on moving Canada
toward a navy are clearly drawn in Gough’s “The End of Pax Britannica.”
Chapter 2. The Bare Beginnings

Rear Admiral N.D. Brodeur on his grandfather, “L.P Brodeur and the Ori-
gins of the RCN,” casts interesting Hght on Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s time; P. W.
Brock recounts a significant contribution to the early navy in “Commander
E.A. Nixon and the Royal Naval College of Canada.”
Chapter 3. The Great War

Sarty’s “Hard Luck Flotilla,” the Naval Historical Section’s Notes, and the
introduction to Hadley’s U-boats Against Canada show the nature of the threat
to Canadian waters and the poor level of preparedness for an important
national role.
Chapter 4. Intermission
Rear Admiral H.F. Pullen writes from the perspective of the peacetime officer
in “The RCN between the Wars. ” The view from the messdecks is reflected in
Boutilier’s Matelot Memories and by Hewitt and Manfield in Lynch’s oral
history. Salty Dips, Vol. 1. The navy is always a highly technical business and
Captain Knox’s “Engineer’s OutHne of RCN History” covers it very well
from 1910 to the Tribals of the seventies. McKee’s Volunteers for Sea Service
recounts the shoestring struggles of the Volunteer Reserve. Canada’s failure in
maritime policy is covered in Mackenzie’s The Preparedness of Canada's Mer-
chant Marine for Two World Wars. C.P Stacey’s Historical Documents of Canada,
Vol. 5, pins down Mackenzie King’s (and Canada’s) identification with
appeasement, and the basis he shaped for unity in event of war: “no neutrahty,
fight alongside Britain, no conscription for overseas service.”
Chapter 5 to 10. World War Two

The only official history to date covering RCN operations in World War Two
is Schull’s The Far Distant Ships, a highly readable, rousing story of exploits of
ships and people, accurate chronologically but short on analysis with small
heed to contentious issues.
340
CHAPTER NOTES
Disinterment in the late seventies and eighties by historians including Alec

Douglas, his West German colleague Jurgen Rowher, Lund, Milner, Hadley et
al. has cast new, sometimes glaring, Hght. Zimmerman’s Great Naval Battle of
Ottawa examines the Headquarters failure to grasp matters technical and
scientific that contributed so critically to Canadian ships’ lag in battHng the
U-boats. Part 4 of Douglas’s Creation of a National Air Force shows how far
Canadian forces were from co-ordinated ASW and it contributes a lot thereby
to the naval story.
Anti-submarine warfare, which has had such a major influence on Cana-
da’s navy, is a subject in itself though not treated separately in this book. The
author’s “Fighting the Submarine” is a chronology of the milestones, from
tentative invention in the eighteenth century through the world wars to the
eighties. The technical side of underwater detection from Great War begin-
nings through to the modern era can be found in D. Hackmann’s Seek and
Strike (including debunking of the myth that “asdic” was the acronym for
Alhed Submarine Detection Committee). RN Rear Admiral J.R. Hill’s Anti-
Submarine Warfare is excellent and concise into the modern era. Karl Donitz’s
pre-war paper on U-boat operations, including wolf-pack tactics, and his
memoirs written in prison post-war are both available in translation.
Hughes and Costello’s The Battle of the Atlantic is a first-rate overview of a
subject that has been expertly, assiduously, and comprehensively recorded
from all but the Canadian point of view. Roskill and Morison wrote the
official histories for the RN and USN and Roskill’s work particularly is ampH-
fied generously by many books by key British participants, such as Macintyre,
who disparaged the RCN’s efforts, and Gretton, who admired them and
understood their problems of equipment, training, and support. That the
RCN’s key part in the Battle of the Atlantic has been so httle noted can be
blamed less on lapses of British and American authors than on the failure of
Canadians (including the navy itself) to write in depth about it themselves.
Lay tells first hand about 1940 in the Channel and the Nabob saga. For the
burden of command, Alan Easton’s 50 North is a wonderfully written memoir,
as ahve as a novel. He commanded Sackville and Saskatchewan and his charac-
ters are real, though he changes the names. Perceptive journalist/photogra-
pher Bill Pugsley wrote Saints, Devils and Ordinary Seamen in 1945 fresh from
experience living on the lower deck. Tony Law’s memoir on his 29th MTB
Flotilla was drafted (and drawn: he is an artist) in 1945, mellowed in the
archives until 1989, and is nicely revealing. J. Essex recorded in 1984 his own
story of that intriguing and little-known phase of the war in Victory in the St.
Lawrence. Thirty to forty years after the events came Jim Lamb’s Corvette Navy
and Triangle Run, and Hal Lawrence’s Bloody War, Tales of the North Atlantic, and
Victory at Sea. They use their own and others’ experiences most colourfully to
evoke the spirit and feel of the times.
341
F.B. Watt’s In All Respects Ready is the excellent, first-hand, and only pub-
Hshed account of the innovative Naval Boarding Service in HaHfax and
contains a very moving picture of the merchant service at war. Wren “Fiddy”
Greer’s lively account of Canada’s Wrens is supplemented by Jean Bruce’s
Back the Attack, on Canadian women at war. Burrows and Beaudoin’s Unlucky
Lady is the story of Athabaskan's people - colourful, personal, not altogether
accurate, but grippingly evocative. Basil Jones, the RN Captain (D) of the
Fighting Tenth, writes very warmly of the Canadians, and of Harry DeWolf
in particular, in And So To Battle. For Haida's wartime story, see W. Sclater
(1946) and A.D. Butcher (a new generation, writing in 1985, extending it
through Korea). M. Whitby has studied the Channel operations from a more
detached historian’s viewpoint. For character and colour, the reminiscences
(mostly officers’) in the three volumes of Lynch’s Salty Dips are a treasure
trove, as is Boutilier’s Matelot Memories.
Mr. Justice Kellock reported officially on the Hahfax riots. Not until 1981
did J.M. Cameron write his sympathetic account of Murray, the Martyred
Admiral on the Hahfax riot; S.R. Redmond’s Open Gangway, published the
same year, took the other tack.
Chapter 11. The Sickly Season

Lay’s report on Operation Crossroads gives a sanguine view of survival of
fleets attacked by the atomic bomb. The need for a Canadian navy in the post-
war, pre-NATO world (and the dearth of money to sustain it) was presented by
the CNS, Vice Admiral Grant, in 1948 to the National Defence CoUege in
“The Future Strategic Role of Naval Forces.” He also sounds a warning
against visionaries without experience who propose unifying the forces as a
cure-all. J. Sokolsky’s “Canada and the Cold War At Sea” traces naval poHcy
from this point on. Rear Admiral S. Mathwin Davis in The St. Laurent Decision
shows how, in the pre-NATO doldrums, the distinctively Canadian post-war
fleet was conceived. The navy’s major social document, the Mainguy Report,
is illuminated by the surviving commissioner, L.C. Audette, in “The Lower
Deck and the Mainguy Report.”
The Air Arm to 1962 is recorded in Kealy and Russell’s official History of
Canadian Naval Aviation. More controversial aspects - the early decisions,
opposition by the RCAF, the senior officers’ view of the air element - are
recounted by Stuart Soward (who as a Lieutenant Commander (P) was tech-
nical adviser on the official history) in “Canadian Naval Aviation 1915-
1969.” The attitudes of the early days, the problems ofRN aircraft, marginal
training, and high accident rates I pieced together from talks with experienced
naval aviators named in the Acknowledgements, including Bice, Burns, R.
Creery, Edwards, Falls, Fotheringham, and Rikely, and reference to
Rotherham’s It^s Really Quite Safe.
342
CHAPTER NOTES
Chapter 12. Korea

The official account is Thorgrimsson and Russell’s Canadian Naval Operations
in Korean Waters. Field’s History of United States Naval Operations: Korea provides
the broad context from the American viewpoint. Volume 1 of Brock’s mem-
oirs gives the view from the bridge by the RCN senior officer in the early, most
active period. CaptainJ. Bovey’s “The Destroyers’ War in Korea” recounts the
train-busting time when he commanded Crusader.
Chapter 13. The New Navy

G. MacKay’s Maritime Warfare Bulletin for 1985, published by the Canadian
Forces Maritime Warfare School, includes: “The Canadian Development of
Variable Depth Sonar” (D. Brassington), “The Marriage of the Small Ship and
the Large HeHcopter” (C. Dailey), and “Canadian Naval Contribution to
Tactical Data Systems and Data Link Development” (D.N. MacGiUivray and
G. Switzer). Admiral Davis on “Technological Decision-making in the Cana-
dian Navy” gives a remarkable picture of its shaping, including frigates and
submarines and the considerations on nuclear power for ships and subma-
rines. As Director General - Ships from 1960 to 1965, he was responsible for
the design or construction of every warship active in the fleet today. With
Knox’s “Engineer’s Outhne” as a summary we have a clear picture of the
quite remarkable technical achievements of this era.
On officer training, R.A. Preston surveys the whole span from earhest
roots into the eighties in “Marcom Education: Is It a Break with Tradition?”
A. Snowie’s The ‘‘Bonnie” gives a spirited account of the beloved carrier’s
career, an excellent picture by a carrier pilot of day-to-day Hfe on board with a
real feel for the strengthening professionalism of naval aviation. Snowie’s
work illuminates as well Chapters 15 and 16 and on to the carrier’s demise in
Chapter 18. McKee continues to be a good resource on Reserves.
Chapter 14. The Northern Gate

“History of HMCS Labrador” written by departmental historian E.C. Russell
is available to researchers at DHist but unfortunately is not pubHshed. The Ice
Was All Between by Labrador's navigator. Lieutenant Tom Irvine, comes with an
expert’s knowledge. So, of course, do Bernier’s Report of 1910 and Captain
TC. Pullen’s hsted papers. A. Taylor documents discoveries in the Queen
Elizabeth Islands. Captain Robertson’s experiences came from personal inter-
views.
Chapter 15. The Brink of War

This most significant Canadian naval operation of the Cold War has been too
well buried. Among a wealth of American material, Leighton’s The Cuban
Missile Crisis of1962 is a good reference. Typically, where Canada is mentioned
343
it’s only related to the failure of political decision-making. No copy of Admi-

ral Dennison’s “Historical Account of the Cuban Crisis,” dated 29 April
1963, appears to have arrived in Canada until mine was downgraded and dug
from Saclant’s files in 1986. Sokolsky touches the incident briefly. The only
comments of Admiral Rayner’s to be found on the Cuban crisis are in evidence
he gave to Parliament a year later regarding readiness, but not operations.
Brock was Vice Chief of Naval Staff and his recollections in The Thunder and
the Sunshine of personally directing readiness and operations are at odds with
those of Rear Admiral Dyer and his staff. As Captain of Mackenzie, making
ready for sea, I was quite close to developments. Sources are Hsted here, rather
than in the bibliographic list:
Minutes, House of Commons Special Committee on Defence. Statement by

Vice Admiral H.S. Rayner, Chief of Naval Staff, 15 Oct. 1963.
House of Commons, Hansard, 24, 25, 26 Oct. 1962.
Hon. Douglas Harkness papers. Memorandum: The Nuclear Arms Question
and the PoHtical Crisis Which Arose from It in January and February, 1963,
National Archives of Canada (NAG).
HMCS Bonaventure (Captain F.C. Frewer) Ship’s Logs and Reports of Proceed-
ings, October-November, 1962, NAG.
Commander 5th Canadian Escort Squadron (Captain C.P. Nixon) Reports of
Proceedings, October, November, December, 1962, NAG.
RCAF Station Greenwood (404 and 405 Squadrons), Historical Record, June-
Nov., 1962, NAG.
RCAF Station Summerside (415 Squadron), Historical Record, Sept.-Nov.,
1962, NAG.
Reports of Fallex 62 and Cubex. NSS 1630-2-13, 23 May 63, NAG, RG24.
Prediction of Operational Exposure Periods in ASW: ASW Operational
Research Team Closed Circulation Report 34/62, NAG.
Cinclant Historical Account of Cuban Crisis, Admiral R.L. Dennison, USN,
29 April 1963, Directorate of History, DND.
Operations Cuba File 80/381, Message traffic. Statements File 73/1093,
Directorate of History, DND.
Naval Board Minutes: Special Meetings 24 Oct. (2), 30 Oct. and 2 Nov. 1962,
Directorate of History, DND.
WA.B. Douglas, Director of History: The Canadian-American Defence
Relationship, 15 Dec. 1982, Directorate of History, DND.
Personal interviews (ranks in October, 1962): Hon. D. Harkness, Rear Admi-
ral K.L. Dyer, Commodore J. Pratt, Commodore J.C. O’Brien, Group
Captain R. Gordon, Squadron Leader E. Voellmecke, Captain C.P. Nixon,
Captain F.C. Frewer, Commodore R.P. Welland, Air Marshal L. Dunlap,
Major General G. Walsh, Commander DR. Saxon.
344
CHAPTER NOTES
Chapter 16. Flying High

The “Brock Report” by the Ad Hoc Committee on Naval Objectives (1961)
spells out strategic concepts and proposes plans for naval development
through to the eighties.
Chapter 17. Integration and Unification

J.G. Glassco’s Royal Commission Report is valuable background. V.J.
Kronenberg documents Paul Hellyer’s drive from White Paper through inte-
gration to unification. He assesses their effects (as of 1972) and notes other
countries’ reactions. Ten years later, Daniel Burke’s “Unification of the Armed
Forces” reinforces Kronenberg and details Rear Admiral Tandy more’s battle
against unification. Rear Admiral Brock’s highly personal account in The
Thunder and the Sunshine contrasts with Landymore’s views of the state of the
fleet and arguments on unification in his briefs to the House Standing Com-
mittee on National Defence: 23 June 1966; 15, 16 February 1967 detailing his
opposition to unification and his account of the altered testimony of 23 June
1966; 23 February 1967 on Hellyer’s charges of disloyalty and the case against
unification. Captain A.K. Cameron, who was secretary in the Atlantic Com-
mand to Admirals Dyer, Brock, and Tandy more, concludes that the navy,
since the war years, had failed to estabHsh its relevance with Canadians, and
hence there was no wave of real public support for its case. Morton underlines
Hellyer’s personal ambition and also concludes that Canadians didn’t really
care.
Chapter 18. Clipped Wings

Snowie’s 'Tonnie” recounts the last phase of the carrier’s life very well. Soward
argues that trade-offs between “air element” and “sea element” in the newly
unified service and salt-horse thinking in Maritime Command conspired to
ditch naval aviation in return for keeping a sizable small-ship, helicopter-
equipped navy. Sokolsky recalls NATO’s shift in the late sixties to graduated
response and the clear call for stronger conventional - and especially maritime
- forces. Saclant’s 1969 Report: Relative Maritime Strategies and Capabilities
of NATO and the Soviet Bloc, promoted strongly by NATO Secretary-General
Brosio, put the case for much stronger naval forces as Trudeau launched his
major cuts in defence.
Chapter 19. Change on Change

Tynch’s Flying 400 tells the story of the hydrofoil Bras TOr. Gerald Porter’s In
Retreat comments on civilianizing the Department, the continuing cuts,
inflated rank structure, and language policy and practice. Bilingualism is
covered officially by: Bilingualism Policy in the CAF, CDS Policy Directive P3/
70, 27 February 1970; Program and Plan to Increase Bilingualism and
345
Biculturalism in the Canadian Armed Forces, 12 February 1971; and Defence

12 (Ottawa: Queen s Printer, 1972). Preston is thorough on officer training in
“Marcom Education. ” M. Hadley tells of adversity in the Reserve in “The
Impact of Public Policy on a Naval Reserve Division. ”
»
Chapter 20. Troubled Times

Porter continues his indictment of defence poHcy and continuing neglect of
the navy. Peter Newman pursues that theme more broadly in his True North:
Not Strong and Free. Shrinking resources, aging ships, and increasing load were
detailed in 1976 by retired Admirals O’Brien, Timbrell, Leir, and Pickford in
“Have We Buried Our Navy?” Timbrell’s assessment of the navy Canada
should have in his “Canada’s Maritime Defence Requirements” is very close
to the report (never pubhshed) by a “Naval Board” of senior officers con-
vened by Admiral Boyle to study the question. Porter recounts Boyle’s tra-
vails, outspoken criticisms, and early retirement.
Chapter 21. The Eighties and Onward

Saclant’s Concept of Maritime Operations written by Rear Admiral D.N. Main-
guy lays the base for NATO nations’ planning. Rear Admiral Crickard’s “Three
Oceans, Three Challenges” discusses response to Canada’s trade and sover-
eignty issues. The Foreword to Janets Fighting Ships (1988-89) by R. Sharpe
gives a comprehensive position summary of the world’s navies, including
Canada’s “giant stride” with proposed nuclear submarines. Harriet Critchley,
in “Canadian Naval Responsibilities in the Arctic, ” discusses approaches to
Canada’s problem of sovereignty and defence in the Arctic, including an
“Underwater Dew Line, ” nuclear submarines, bilateral sharing with the
U.S., and multilateral arrangements within NATO. Rear Admiral Brodeur
(retired) and others informed me on the development of the nuclear-powered
submarine proposal. Defence Minister Beatty’s White Paper of June, 1987
details years of underfunding and Canada’s low standing in NATO. D.
Middlemiss, in “Economic Considerations in the Development of the Cana-
dian Navy Since 1945, ” documents expenditures on the navy over forty years
as bottom of the service heap and steadily sHding in relation to GNP, total
government expenditure, and share of the Defence budget. C.R. Nixon,
recent past Deputy Minister of National Defence, in “Defence Budgets - A
Review and Outlook, ” contrasts Canada’s steadily increasing economic
power in relation to friendly countries with her decHning defence expenditure
and the bleaker prospects following the federal budget of April, 1989.
346
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
DELVING INTO THE HISTORY OF CANADA’S NAVY BECAME A PLEASURE

with the help so generously extended by Dr. W.A.B. Douglas, the Official
Historian, Department of National Defence. His own pubhcations - in keep-
ing with his rare combination of scholarship of international repute and a
naval officer’s sohd sea experience - have filled many of the gaps in Canadian
naval historiography. His leadership has had a great influence over the last ten
years and more in developing studies in what was a sadly neglected field, and
he was unstintingly generous to me with his own time and talents.
On his staff, Mark Milner, Roger Sarty, Norman Hillmer, and Carl Chris-
tie were especially helpful while I worked on this book. So were Michael
Hadley, University of Victoria, with his special knowledge of the U-boat
men; Dean Allard, Naval Historical Center, Washington; Director Victor
Suthren, Hugh HaUiday, and Fay Kert of the Canadian War Museum; Mari-
lyn Smith, curator of the Maritime Command Museum, HaHfax; Cohn
Shaw, Maritime Museum of British Columbia; F.D. Nelson, Base Historian,
CEB Esquimalt; M. Hamilton, curator of the Shearwater Aviation Museum;
Peter Seregei, National Defence Library; and staffs of the National Archives
of Canada, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, and the Imperial War
Museum.
Alec Douglas read my first seventeen draft chapters and his wise counsel
opened new channels and kept me clear of many shoals. For similar invaluable
help on subjects within their realms of unique knowledge I am most grateful
to Tom Pullen on the Arctic, Ken Dyer on the Cuban crisis, and Bill Landy-
more on integration and unification.
Leshe Smith and Andrea Schlecht were assiduous with their research.
Katharine Fletcher’s execution of the maps was fine and precise. I must thank
Collins and Dial Press for permission to use graphic data on shipping and U-
boat losses from The Battle of the Atlantic by T. Hughes and J. Costello in the
maps on pages 81, 100, 114, 140, and 330; also. Dr. Douglas for the ship
dispositions on page 267. My editor, Richard Tallman, applied a surgeon’s
skill to trimming a fat manuscript. Robert Paris helped me with translation.
My thanks to Mrs. H.T.W. Grant for allowing me access to Admiral
Grant’s papers, and also to all hereunder - able seamen to admirals - who have
shared their personal experiences with me. I have used the first names by
which their shipmates knew them, no ranks, and for women their maiden
347
names. Among them are concealed a Privy Counsellor, some soldiers, air
force types, and a master shipbuilder. The Hst includes:
Louis Audette, Camilla Balcombe, A1 Bice, Dickie Bird, John Bovey,
Douglas Boyle, Jeffry Brock, Nigel Brodeur, George Brown, Pat Budge,
Helen Burns, Jim Burns, Barry Butler, Ruth Charlton, Joe Clark, Tom Clark,
Gavin Clarke, John Coates, Ray Creery, Wallace Creery, Peggy Davis, Harry
DeWolf, Larry Dunlap, Ken Dyer, Gordon Edwards, Ted Edwards, Bob Falls,
Albert Fargo, Steve Foldesi, Pop Fotheringham, John Frank, Fred Frewer,
George Fyfe, Ginger Geldard, Barry German, Don German, Andy Gillespie,
Norman Goodale, Ralph Gordon, Douglas Harkness, Bill Hayes, Ralph
Hennessy, Jimmy Hibbard, Bill Howe, Vern Howland, Norman John, Bill
Landymore, Tony Law, Hal Lawrence, Elsa Lessard, Sage Ley, John Lipton,
Grace Lovatt, Mac Lynch, Allan MacConney, Dan Mainguy, Terrence
Manuel, Bill Manfield, Jim McDougall, Andy McMilHn, Jock McGregor,
Paul Melanson, Stuart Meehan, Pat Milsom, Glen Moxham, Keith Nesbitt,
Eleanor Nichols, Pat Nixon, J.C. Scruffy O’Brien, Bruce Oland, Donald
Page, Scott Peddle, Jack Pickford, Deb by Piers, Fred Pohchuk, Jim Pratt, Bill
Pugsley, Tom Pullen, John Ralph, Gus Rankin, Max Reid, Bill Rikely, Owen
Robertson, Dick Ross, John Roue, Pat Ryan, Don Saxon, Bob Stephens, Iris
Stinson, AJison Taylor, Bob TimbreU, Jean Verroneau, Ed Voellmecke, Geof-
frey Walsh, Percy Warrilow, Jake Warren, Bob WeUand, Vic Wilgress, Tug
Wilson.
As well as doing the index and providing the perspective of a wartime
Wren, my wife Sage gave me support beyond measure, the kind that comes
with being a navy wife.
With aU this invaluable help, what I have presented in this book is my
responsibihty alone.
Tony German
Kingsmere
Old Chelsea, Quebec
February, 1990
348
Abyssinia, 63 Arctic archipelago, 250, 255
Acadia, 15-15 Arctic, CGS, 254, 255, 257
Action trainer, 145 Arctic Waters Pollution Act, 310
Adack, 226 Argentia, 93, 109, 111, 142, 261
Adams, Commodore K.F., 60, 147, 155, 214 Argentina, 272
Addis Ababa, 63 Argo (Italian), 83, 155
Admiralty, 21, 24, 36, 38, 40, 41, 45, 53, 72, 73, 98, Ariak (RCMP), 256
111, 143 Armada, Battle of the Spanish, 13
Afghanistan, 316, 324 Armed merchant cruisers (AMCs), 94
Africa, 41 Arromanches, 172
Air Command, 303, 313 Aruba, 113, 115
Air cover, 99, 101, 102, 107, 109, 115, 131, 133 Asdic, 66, 68, 74, 80, 82, 117, 124, 149, 154; type
Aircraft, 35, 47, 66; Argus, 247, 262, 266, 268, 286, 123A, 89; conditions, 120, 133, 177; decoy, 122;
312, 313, 317; Aurora, 316, 317, 323; Avengers, see also Sonar
186-88, 212, 234, 238, 242; Avro Arrow, 300; B- Athenia, SS, 73, 98
17s, 111; Banshee, 242; Barracudas, 187, 189,212; Atlantic Charter, 109
Blinder, 278; Canso, 140; Catalina, 99, 104, 111, Atlantic Convoy Conference, 144, 145
117; CF-100, 242; Corsair, 212; Curtis flying Atlantic Ocean, 13, 15, 48, 136
boat, 52; Dornier, 158; Digby, 99, 127; F-18, 316; Atlantika (US.S.R.), 270
Firefly, 212, 213; Gannet, 242; Heinkel, 134; Atomic bomb, 202, 205, 206
Hellcat, 212, 213; Hudson, 99, 113, 119, 120; Attu, 95, 96
Hurricane, 79; Junkers 88s, 158; Kondor, 80, 107, Australia, 25, 216
184; Lancaster, 237, 246; Liberators, 107, 128, 131, Austria, 29, 63
136, 139, 141, 144, 177; Martlet, 107; Neptunes, Austria-Hungary, 23, 33
266, 268, 286; Panther, 225; Seafires, 212, 213, Audette, Lieutenant Commander L.C., 83, 127, 128,
228; Sea Fury, 213, 225, 242; Spitfire, 79, 213; 155,209
Sunderland, 81, 99; Swordfish, 74, 149, 184, 185; Axis pact, 63
Tracker, 242, 269, 271, 275, 278, 286, 293, 294, Azores, 109, 130, 150, 266
296, 318, 323, 324; U-2, 270; Wildcat, 185, 187-
89 Baffin Island, 251
Aircraft maintenance, 214, 296, 317 Bale des Chaleurs, 176
Air gap, 99, 101, 107, 125, 127, 128, 136, 138, 140, Baker, Commodore R., 234
141 Balanced fleet, 200
Air power, 62 Balfry, Lieutenant Commander C.P, 178
Air stations: Sydney, 52; Eastern Passage, 52 Ball, ChiefPetty Officer J., 188
Aix la Chapelle, Peace of, 15 Ballantyne, C.C., 51
Ajax Club, 197 Baltic, 278
Alaska, 20, 250 Baltimore, 18
Alexandra Fiord, 253 Banks Island, 254
Aleutian Islands, 95, 226 Barclay, Lieutenant R., RN, 18
Algiers, 133 Barents Sea, 187
Allard, GeneralJ.V., 288, 289 Barron, Lieutenant}., 27, 52
Allied Anti-Submarine Survey Board, 145, 147 Bataan, HMAS, 219, 221
American Civil War, 18, 19, 22, 39 Bate, Cadet T, 27
American Navy, see United States Navy Battle of the Atlantic, 11, 71, 72, 88, 96, 98, 138, 141,
American Revolution, 16 148, 182, 192,319
Amherstburg, 18 Bay Bulls, 182
Amundsen, Roald, 254 Bay ofBengal, 9
Andrewes, Vice Admiral W.G., RN, 219, 222 Bay ofBiscay, 117, 149, 157, 183; air offensive, 136
Angled deck, 242 Bay of Fundy, 14
Annapolis, see United States Naval Academy Beard, Commander C.T., 27, 56, 95
Anse au Foulon, 15 Beartrap, 9, 11,277,279
Anson, Admiral Lord, 30 Beatty, Admiral Sir D., RN, 43, 44
Anticosti, 177 Beatty, Perrin, 321-26
Anti-submarine escorts, 65, 88, 98, 233 Beaufort Gyre, 258
Anti-submarine warfare (ASW), 8, 67, 68, 146, 234, Bedford Basin, 47, 75, 250, 296, 319
241,243,248,283,310 Beechey Island, 257
Antwerp, 167 Belfast, 241
Arandora Star, SS, 81 Belgian navy, 93
Arctic, 189, 239, 249-59, 318, 322 Belgium, 77, 167,205
349
Bell, Alexander Graham, 245, 298, 301 Burke, D.P, 283

Bella Coola, 20 Burrell, M., 35
Bellot Strait, 257 Butler, Mayor A., 196
Bering Sea, 96 Byrd, Lieutenant Richard, USN, 52
Bering Strait, 250, 253
Berlin, 205, 233, 325 Cabot, John, 13
Bermuda, 40, 62, 155 Cabot Strait, 122
Bernays, Chief Petty Officer M., 125 Cadieux, Leo, 301
Bernier, CaptainJ.-E., 254, 255, 257, 259 California, 20, 237
Bernier Marine Museum, 301 Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 318
Bethlehem Steel, 42 CAM ship, 184
Bice, Commander A., 293 Cambridge University, 57, 241
Bidwell, Rear Admiral R.E.S., 186, 189, 236 Cameron, L.S., 294
Bikini Atoll, 205 Campbell, Lieutenant Commander A.C., 178, 179
Bihnguahsm, 305, 306 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 255
Birch, Commander J., RNR, 173 Canadian Armed Forces, 290
Bird, Lieutenant Commander R., 212, 242 Canadian Army, 133, 189, 231, 320; Air-Sea Trans-
Bismarck (German), 65, 95, 184 portable (CAST) Brigade, 320, 321; Brigade
Black Pit, see Air gap Group (Korea), 225; Canadian Scottish Regiment,
Bleriot, Louis, 35 170; Carleton and Yorks, 135; First Canadian
Bletchley Park, 101 Army, 167; First Canadian Army Tank Brigade,
Bhss, Commander P.M., RN, 129 135; First Canadian Division, 75, 135, 147; Le
Bhtzkrieg, 77 Regiment de la Chaudiere, 170, 171; Princess
Blockade, 16, 19, 43, 218, 260 Patricia’s Light Infantry, 225; Queen’s Own Rifles,
Blyskawika (Pohsh), 159-65 239; Royal Canadian Regiment, 40; Royal 22nd,
Boak, Lieutenant Commander E.E., 165, 166 135, 306; Third Canadian Division, 170; West
Boarding, 115 Nova Scotians, 135
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 17, 18, 79, 253 Canadian Government Merchant Marine, 52, 59
Bordeaux, 80 Canadian Joint Staff, Washington, 143
Borden, Sir Robert, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 47, 48, 52, Canadian National Railway, 52
55, 56 Canadian National Steamships, 75
Boscawen, Admiral E., RN, 15, 16 Canadian Naval Electronics Laboratory, 245
Boston, 40, 49, 52, 114, 261, 268, 270 Canadian North Atlantic Command, 236
Boulton, Commodore A.G., 214 Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), 20, 21
Bourassa, Henri, 26, 27, 29 Canadian Vickers, 42, 46, 235, 276
Bovey, Lieutenant Commander J., 230 Cann, Midshipman M., 32
Boyle, Vice Admiral D., 311-15 Canso, 50
Brainard, Vice Admiral R.M., USN, 111, 126, 142, Cap Chat, 117, 119
144 Cap de la Madeleine, 117, 118
Brand, Captain E.S., 69, 111, 113, 192-95 Cape Breton, 15, 50, 63
Bras d’Or Lakes, 245, 298 Cape Chidley, 250
Brest, 16, 77, 80, 160, 163, 172 Cape Cod, 49, 112
Briggs, Lieutenant Commander W.E., 104, 106, 108 Cape Farewell, 101
Bristol, Rear Admiral A.L., USN, 107, 111 Cape Hatteras, 112
British alliances (France, Japan, Cape Horn, 134
Russia), 23 Cape Race, 99, 109, 126
British Columbia, 95 Cape Sable, 29
British Empire, 22, 23, 29, 33 Caravel, 13
British Naval Discipline Act, 26 Caribbean (West Indies), 14, 16, 17, 24, 28, 62, 68,
British North America, 18 76, 95, 113, 115, 118, 125, 186, 208, 237, 263, 293
British Pacific Fleet, 200-03 Caribou, SS, 122, 177
Broadbent, Ed, 317 Caroline, SS, 19
Broadway, 191 Carpenter, Superintendent J., WRNS, 189
Brock, Captain E., 189, 190 Cartagena, 40
Brock, Major-General Isaac, 17 Cartier, Jacques, 13, 116
Brock, Rear AdmiralJV, 180, 207, 217, 219-22, 246, Casablanca, 133
263, 276, 283, 285, 288, 290, 291 Cat (Canadian Anti-Torpedo), 150, 179
Brock Report (Ad Hoc Committee Report on Naval Chamberlain, Joseph, 22, 23
Objectives), 276, 277, 298, 302 Chamberlain, Neville, 63
Brockington, L.W., 209 Champlain, Samuel de, 14
Brodeur, L.P, 24, 26, 28, 31, 32, 254, 307 Channel Islands, 160, 167
Brodeur, Lieutenant Commander N.D., 289 Charles I, 14
Brodeur, Rear Admiral VG., 27, 59-61, 143, 144 Charleston, 16, 200
Brown, Able Seaman G., 216-26 Charlottetown, 29, 117
Bruneval, 132 Chatham, 117, 119
Budge, Rear Admiral P.D., 207, 238 Chauncey, Commodore Isaac, USN, 18
Budget, 281, 284, 295, 301, 316, 324 Chebucto harbour, 15
Burchell, Rear Admiral T, 297 Cherbourg, 159, 163
Burgeo, SS, 177 Chernobyl, 323
Burgoyne, Major-General J., 16 Chesapeake Bay, 16, 18
350
INDEX
Chief of Defence Staff, 284, 305 129-31; SC7, 81; SC41, 100, 101; SC42, 100-07,
Chief of Naval Engineering and Construction, 146 126; SC43, 101, 102; SC44, 108; SC47, 112; SC48,
Chief of Naval Operations (U.S.) (CNO), 269 108; SC52, 109; SC94, 124, 125; SC97, 125;
Chief of Naval Staff, 59, 60, 85, 147, 148, 199, 206, SC107, 126-29; SC118, 137
209, 233, 236, 250, 264, 283, 284 Cook, Dr. E, 254
Chile, 35, 36 Cook, Captain James, RN, 15, 20, 30, 31
China, 216, 218, 220, 229 Cook,Jean, 178
China Sea, 13 Copas, Lieutenant E, 230
Chinnampo, 220-22, 227, 231 Corbett, Captain R.G., RN, 40
Chukchi Sea, 250 Cork, 45, 46
Churchill, Man., 249 CornwalHs, General Lord, 16
Churchill, Winston, 29, 34, 63-66, 73, 77, 85, 88, Coronel, 32, 39
98, 109, 129, 147, 158, 192, 205, 236, 243 Corsairs, see Privateering
“Civilianizing,” 305, 306 Corvette, 20, 65, 74, 75, 76, 86, 89, 96, 99, 117, 121;
Clark, Joe, 308 improved, 142; last, 319
Clark, Commander N.V., 178 Cosh, Lieutenant Commander D., 185
Clark, Able Seaman Tom, 134 Cossette, Rear Admiral J.O., 28
Claxton, Brooke, 208, 240, 281 Court martial, 29, 51
Closure (ParHament), 30 Craddock, Rear Admiral Sir C., RN, 32, 39, 40
Clyde Escort Force, 80, 85 Creba, Lieutenant D., 167
Clyde estuary, 80, 84, 178, 189 Creery, Commander R., 214
Coastal Command, 67, 136, 149 Creery, Rear Admiral W.B., 78, 79, 85, 202, 203
Coastal Forces, 166 Crosswell, Lieutenant G., 275
Coates, Robert, 308 Crowsnest, The, 112, 124, 198
Coke, Vice Admiral Sir C., RN, 46 Cruisers: AppoUo class, 25, 27; Boadicea class, 26;
Cold War, 21, 205, 262, 293, 325, 326 Bristol class, 26, 39
Coleman, Lieutenant Commander A.R., 133 Cuba, 14,260-73,311
College Militaire St. Jean, 306 Cunards, 17, 19
Colher, Vice Admiral A.L., 221, 222, 315 Curry, Captain A., 76
CoUishaw, Lieutenant R., RNAS, 52 Cutts, CaptainJ.M., 294, 296
Colonial Conference (1887), 21, 22; (1902) 23 Cypher, German, 41; Enigma, 98, 99; Hydra, 98,
Columbia River, 20 111; Triton, 98, 126, 138
Columbus, Christopher, 13 Cyprus, 10, 278
Combined Operations, 131, 134 Cyr, Surgeon Lieutenant Joseph, 229
Commander, Eastern Sea Frontiers, 113 Czechoslovakia, 63, 205, 294, 325
Commander-in-Chief America and West Indies (C-
m-C AWI), 46, 49 Daleby, SS, 128
Commander-in-Chief Canadian Northwest Atlantic Damage control, 188
(C-m-C CNA), 92, 144, 192 Dartmouth, N.S., 50, 52, 91, 196, 234
Commander-in-Chief Plymouth, 159 Datar, 245
Commander-in-Chief U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 109, 142, Davis, Rear Admiral S.M., 277
261 D-Day, 167, 169, 172
Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches (C-in-C Deep Brook, 145
WA), 88, 91, 128, 144 Defence estimates, 60, 62
Commanding Officer Atlantic Coast (COAC), 92 Defence pohcy, 294
Commerce raiding, 19, 24, 39 Defence Research Board, 282
Committee of Imperial Defence, 29 Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS), 192,
Commonwealth, 9, 190, 237 193
Compasses, 89, 124, 142, 147 De Havilland, 242, 299
Compeigne, 78 Delaware, 48
Conception Bay, 93 Demara, F.W., 229
Conditions of service, 198, 206, 209, 223, 224 Denmark, 206
Confederation, 19, 20 Dennison, Admiral R., USN, 261, 270, 272
Connolly, CaptainJ., 191 Department of Marine and Fisheries, 23
Connolly, John, 147 Department of National Defence (DND), 282
Conscription, 47, 76, 201 Department of Transport, 258, 259
Conservative Party (and Progressive Conservative Depth charge, 41, 48, 83, 109, 172, 179
Party), 21, 25, 26, 29, 56, 308, 316, 321 Desbarats, G., 28, 59
Controller of Ship Construction and Repairs, 193 Destroyer escorts (DDE): “Cadillacs,” 235, 312;
Convoy, 14, 17, 33, 40, 44, 45, 47, 51, 53, 54, 65, 66, Mackenzie class, 234, 308; Restigouche class, 234,
68, 69, 71, 73, 111, 117, 140, 155, 167, 238; 248, 262, 268, 277; St. Laurent class, 42, 234, 248,
Boston-Halifax, 113, 179; Bucket Brigade, 113; 277, 314
Russian, 108, 112, 165, 174 Destroyer, helicopter (DDH), 236; Tribal class, 285,
Convoy Commodore, 102 295,304,305,312,315
Convoy terminal: Halifax, 49; Quebec, 50, 51; Destroyers, 233; Elbing class, 161-63; four stackers,
Sydney, 49, 99; New York, 49, 113 85, 86, 107; Narvik class, 161, 163; River class, 85;
Convoys: HC 12, 49; HX 1, 73; HX 79, 81; HX 113, Rolls-Royce, 59, 60; Tribal class, 65, 75, 146, 156,
99; HX 280, 151; HXS 300, 155;JW 55B, 159; 200, 204
ON 127, 125; ON 166, 138; ON 202/ONS 18, Detroit, 17
149; ONS 5, 140, 141; ONS 115, 124; ONS 154, Deutschland (German), 43, 51, 74
351
DeWolf, Vice Admiral H.G., 8, 61, 64, 81, 83, 85, 87, Estevan Point Lighthouse, 96
88, 143, 158-65, 185-89, 212, 214, 247, 248, 277 Exercise Brave Lion, 321
Deyo, Captain M., USN, 107 Exercise Mariner, 237
Diefenbaker,John, 9, 264, 265, 270, 273, 281, 300 Exercise Nanook, 249
Dieppe, 132, 245, 298
Director of Naval Intelligence, 69 Faa di Bruno (Italian), 83
Director of Personnel, 86 Faeroe Islands, 177
Director of Plans, 87 Fairey Aviation, 234
Director of Trade, 69 Falcon, CGS, 23
Dirigibles, 52 Falkland Islands, 39, 317
Disarmament, 8, 56, 60; arms reduction, 324 Falls, Admiral R.H., 242, 271, 293, 294, 314
Discipline, 147, 210 Famagusta, 278
Distant Early Warning line (DEW line), 256 Farallones Islands, 38
Divisional system, 198 Farrow, Lieutenant Commander J., 191
Dobson, Lieutenant Commander A.H., 124, 136, Father Point (Pointe-au-Pere), 119
149 Fenian Brotherhood, 19
Dockyards, 55, 65, 71, 285, 298; British, 138; Fire Island Light, 49
Esquimalt, 24, 36; Halifax, 24, 31, 46, 48, 91, 146, Fisher, Admiral LordJ., RN, 30, 31
289; Londonderry, 112; St.John’s, 146 Fisheries patrol, 322
Donitz, Crosadmiral Karl, 53, 68, 69, 74, 77, 80, 94, Fisheries Protection Service, 20, 23, 24, 27
98, 101, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 128, Fisherman’s Reserve, 74
133, 136, 137, 141, 151, 168, 175-77, 179, 182 Fishing, 13-15, 17, 20, 21, 311, 325, 326
Doppler, 66, 82 Five-year plan, 7
Dornfontein, 49 Flag Officer Atlantic Coast (FOAC), 236, 247, 261
Downie, Captain P, RN, 18 Flag Officer Newfoundland Force (FONF), 143
Drake, Sir Francis, 30 Flag Officer Pacific Coast (FOPC), 247
Dreadnoughts, 24-26, 29, 34 Flannagan, Lieutenant J., 294
Dresden (German), 39, 40 Fleet Air Arm, 67, 184, 212, 213
Drifters, 47 Fleet train, 200
Drydocks: Esquimalt, 20; Halifax, 20; subsidy, 29 Fleury, Lieutenant-General E, 288
Dubois, Sub-Lieutenant R., 294 Florida, 17, 113
Duff, Rear Admiral, RN, 44 Formosa, 201, 216
Dunkirk, 77, 94, 192 Forrester, Lieutenant D., 187
Dutch Harbour, 95 Forteau Bay, 118
Dutch navy, 14 Foster, C., 25
Dyer, Vice Admiral K.L., 124, 261-72, 284, 286, 288 Fotheringham, Lieutenant Commander J.B., 214,
242, 295
Eames, Michael, 299 Foxe Basin, 257
East Coast Patrols, 45, 46, 50, 51, 60 Foyle River, 139
East Germany, 325 France, 13, 14, 16, 23, 33, 41, 46, 63, 77-79, 175,
Easton, Lieutenant Commander A.H., 124, 173 205
E-boats, 161, 166 Franklin, Captain Sir John, RN, 249, 253
Edwards, Lieutenant Commander G.C., 185 Fraser-Harris, Commander A.F., 227
Edwards, Commodore G.I., 299, 300, 315 Free French navy, 93
Egersund, 165 French language, 28, 31, 57, 240, 241, 306, 307
Egg Island, 179 French-language units (FLU), 306
Egypt, 239 French navy, 14, 17
Eire, 139 French Revolution, 17
Eisenhower, General D.D., 169 Frewer, Captain EC., 130, 131, 271, 274
Elbing class (German), 161; T29, 161; T24, 162, 163; Frigates, 96, 145, 151, 233, 248, 269; general pur-
T27, 162 pose, 276, 277, 285; patrol, 314, 316, 317, 322
Elections, 21, 29, 33, 47, 56, 281, 308, 317, 321, 324 Frobisher, Martin, 249, 253
Electric Boat Company, 36, 42 Frobisher Bay, 250, 257, 270, 313
Electronic intelligence (Elint), 262, 311 Frontenac, Comte de, 14
Elizabeth II, 237 Fuelling at sea, 130, 226, 312
Ellesmere Island, 254 Fuller, Lieutenant T, 166
Ellis, Petty Officer S., 123 “Funnel,” 72
English Channel, 16, 35, 77, 79, 94, 159 Fur trade, 13, 14, 20
Equipment shortage, 144, 147 Fyfe, Commander G.M. 308
Escort carriers, 131, 138-41, 144, 145, 149, 154, 186
Escort groups: 6th, 157, 169, 174; 9th, 169, 174; Gallipoli, 132
24th, 100; B7, 140, 141; Cl, 129, 136, 137, 154; Galt, 190
C2, 124, 137, 141, 149, 151; C3, 124, 137; C4, Gander, 111
125, 126, 137; C5, 149, 177; EG6, 177; EG9, 149, Garrard,,Lieutenant G.H., 134
178;EG11, 154, 169, 173;EG12, 154, 169, 172, Gaspe, 10, 13, 33, 40, 48, 116-19
173, 174;EG25, 180;EG26, 180 Gas turbine, 299, 304
Escort squadrons (Canadian): 1st, 271; 3rd, 269; 5th, Geneva Convention, 157
268; 7th, 269; 9th, 269 George III, 20
Esquimalt, 11, 24, 27, 36, 38, 61, 73, 95, 96, 175, 201, George VI and Elizabeth, 64, 191
203,279 George’s Bank, 262
352
INDEX
Georgia Strait, 73 Halsey, Admiral W., USN, 201

German, Commander A.B., 8, 11, 269 Hamburg, 182
German, Commander P.B., 27, 28, 118, 298 Hamilton, 246, 301
German, W.M., 28 Hampton Roads, 47
German navy, 22, 24, 43, 63 Han River, 225
Germany, 22-24, 29, 33; surrender, 182, 195 Hanbury, Lieutenant Commander R., 180
Gibraltar, 107, 157 Hanington, Commander D., 245
Gironde River, 78 Hannam, Able Seaman J., 163
Gjoa, 254 Hanover, SS, 77
Gjoa Haven, 254 Harding, President Warren, 56
Glassco, J.G., 282 ' ' Harkness, Douglas, 263-65, 270
Glassco Commission, 282, 284 Harbour defence, 75, 93, 119, 122
Glider bomb, 158 Hartwig, Lieutenant Commander P (German navy),
Globe and Mail, 287 118-20,122
Gnat torpedo, 150, 154, 168, 172, 175, 177, 180 Hathaway, Midshipman J., 32
Gneisenau (German), 65, 166 Hawaii, 237
Goering, Reich Marshal H., 79 Hawke, Admiral Lord, RN, 16
Golby, Lieutenant Commander T.M., 118, 134 Hebrides, 177
Goose Bay, 118 Hedgehog, 124, 147, 172, 174
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 324, 325 Heinernan, Commander P, USN, 138
Gordon, Lieutenant A., RN, 21, 24 Helicopter: anti-submarine, 9, 11, 241, 243, 262,
Gordon, Walter, 284 271, 303; H04S, 242; Sea King, 9, 11, 243, 277,
Gorshkov, Admiral Sergei, 311, 320 285,294-96,318,323
Gouzenko, Igor, 205 Hellyer, Paul, 277-79, 281-92, 309
Graf Spee (German), 74 Henderson, Lieutenant S., 130
Grand Banks, 50, 90, 247, 262, 311 Hendry, Surgeon Lieutenant G., 125, 126
Grand Fleet, 34, 43 Hennessy, Vice Admiral R.L., 124, 297
Grant, Vice Admiral H.T., 86, 202, 206, 233, 236, Henry III, 44
241,250 Henry IV (France), 13
Grant, CaptainJ.M., 60, 240 Hernandez, 20
Grasse, Admiral Conte de, 16 Heyda, Lieutenant Commander W. (Geman navy),
Gray, Lieutenant R.H., 201 177
Great Britain, 33, 41, 63, 73, 156, 190, 205, 216, 253 Hibbard, Rear Admiral J.C., 79, 85, 100-08, 126,
Great Depression, 60, 62 145, 157, 164, 207
Great Lakers, 52 Hickey, Rear Admiral R.F., USN, 231, 232
Great Lakes, 16, 17, 19, 21, 75 High-frequency direction finder (HF/DF; huff-duff),
Great Lakes Training Centre, 246 42, 80, 98, 112, 123, 127-30, 141, 142, 188, 271
Great War, see World War One Hiroshima, 47, 202, 223
Greece, 175 Hitler, Adolf, 60, 63-65, 68, 69, 73, 77-79, 111, 133,
Greenland, 99, 101, 109 137, 182
Greenland-Iceland-U.K. (GIUK) gaps, 266, 312 HMCS (His/Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship): Acadia,
Greenock, 84, 85, 178 75; Agassiz, 42, 90; Alberni, 90, 101-07, 174;
Greenwich, 281 Algonquin, 165, 166, 170, 171, 187, 188, 237; II,
Greenwood, 266 2>\5; Amherst, 127, 128-, Annan, 177, l7S;Armen-
Greer, R., WRCNS, 203 tieres, 53; Assiniboine, 75-77, 107, 124, 125, 147,
Gretton, Commander R, RN, 140, 146 173; Athabaskan, 157-65, 317; II, 208, 210, 216,
Grey, Lord, 28 219- 23, 225-27, 231, 317; III, 317; Aurora, 7, 56,
Groos, Lieutenant Commander D.W., 173, 210, 288, 57; Avalon, 93; II, 93; Battleford, 130; Beacon Hill,
289 180; Bonaventure, 10, 241-43, 262, 266, 271, 274,
Grubb, Lieutenant F, 102 275, 277, 278, 286, 293-96, 305; Bras d’Or, 298-
Guadalcanal, 199 301, 305; Buckingham, 243; Galgary, 149; Gamrose,
Guantanamo, 116 151; Canada (CGS), 23, 24, 27, 118; Cape Scott,
Guerre de course, 17, 43, 44, 74 269; Caraquet, 169; Cartier, 50; Cayuga, 216-18,
Gulf Escort Force, 117 220- 22, 226, 229, 231; Cedarwood, 250; Charnbly,
Gulf of Maine, 49 90, 99, 102, 105-07, 110, 149, 180; Champlain, 59,
Gulf of Mexico, 113 62; Charlottetown, 119; Chaudiere, 151-53, 174;
Gulf of St. Lawrence, 40, 43, 45, 50, 99, 116, 176; Chebogue, 177; Chilliwack, 130, 151-53; Clayoquot,
closed, 120 119, 178, 180; Coaticook, 155; Cobalt, 90; Columbia,
Gunnery, anti-aircraft, 158 85; Collingwood, 90, 99; Conestoga, 190; Cormorant,
304; Cornwallis, 145, 208, 266; Crescent, 208, 210,
Hague Conventions, 34, 73 212; Crusader, 212, 213, 230-32, 244; Dawson, 96;
Hague Peace Conference, 24 Drumheller, 141, \42; Drummondville, \\7; Dunver,
Haiti, 115 \77; Esquimau, 180-82; Ettrick, 179; Fennel, 151-
Halifax, 7, 11, 15-20, 26, 28, 29, 32, 36, 40, 45-49, 53; Fraser, 9, 10, 62, 73, 77-79, 81, 82, 278, 279;
73, 75, 92, 95, 96, 113, 114, 121, 122, 145, 146, Gatineau, 151-53; Georgian, 120; Grandrnere, 122;
150, 176, 178, 189, 191, 192, 195, 200, 204, 206, Grilse, 276; Haida, 87, 158-65, 185, 206, 230, 231;
229, 244, 250, 261, 262, 266, 270, 302, 306; Halifax, 323; Hespeler, 177; Hochelaqa, 50; Huron,
explosion, 32, 47; riots, 195-99 158-65, 208, 225, 231; II, 315; Iroquois, 157-65,
Halifax Ghronicle, 27 207, 209, 230, 231; //, 311, 315; Kenogami, 101-07;
Halifax Herald, 27 Kirkland Lake, 178; Kootenay, 174; Labrador, 239,
353
250, 251, 255, 256-59; La Hulloise, 180, 237; Levis, Holloway, Leading Seaman, 118
108; Louisburg, 133; Mackenzie, 9, 10, 269, 278, Hollywood, 191
279; Magnificent, 204-06, 208, 210, 211, 213, 225, Holms, Commander W.B., 157
234, 237-39, 241-43, 251; Magog, 177; Margaree, Hong Kong, 11, 95, 202, 203, 220
81, S2;Matane, 154, 174; Mayflower, 108; Moose Honshu, 201
Jaw, 102, 105, 106, 115; Morden, 125, 149, 150; Hope, Commodore A., 210
Nabob (HMS), 186-88, 212; Naden, 96; Napanee, Horton, Admiral Sir M., RN, 91, 128, 131, 138, 144,
130; New Glasgow, 180; Niagara, 85; Niobe, 26-29, 147
36, 39, 40, 47, 59; II, 178; Nootka, 206, 225-28, Hose, Rear Admiral W., 27, 30, 37-39, 46, 48, 50-
230, 231; Norsyd, 177; Oakville, 114-16, r25; 52, 56-58, 59-61, 69, 246, 285
Ojibwa, 277, 293; Onondaga, 293; Ontario, 202, Houghton, Rear Admiral F.L., 210, 214
206-10; Orillia, 90, 99, 101-08; Ottawa, 63, 74, 77, Hovercraft, 298
82, 83, 85, 99, 125, 126, 132; II, 149, 173, 174, Howe, C.D., 146, 236
306; Owen Sound, 154; Patrician, 56, 59, 298; Hudson Bay, 14, 15, 206, 250
Patriot, 56, 59; Port Arthur, 133; Preserver, 42, 295, Hudson River, 14
300, 312; Prescott, 137; Prince David, 75, 95, 96, Hudson Valley, 15
170, 171, 175; Prince Henry, 75, 95, 96, 170, 171, Hudson’s Bay Company, 16, 20
175; Prince Robert, 75, 95, 96, 175, 202, 203; Prince Hungary, 325
Rupert, 154; Protecteur, 295, 312; Provider, 271, 277, Hurl, Warrant Officer D., 219
293, 312; Puncher (HMS), 186-89; Qu’Appelle, 172, Hvalfjord, 89, 106
173; Quebec, 237, 238 {see also Uganda); Raccoon, Hydrofoil, 245, 246, 298-301, 305
119; Rainbow, 26, 27, 30, 32, 36, 37, 57; Regina, Hydrographic Services, 23, 24
133, 174; Restigouche, 63, 74, 77-79, 123, 126-28, Hydrophones, 35, 41, 48, 66, 80, 120
144, 172, 173; Rimouski, 138; Royal Roads, 96, 239,
240, 315; Sackville, 124, 149, 150, 319, 320; Iberville, P. le M. d’, 14
Saguenay, 59, 62, 74, 77, 83, 124, 129, 299; St. Icebergs, 251
Catharines, 151-53; St. Clair, 85; St. Croix, 124, Icebreakers, 251
125, 136, 137, 149, 150; St. Francis, 85, 149; Saint Iceland, 74, 88, 99, 109, 112, 128, 206, 238
John, 174, 180; St. Laurent, 9, 10, 62, 64, 73, 74, 77, Idzumo (Japan), 39
78, 80, 83-85, 129-31, 154; II, 234, 236, 243, 278, He de Bas, 160
279; Sarnia, 180, 181; Saskatchewan, 112, 173; He Ste. Jean, 15
Shawinigan, 111, 181; Shearwater, 213, 242, 269; Imperial Defence Conference, 24, 25, 55, 56
Shediac, 137; Sioux, 165, 166, 170, 171, 187, 188, Inchon, 218-20, 222, 227
216, 221, 225, 226, 231; Skeena, 11, 59, 62, 77, 79, Indian Ocean, 13, 278
87, 101-07, 124, 129, 172, 173; Snowberry, 149; Integration, 11, 58, 280-86
Somers Isles, 155; Spikenard, 112; Stadacona, 190, International Commission for Control of the North-
196-98, 203; Strathadam, 180; Swansea, 154, 174, west Atlantic Fishery, 311
237, 250; Feme, 174; The ford Mines, 180; Transcona, Inuit, 250
178; Trawler 32, 50; Trentonian, 180; Trillium, 138; Ireland, 41, 74, 80
Uganda, 200-03, 237, {see also Quebec); Valleyjield, Iron Curtain, 205, 304, 325
154; Vancouver, 59, 62, 96; Venture, 63, 241, 306, Irvine, Lieutenant T, 256
307, 308; Ville de Quebec, 133; Vimy, 53; Warrior, Isherwood, Chief Officer D., WRNS, 190
189, 204-06, 211, 212, 250; Waskesiu, 151; Wetaski- Italy, 23, 29, 33, 63, 206; surrenders and joins Allies,
win, 90, 124; Weyburn, 10, 118, 133, 134; Wind- 135
flower, 110; Ypres, 53 Iwojima, 200
HMS (His/Her Majesty’s Ship): Algerine, 37-39, 40;
Albrighton, 173; Alderney, 266; Ark Royal, 74; Jackson, Lieutenant Commander R., 103
Ashanti, 159-65; Astute, 266; Audacity, 11, 107, 184; Jacques, Petty Officer C., 180
Bayntun, 151; Bellona, 159-65; Berwick, 74; Bicker- Jamaica, 77, 268
ton, 181; Biter, 139, 140; Black Prince, 159-65; James, L, 14
Burwell, 129; Calcutta, 78; Celandine, 125, 127; Janowski, W. von, 122
Charybdis, 20; Courageous, 14, 188; Dianthus, 125; Japan, 11, 22, 23, 39, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 95, 111, 199-
Dreadnought, 24, 29; Duke of York, 159; Duncan, 202, 216; surrender, 202, 203
146; Dunedin, 16; Egret, 158; Enterprise, 202, 206; Japanese navy, 63, 67, 95
Eskimo, 159-65; Excalibur, 244; Fidelity, 130, 131; Jarman, C., 195
Forester, 154; Forfar, 84; Formidable, 201; Forth, 93; Jelhcoe, Admiral Sir J., RN, 43-45, 55, 65, 112
Good Hope, 32; Harvester, 82, 83; Icarus, 151-53; Jig Red beach, 172
Itchen, 149, 150;Javelin, 159-65; Kent, 165; Lagan, John A. Macdonald, CCS, 259
149, 150; Mauritius, 164; Nene, 149; Newcastle, 38, Johnson, Lieutenant Commander B.D., 42, 60
39; North Star, 251; Nubian, 159; Polyanthus, 149, Johnson, Captain B.L., 36, 42, 56
150; Premier, 189; Prince of Wales, 184; Repulse, 184; Joint Maritime Warfare School, 247, 262
Royal Oak, 14; St. Lawrence, 18; Salisbury, 120; Jones, Captain B., RN, 161, 163, 164
Shearwater, 24, 37-39, 40; Statice, 174; Stockport, Jones, Lieutenant B., 36
121; Tartar, 159-65; Toward, 130; Trent, 19; Tri- Jones, Vice Admiral G.C., 56, 92, 108, 110, 113, 121,
umph, 218; Trumpeter, 187; Ursa, 164; Valiant, 135; 148, 186, 199,206,213,249
Victorious, 201; Victory, 18; Viscount, 84, 85; War- Jones, Admiral John Paul, USN, 210
spite, 135; Western Isles, 86, 137; Wivern, 134; York, Jones Act (U.S.), 59
14 Jutland, Battle of, 43
Hoffman, Lieutenant (German navy), 119
Holland, 68, 77, 167, 205, 218 Kamikazes, 201
354
INDEX
Karlsruhe (German), 40 Legate, Lieutenant R., 50

Kauffman, Rear AdmiralJ., USN, 145 Leipzig (German), 37-39
Keighley-Peach, Commodore, RN, 242 Lemp, Fritz, 73, 98
Kellock, Mr. Justice R., 196, 197 Lend Lease Act, 109, 186, 189
Kennedy, President J.F., 260, 263, 264, 269 Letters of marque, 13, 17
Key West, 115,243 Lewis and Clarke Expedition, 20
Keyes, Lieutenant A., RN, 36, 42 Liberal Party, 30, 56, 280, 281, 308, 316, 324
Khrushchev, Nikita, 270 Lippmann, Walter, 205
Kiel, 182 Liverpool, 80, 137
Kilbotn, 189 Lloyd George, D., 44
Killam, Lieutenant D., 167 Lloyd’s Coffee House, 44, 72
King, Commander C.A., 41, 115, 154 Lockeport, 48, 274
King, Admiral E., USN, 109, 112, 113, 143, 144 Logan, Captain W.H., 35, 36
King, W.L. Mackenzie, 56, 62-64, 73, 76, 77, 109, London, 79, 81, 156
121, 129, 144, 147, 201-03, 205, 206, 212, 250 Londonderry, 112, 138, 147
King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions (KR Lorient, 80, 160, 164
& AI), 26 Louisbourg, 15, 48, 132
Kingsmill, Vice Admiral Sir. C., 25-28, 30, 34, 36, Louisiana, 14
39,46,47,50,51,55,56 Lubeck, 182
Kingston, 17, 18, 63 Luftwaffe, 77, 79, 135
Kang William Island, 254 Lusitania, SS, 41, 42, 46
Kirke, Sir David, 14 Lusk, Sub-Lieutenant C., 52
Kirkpatrick, Lieutenant Commander J., 166, 167 Luxembourg, 205
Kiska, 95, 96 Luz Blanca, SS, 49, 51
Kite balloons, 52, 75
Knights, Stanley, 245 MAC ships, 149, 155, 184
Knights of Columbus, 198 MacArthur, General D., USA, 216, 218, 225
Knowlton, Rear Admiral J.G., 234 MacBrien, Major-GeneralJ.H., 58, 59
Korea: North, 216-32; Republic of (ROK), 216-32; MacBrien, Lieutenant J.J., 225
War, 8, 216-32 Macdonald, Angus L., 144, 146, 147
Kretschmer, Lieutenant Commander O. (German Macdonald, D.S., 300, 310
navy), 98, 176 Macdonald, Sir John A., 21, 24
Krupps, 68 MacDonald, Commander W.B., RN, 26
Kuala Lumpur, 9 MacIntyre, Lieutenant C., 294
Kure, 223, 224 Mackenzie, Alexander, 20
Mackenzie, Ian, 64
Labrador, 247 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 19
Lachine Canal, 192 MacLean, Surgeon Rear Admiral B., 82, 85
Lady Nelson, SS, 59 Maclean’s, 291
Lady Rodney, SS, 59 MacLure, Leading Stoker W., 163
Lafayette, Marquis de, 16 MacMillan, Lieutenant R., 181
La Have, 49 Macneill, Commander Isobel, 190, 247
La Havre, 167 Madison, President J., 17
Lake Champlain, 16, 18 Magdalena Bay, 37
Lake Erie, 17, 18 Magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), 262
Lake Ontario, 15, 17, 18 Magor, Sub-Lieutenant N., 52
Lamontaigne, M., 303 Maine Border Dispute, 19
Lancaster Sound, 253, 318 Mainguy, Rear Admiral D.N., 316
Landing craft, 133, 170, 171; 55th and 61st LCA Mainguy, Vice Admiral E.R., 76, 82, 83, 85, 99, 126,
Flotillas, 134, 135; 80th and 81st LCM Flotillas, 198, 200-02, 207, 209, 236, 241, 315
134, 135; 260th Canadian Flotilla, 171; 262nd Mainguy Report, 207-11
Canadian Flotilla, 171 Maintenance, 107, 108, 123, 126, 129, 145, 146,307;
Land’s End, 174 refits, 314
Landymore, Rear Admiral W.M., 82, 85, 210, 230, Maitland-Dougall, Lieutenant W., 36, 42
242,271,285-91,293,305 Makarios, Archbishop, 10, 278
La Pallice, 80, 160 Malacca Strait, 9
Larsen, Staff-Sgt. H., RCMP, 255 Malaya, 184
Lascars, 193 Malaysia, 9, 278
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 22-26, 29, 31, 32, 34, 71, 234, Malin, Able Seaman R., 79
325 Malta, 135
Law, Commander C.A., 166, 167, 257 Manchuria, 60, 229
Lawrence, Sub-Lieutenant H., 115 Manfield, Commander W., 61, 62
Lay, Rear Admiral H.N., 78, 79, 85, 143, 185-89, Manhattan, SS, 259, 318
205, 212 Manila, 202
League of Nations, 56, 60, 63 Manning, 92, 96, 108, 194
Leatham, Admiral, RN, 159, 160, 164 Mansfield, Rear AdmiralJ., RN, 145
Leckie, Air Marshal R., 213 Manuel, Petty Officer T, 180
Le Devoir, 26, 27 Manus, 202
Lee, Group Captain W., RCAF, 282, 285, 287 Manzanillo, 95, 208
Leeming, Commander J.M., 256 Marco Polo, 19
355
Marine Industries Ltd., 299 Moville, 139

Maritime air, 234, 246 Mulberry, 132, 168, 172
Maritime Command (MARCOM), 284, 289, 297, Mulroney, Brian, 308, 321, 322, 324
298,302,307,310,320 Munich, 64
Maritime Commander, Pacific (MARPAC), 318 Murmansk, 77, 158, 165
Maritime Headquarters Atlantic, 247 Murray, Chief Petty Officer E, 163
Maritime policy, 8, 53, 59, 236, 321 Murray, Brigadier GeneralJ., 16
Martinique, 16 Murray, Rear Admiral L.W., 68, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96,
Maryland, 48 99, 101, 107-11, 121, 126, 143-45, 179, 182, 186,
Massachusetts, 14 192, 196-99, 209
Mattison, Warrant Officer A., 47 Musgrave, Captain R, 60
Mazatlan, 37 Mussolini, Benito, 63
McBride, Sir R., 35 Mutiny, 157, 186, 194, 207-11
McCormick, Admiral Lynde, USN, 236, 237
McKillop, Commander A., RN, 154, 173 Nagasaki, 202
M’Clure, Captain R., RN, 253 Nanaimo, 37, 63
M’Clure Strait, 254 Nanking, 208
McNaught, Able Seaman C., 83 Nanoose Bay, 207
McNaughton, Major-General A.G.L., 60, 62 Naples, 175, 239
McPhee, Commander A., 243 Narvik class (German), 161; Z 24, 163; Z 32, 163
Mediterranean, 29, 41, 53, 111, 133, 166, 184, 311 National Defence Act, 290, 297
“Meet the Navy,” 191 National Defence Headquarters, (NDHQ), 284
Meighen, A., 56 National Research Council (NRC), 110
Melrose Abbey, SS, 82 National Union of Seamen, 195
Melville Island, 255 Nationaliste Party, 26, 29
Merchant, L., 264 NATO, 8, 11, 215, 225, 233-37, 247-48, 258, 261,
Merchant navy; Alhed, 192; American, 16, 18; 264, 283, 285, 294, 295, 298, 301, 302, 306, 310,
British, 192; Canadian, 34, 52, 53, 59, 192-95, 312,315,316,321-24,326
236, 321; Japanese, 199 Naval Aid Bill, 30
Merchant Seaman Order, 195 Naval air squadrons: 881 (RN), 189; 821 (RN), 189;
Merchant Seamen’s Club, 198 803, 212; 825, 212; VS 880, 294, 296
Messina, 135 Naval aviation, 184-86, 212-15, 234, 241, 295, 303
Metis, 121 Naval Board, 147, 156, 185, 212, 265
Mexico, 37 Naval Boarding Service, 194
Miami, 112 Naval Central Drawing Office, 235
Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF), 122-28, 139, Naval control of shipping, 49, 65, 69, 302
145, 172, 185 Naval Control Service (NCS), 73, 192
Mid-Ocean Meeting Point (MOMP), 89, 109 Naval Control Service Officer, 73, 192
Midway, Battle of, 95, 184, 199 Naval estimates, 56, 287
Miles, Commodore G.R., 83, 85, 158, 208, 214 Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC) Gaspe, 10, 116,
Miller, Air Chief Marshal E, 264, 265, 284, 288 118,121
Mines, 47, 49, 51, 65, 74, 75, 160, 168, 176, 219-21, Naval Officer in Charge (NOIC) Sydney, 177
227, 228, 233, 322 Naval Officer Training Centre, 307. 308
Minesweepers, 63, 71, 75, 169, 170, 247, 248, 322; Naval pohcy, 21, 25, 29, 33, 53, 55, 71, 148, 182
Bangor class, 75, 76, 96, 117, 169, 233; Bay class, Naval power, 22, 310
234, 308; 31st Canadian Minesweeping Flotilla, Naval Research Estabhshment (NRE), 244, 245, 298
169,170 Naval Reserve, 23, 301, 302, 322
Minesweeping, 48, 75, 89, 169, 170 Naval Service Act, 26, 30, 31
Mirror landing aid, 241 Naval Service Headquarters (NSHQ), 7, 37, 64, 72,
Missiles: Cuban crisis, 260-73; Exocet, 317; Har- 110, 143, 145, 189,265
poon, 317; nuclear, 293; Polaris, 260-62; Sea Naval tactical data systems, 245
Sparrow, 317; Sidewinder, 242; Soviet, 261, 268, Navy Island, 19
310, 320 Navy League of Canada, 23, 194
Moncel, Lieutenant-General R.W., 288 Navy ship design, 317
Monk, ED., 25-27 Nelles, Admiral P.W., 27, 59-61, 64, 67, 72, 73, 88,
Mont Blanc, SS, 47 96, 97, 121, 129, 131, 143, 144, 146-47, 148, 155,
Monte Carlo, 255 185,186
Montevideo, 74 Nelson, Admiral Lord H., RN, 21, 30, 37, 44, 79,
Montmorency, 15 209,325
Montreal, 15, 16, 18, 21, 26, 27, 42, 57, 95, 116, 121, Netherlands, see Holland
234,277,310 Neutrality patrol, 108
Montreal Gazette, 64 Nevis, 14
Moray Firth, 180 New Amsterdam, 14
Motor gunboats (MGB), 166, 167 New Carlisle, 122
Motor launches (Fairmile), 86, 117 New Democratic Party (NDP), 317, 323
Motor torpedo boats (MTB), 166, 167, 169; 29th New England, 15-17
Canadian Flotilla, 166, 167, 169; 65th Canadian New France, 14
Flotilla, 166, 167, 169; MTB 460, 167; MTB 459, New Severn, 14
167; MTB 463, 167; MTB bases, 167 New York, 14, 40, 41, 47, 113, 114, 116, 261, 268
Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis, RN, 132 New York Times, 41
356
INDEX
New Zealand, 25, 216 Raravanes, 35

Newcombe, Commander, RN, 46 Rark Steamship Company, 195
Newfoundland, 13, 14, 16, 40, 45, 88, 93, 94, 99, Rarry, Lieutenant W., RN, 253, 259
106, 111, 129, 139, 144, 190, 247, 269 Rarry Channel, 251, 318
Newfoundland Escort Force (NEF), 88, 92, 96, 99, Raterson, J.V., 35, 36
107, 109, 111, 129 Ratton, General G., 175
Newfoundland Reserve, 48 Ray, 61, 62, 198, 206, 207, 247, 301, 305
Newfy-Derry run, 112 Rearl Harbor, 95, 110, 184, 199, 266
Newport, 43, 49 Rearson, Chief Retty Officer DJ., 222
Niagara, 17 Rearson, Lester B., 206, 236, 280, 281, 283, 288, 290
Nielsen, Erik, 321 Reary, Robert, 254
Nixon, Commander A.E., 32 Reel Sound, 254
Nixon, Captain C.R, 174, 269 Reggy’s Cove, 51
Noble, Admiral Sir R, RN, 88, 91, 106, 195 Rerce Rock, 116
Nootka Sound, 20 Rermanent Joint Board on Defence (RJBD), 63, 109,
Norfolk, 186, 189, 236, 261, 262, 270, 300 143
Normandy, 168 Rerry, Lieutenant Oliver, USN, 18
North America, 13, 45, 77 Rersian Gulf, 322
North American Air Defence Command (NORAD), Rharand, Donat, 319
242, 264, 265, 273 Rhilippines, 199
North Atlantic Treaty, 206 Riccadilly Circus, 82
North Role, 258 Rickford, Rear Admiral RJ., 77, 85, 138
North Sea, 43 Riers, Rear Admiral D.W., 78, 85, 123, 126-28, 144,
Northwest Rassage, 239, 249, 251, 253-56, 258, 318, 145, 165, 171, 177, 198,208
319 Piorwn (Rolish), 159-65
Northwest Staging Route, 249 Riraeus, 175
Norway, 77, 79, 94, 164, 165, 189, 206, 254, 320 Ritt, William, 15
Norwegian navy, 93 Rlains of Abraham, 15, 16
Nova Scotia, 14, 15, 43, 45, 146 Rlattsburgh, Battle of, 18
Nuclear power, 258, 261, 276, 323 Rlomer, Commander}., 229
Nuclear war, 246 Rlymouth, 77, 78, 157, 161
Nuclear weapons, 235, 260, 268, 281, 323; nuclear Rointe-aux-Trembles, 15
depth charge, 262 Roland, 324, 325
Nurnberg (German), 37-39 Rolar8, CGS,319
Polar Sea, USCG, 318, 319
O’Brien, Vice AdmiralJ.C., 269, 274, 289, 296, 297, Rolish navy, 93
298, 302 Rolson Iron Works, 23, 46
Official Languages Act, 306 Rort aux Basques, 177
Ogdensburg Agreement, 63, 97, 109 Port Fairy, SS, 82
Okanagan, 41 Rort Royal, 14
Okinawa, 200 Rort Said, 134, 239
Oland, Captain R., 73, 192, 194, 195 Rortsmouth, 195, 237
Oland, Colonel Sydney, 196 Rortugal, 13, 16, 130, 150, 206
Omaha Beach, 170 Round, Admiral Sir D., RN, 90, 113, 121, 147, 186
Operation Comeback, 219 Rowell, Retty Officer A., 115
Operation Crossroads, 205 Rratt, Commodore}., 270
Operation Dragoon, 175 Rratt,}ohn, 191
Operation Dredger, 172 Rrefontaine, Raymond, 23
Operation Drumroll, 111, 112, 116, 122 Rrentice, Captain}.D, 90, 91, 99, 101, 105, 129, 145,
Operation Goodwood, 187 154, 155,173,174, 180
Operation Hostile, 159 Rrevost, Major-General Sir G., 18
Operation Neptune, 163, 164, 168-74 Rrien, Lieutenant Gunther (German navy), 74, 98
Operation Sea Lion, 79 Rrince Edward Island, 15, 324
Operation Tiger, 162 Prince George, SS, 38
Operation Torch, 121, 128, 132-34 Rrince Rupert, 39
Operation Tunnel, 159 Rrivateering, 13, 14, 15, 43, 113
Organization of American States (OAS), 272, 326 Rroctor, Lieutenant-General H., 18
Ostend, 167 Rrogressive Conservative Rarty, see Conservative
Ottawa, 18, 35, 46 Rarty
Outerbridge, L., 198 Rrovincial Marine, 17, 20
Oxholm, Lieutenant Commander B., 275 Ruerto Rico, 77, 275
Oxner, Chief Retty Officer A., 194, 195 Ruget Sound, 318
Rullen, Rear Admiral H.F., 91, 200, 241, 247, 311
Racific Ocean, 13, 19, 36, 39 Rullen, Captain T.C., 125, 257, 259, 312
Racific Squadron, 24 Rullen, Commander WJ.S., RN, 257
Racific volunteers, 201, 202 Rusan, 217, 218, 222,225
Racific war, 155, 186, 189, 199-203, 212 Rut-in Bay, Battle of, 18
Ralmer, Midshipman W., 32 Ruxley, Captain W.L., RN, 178
Ranama Canal, 27, 62, 73, 113, 186, 208, 256 Ryongyang, 220
Rapandreou, M., 175
357
“Q” ships, 41 Royal Flying Corps, 67

Quadra, B., 20 Royal Military College (RMC), 31, 240
“Q’J^rantine,” 260 Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), 35, 45, 52, 67
Quebec, 14, 18, 19, 26, 29, 33, 64, 116, 121, 132 Royal Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve (RNCVR),
Quebec Conference, 147, 186 33, 46, 48
Quebec Conservatives, 25 Royal Naval College, 25, 31, 239
Queen Anne’s War, 14 Royal Naval College of Canada, 26, 32, 42, 57
Queen Elizabeth Islands, 250 Royal Naval Reserve, 40, 41
Queenston Heights, 17 Royal Naval Staff College, 11, 281
QuiberonBay, 16 Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, 30
Quonset Point, 269 Royal Navy (RN), 7, 10, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24, 30, 34, 37,
45, 46, 48, 65, 71, 77, 79, 88, 174, 183, 199, 211,
Radar, 110, 122, 124, 141, 142, 166, 167, 175, 238, 249
246; ASV, 117; beacon, 93; decoy balloons, 149; Rules of War, 34
RX/C, 154; Sperry, 221; SWIC (“Swick”), 110, Rum, 134, 302
117, 123; Type 271, 110, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130, Rush-Bagot Agreement, 18, 19
132, 133, 137; Type 286, 80, 99, 110, 123, 124 Russell, Lieutenant Commander PFX., 173, 174
Radar search receiver, 17, 141, 149, 175, 246, 268 Russia, 20, 23, 33, 48, 73, 165; see also Soviet Union
Radio Berlin, 119 Rutherford, Lieutenant Commander L., 126
Radio telephones, 89, 99 Ryan, Lieutenant Commander D.P, 243
Raeder, Grosadmiral E. (German navy), 133, 137, 182 Ryan, S.P, 265, 273
Ramming, 115, 125, 180
Rankin, Commander A.H., 149, 231 Sable Island, 48, 50, 269
Rattlesnake class, 21 St. Hyacinthe, 145
Rayner, Vice Admiral H.S., 83-85, 158, 159, 164, St. Jean de Luz, 78
238, 248, 263, 264, 266, 269, 270, 272, 273, 278, Saint John, 19, 121
283,284,288,290 St.John’s, 14, 27, 40, 48, 88, 93, 94, 96, 101, 114, 131,
Razak, Tan, 9, 278 176,266,313
RCN/RCAF CoUege, 240 St. Laurent, Louis, 206, 217, 233, 236
Reagan, President R., 316, 324 St. Lawrence River, 13-15, 19, 48, 128
Reciprocity, 29 St. Malo, 160
Red Ensign, 195 St. Nazaire, 80, 132
Red Mike beach, 171 St. Pierre and Miquelon, 17, 50
Regular Officers Training Plan (ROTP), 241 St. Roch, RCMP, 255
Reid, Vice Admiral H.E., 143, 145, 206, 213, 241, St. Valery, 78
249, 250 Saipan, 199
Rescue ships, 104, 123, 127, 130 Salvation Army, 198
Rhineland, 63 Salvor, SS, 36
Richardson, J., 313 Sambro Light Vessel, 49, 51, 178-80
Richeheu, Cardinal, 14 San Diego, 37, 38
Rideau Canal, 18 San Francisco, 37, 38
Ridgway, General M., USA, 225 San Juan Island, 19
Robertson, Commodore O.C.S., 250, 251, 256, 258, Saratoga, 16
259 Sasebo, 217-19, 222, 223, 224
Romania, 325 Sassafrass, USCG, 177
Roosevelt, President Franklin, 63, 85, 109, 147 Saunders, Vice Admiral Charles, RN, 15
Rosyth, 43, 188 Saxon, Lieutenant D.R., 228
Rotheram, Captain H., RN, 213 Scapa Flow, 43, 74, 157, 187, 188, 200
Roy, Commander J.W.R., 82 Scharnhorst (German), 65, 159, 166
Royal Air Force (RAF), 52, 67, 179, 182, 237 Scheer, Admiral (German navy), 43
Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), 59, 67, 76, 111, Schull, Joseph, 11
136, 144, 184-86, 189, 206,207, 211-13, 225, 234, Sea ofjapan, 218
240, 246, 264; Air Force Headquarters, 143; Seaplanes, 35
Eastern Air Command, 143, 179; Maritime Air Seapower, 14, 21, 218, 325
Command, 247, 268, 272; #1 Group, 143; 423 Searchlights, 89, 103
Squadron, 177 Seattle, 35, 36, 186
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), 122, 250, Senate, 30
253,254,255 Senior Officer Escort (SOE), 89, 101, 103, 123
Royal Canadian Naval Air Service (RCNAS), 48, 51- Seoul, 225
53,55,185 Seven Years’ War, 15, 16
Royal Canadian Naval College, 7, 10, 27, 30, 47, 96, Shadforth, Lieutenant Commander H., 112
239, 240 Shakashima Islands, 201
Royal Canadian Naval Reserve (RCNR), 42, 58 Shelburne, 49, 182, 247, 261-62, 266, 269
Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR), Shepke, Lieutenant (German navy), 98
57, 58, 86, 180 Shipbuilding, 17, 19, 29, 34, 48, 53, 71, 76, 136, 146,
Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), 28, 30, 48, 53, 58, 71, 151, 155,234,248,300,305
75, 77, 142, 155, 199, 288, 290; 50th anniversary, Shiphandhng, 91, 226, 315
247; 75th anniversary, 319 Shipping: British, 16; Canadian, 19; losses, AUied,
Royal Canadian Navy (Reserve) (RCN(R)), 246 41, 43-45, 52, 53, 74, 85, 98, 113, 120, 122, 136,
Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, 234 138, 151, 164, 182;Japanese, 200
358
INDEX
Shipping Register of Liverpool, 19 14, 42, 56, 57; H-15, 42, 56, 57; Oberon class, 277,
Shipyards, 29, 52, 75, 89, 95, 96, 146 312,317
Shkval (U.S.S.R.), 263, 270 Suez Canal, 134, 200, 239
Shore Patrol, 191, 196, 197, 224 Sukarno, President, 9, 278
Sicily, 134, 135 Summerside, 117, 266, 324
Silver, Midshipman A., 32 Support groups, 131, 138, 140, 145, 149, 151
Simmons, Commander E.T., 105, 133, 180 Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (Saclant), 236,
Simpson, Commodore G., RN, 145, 147 261,315
Sinclair, Commander Adelaide, 190 SUSTOPS, 243, 271
Singapore, 10, 199 Sverdrup, Otto, 254
Sitka, 20 Sydney, Australia, 200, 203
“Slackers,” 192, 199 Sydney, N.S., 45-48, 99, 116, 177, 266
Slater, Lieutenant A.M., 227
Slave economy, 17 Tahchee, SS, 104, 106
Smith, Lead Stoker W., 294 Tanker convoys, 113, 115
Snorkel (snort), 151, 168, 175, 261, 262 Taranto, 52
Sonar, 66, 219, 235, 242-44, 258; variable depth Task Force 24, 111, 142
(VDS), 9, 244, 246, 300 Task Group Alfa, 262, 268, 270
Songjin, 227 Tate, Lieutenant C.LP, 154
Sonobuoys, 262, 268, 271 Tate, Commander D., 296
Sorel, 253 Taylor, Vice Admiral E.B., USN, 261, 262, 268-70,
SOSUS, 247,261,266,271 272
South America, 237 Taylor, Commander P, 221
Southern Pride, SS, 65 Taylor, Petty Officer, 128
Sovereignty, 23, 254, 259, 294, 310, 319 Tecumseh, 18
Soviet fleet, 261, 273, 278, 294, 311, 318, 320 Tenth Destroyer Flotilla, 159-65
Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.), 11, 205, 206, 216, 260-73, Terek (US.S.R.), 263
294, 316, 324; see also Russia Thames River, 167
Spam, 13, 16, 19,20, 157 Timber, 16, 17
Spain, O.G.V., 23, 24 Timbrell, Rear Admiral R.W., 77, 82, 85, 174, 236,
Spanish Civil War, 63, 66 243,278,311,313,314
Spanish navy, 14, 16 T/rpite (German), 65, 159, 165, 185, 187
Special Service Officer, Londonderry, 198 Tirpitz, Admiral A. von (German navy), 34, 39
Spee, Vice Admiral Graf von (German navy), 32, 36, Tisdall, Commodore P, 241
39 Tobermory, 86, 137
Spithead, 237 Tokyo, 201
Squid, 228 Torbay, 269
Standing Naval Force Atlantic (Stanavforiant), 315, Toronto, 23, 36, 245
319 Torpedo boats, 24
Starshell, 103, 105 Torpedoes, 22, 36, 41, 69, 109, 261, 262, 268; see also
Stalin, Joseph, 205, 233 Gnat
Steam, 22 Toulon, 16
Steam-powered catapult, 241 Trade, 8, 14, 16, 19, 21, 53, 54, 59, 60, 69, 195, 203,
Steele, Commander G.P., USN, 258 237, 320, 325
Stefansson, V., 255 Trade, British, 15, 17, 34, 39, 43, 44
Stephen, Lieutenant Commander G., 108, 154 Trade, China, 20
Stephens, Rear Admiral G., 28, 76, 146, 234 Trade, Scandinavian, 44
Stephens, Commander R. St. G., 276 Trade Division, 193
Stephenson, Commodore G., RN, 137 Trafalgar, Battle of, 18, 21
Stevens, Captain E.B., RN, 99, 106, 107 Train, Admiral H., USN, 316
Stirling, Rear Admiral M.G., 288 Trainbusters Club, 230, 231
Storey, Rear Admiral W.O., RN, 46 Training, 51, 67, 71, 76, 86, 87, 92, 99, 123, 136, 145,
Storrs, Commander A.H., 169 146, 209, 240, 285, 298, 304, 307
Strait ofBelle Isle, 10, 40, 51, 99, 109, 117, 118 Training, officers, 31, 51, 57, 67, 307, 308
Strait ofjuan de Fuca, 70 Treasury Board, 60
Strait of Magellan, 27 Treaty of Paris, 16
Strange, Captain W., 146-47 Treaty of Utrecht, 15
Strategic Air Command (SAC), 260, 263 Treaty of Versailles, 63, 68
Struble, Vice Admiral D., USN, 222 Treaty of Washington, 20, 56
Stubbs, Lieutenant Commander J.H., 124, 125, 158, Trial Island, 36
162,163 Triangle Run, 114
Sturdee, Rear Admiral, RN, 39 Trinidad, 113, 115,272
Subair Barrier, 266, 268, 269, 271 Triumph, SS, 50
Submarines, 22, 24, 25, 34-36, 258; Federal Ger- Trudeau, P.E., 291, 292, 294, 305, 308, 310, 325
man, 315; Holland type, 34; Japan, 96; RN, 42, Truman, President Harry S., 205, 216
266, 276; Soviet, 233, 247, 260-63, 266, 268, 270, Tucker, G.N., 11
271, 278, 293, 294, 311, 312, 318, 320; USN, 95, Turner, John N., 324
199,260,266 Tweedmouth, Lord, 24
Submarines: Canadian, 276, 277, 321, 323; CCl and Two Power Standard, 20
CC2, 36, 37, 42; H class, 42; H-S, 42; H-10, 42; H-
359
U-boat groups: Markgraf, 101, 106, 108; Seawolf, Walesa, Lech, 324
180; Veilchen, 126-28 Walker, Lieutenant W., 36
U-boat types: IXC, 179; XXI, 176, 179; XXIII, 151 Wallace, Commander D., 124
U-boats, 10, 40-43, 47, 48, 51-53, 65, 68, 72, 98, War hawks, American, 17
113, 129-31, 133, 136-38, 164, 182, 199, 203, 244, War Measures Act, 310
315; losses, 136, 141, 149, 151, 182; pens, 182; War of 1812, 17-20,23
surrender, 199; unrestricted warfare, 43-45 War of the Austrian Succession, 44
U-boats (specific boats): U-1, 34; LJ-20, 42; U-30, Warramunga, HMAS, 221
73; U-39, 74; U-47, 74; U-53, 43; U-69, 120-22; Warren, Lieutenant J.H., 154
U-87, 137; U-89, 141; U-90, 124; U-9’4, 115; U- Washington, D.C., 18, 36, 46, 52, 142-44, 261, 269
119, 176; U-132, 117, 118, 128; U-151, 48; U-156, Waterloo, Battle of, 17
48-51; U-163, 137; U-165, 118, 119; U-190, 180- Wave Knight, REA, 226
82; U-210, 124, 125; U-257, 174; U-343, 187; U- Watt, Lieutenant Commander EB., 194, 195
356, 130; U-484, 177; U-501, 105, 115; U-513, Welfare committees, 210
118; U-517, 118-20; U-518, 122; U-536, 111- U- Welland, Rear Admiral R.R, 173, 174, 219-23, 226,
548, 154; U-553, 116, 117; U-575, 154; U-588, 241,244,271,275,288,299
124; U-630, 140; U-652, 109; U-678, 174; U-744, Welland Canal, 28
152-54; U-756, 125; U-806, 178, 179; U-845, 154; Wellington, Duke of, 18
U-879, 182; U-889, 182; U-1006, 178; U-1228, Weser, SS, 95
177; U-1232, 179 West coast, 27, 95
U-cruisers, 47 West Indies, see Caribbean
Ultra, 98 Western Approaches, 74, 80, 83, 85, 88
Unification, 11, 280-92, 303, 308, 309 Western Approaches Tactical Unit, 137, 143
Uniform, 286, 289, 290, 302, 308, 309, 321 Western Local Escort Force (WLEF), 113, 120;
United Nations (UN), 205, 216, 225 Western Escort Force, 149
United Nations Emergency Force, 239 Western Ocean Meeting Place (WESTOMP), 112
United States, 16, 18, 23, 39, 41, 43, 45, 51, 60, 63, Western Union, 205, 206
73, 190, 205, 206, 216, 260, 321, 326 Whaling, 253, 254
United States Naval Academy, 31, 239, 240 White Ensign, 28, 36, 68, 75, 153, 182, 319
United States Navy (USN), 17, 22, 40, 45, 48, 50, 52, White Paper on Defence (1964), 279, 280, 294;
55, 67, 71, 95, 107, 118, 143-44, 174, 183, 201, 211, (1971), 300, 310; (1987), 321, 322
213, 218, 250, 310, 316; Military Sea Transport Wilhelm, Kaiser, 43
Service, 256 Wilhelmshaven, 182
University Naval Training Divisions, 246, 302 Willson, Lieutenant Commander W.H., 174
UN navy, 216-32 Wilson, President Woodrow, 36, 41
Ushant, 160, 161, 172 Windeyer, Lieutenant Commander G., 124, 129-31
USS (United States Ship): Albacore, 243; Arkansas, Winger, Leading Seaman R., 294
170; Atule, 258; Bennington, 238; Bearfish, 258; Winter Harbour, 255
Bogue, 131, 140, 176; Buckley, 182; Campbell, 138; Wireless telegraphy, 22, 23, 24, 34, 37
Card, 176; Enterprise, 268; Forrest Royal, 221; Creer, Wolf packs, 53, 68, 80, 88, 101, 127
109; Independence, 268; Kearney, 109; Lea, 115; Wolfe, Major-General James, 15
Milwaukee, 36; Missouri, 222; Nautilus, 243, 258; Wolfe, Stoker R., 195
Oriskany, 225; Pennsylvania, 35; Randolph, 268; Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS:
Redfin, 238; Redfish, 258; Reuben James, 109, 182; Wrens), 145, 204, 246, 247, 261, 304-05
San Diego, 49; Seadragon, 258; Stickell, 228; Texas, Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS: Wrens), 189.
170; Wasp, 238 190, 197
Wood, Vice AdmiralJ.C., 320
Valcartier, 33 World War One, 7, 10, 32, 33-54
Valdez, 318 World War Two, 7, 10, 11, 54, 71-203
Vancouver, 27, 37, 73, 186, 318 Worth, Commander G.A. (Sam), 60, 123
Vancouver, Captain G., RN, 20 Wright brothers, 35
Vancouver Island, 96
Vancouver Province, 64 Yachts, 75, 117
Vanier, Lieutenant Colonel G., 78 Yalu River, 218, 227, 229
V-E Day, 189, 195, 203 Yamamato, Admiral (Japanese navy), 95
Venezuela, 272 Yarmouth, 29
Victoria, 20, 23, 27, 30, 35, 37, 206 Yellow Sea, 218, 225
Vigilant, CGS, 23 Yeo, Commodore M., RN, 18
Ville Marie, 14 YMCA, 198
Virginia, 14 Yokohama, 38
V-J Day, 203 York,17
Vladivostok, 318 York town, 16
Volunteer, SS, 250 Yosu, 218
Yugoslavia, 175
Wabana, 118, 122
360
V •
‘ %'■
Commander Tony German, CD, RCN
(retired), whose father was among the first
seven cadets to join the navy in 1910, was a
career naval officer, 1942 to 1966, and served
in the Atlantic and Indian oceans in World
War Two. During the Cold War he commanded
three destroyers and the RCN's Weapons
Training Division. He is the author of four
historical novels for young adults, has
scripted several films, including the docu-
mentary history of the navy 'The Sea Is At
Our Gates," and a radio special on the navy
for CBC/FM called "Sounds from the Sea." In
a varied career, he had the first company to
operate hovercraft commercially in Canada,
founded the national youth program, the
Forum for Young Canadians, and is co-
chairman of the Ottawa Valley Book Festival.
Jacket Design: Andrew Smith

Front Jacket Illustration: The frigate is HMCS
Penetang. The black pennant at the yardarm
means, "I am in contact with a submarine."
Overhead a Canso
(Credit: Alan Daniel)
Author Photograph: Philip Doyle
M&S
McClelland & Stewart Inc.
The Canadian Publishers
" .. a valuable addition to Canada's
maritime and military literature.... of
special importance to those who have
grown up without the experience of war.
VICE ADMIRAL HARRY DeWOLF
Here's the magnificent saga of Canada's

naval tradition richly resurrected in a^
book worthy of its subject"
PETER C. NEWMAN
It was Royal Navy uniform from 1910 except for such small distinctions as "Canada"
on the shoulders and on gilt buttons, and "HMCS" on the cap tally. In the 1950's
Canada modified the traditional sailor's "square rig" slightly to make it more practical
and comfortable. In 1970 all the Canadian Forces donned the commoii green until, in
1985, the navy at last had its own distinctive Canadian uniform. (Credit: Alan Daniel)
ISBN Q-7710-3Eb'l-a

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What was Sir John A. Macdonald's move toward a Canadian navy?

What was Sir John A. Macdonald's move toward a Canadian navy?

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THE HISTORY OF THE

expertise plugging leaks as the U.S. Navy -.-.a

COMMANDER TONY GERMAN

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

German, Tony, 1924-

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Canada. Royal Canadian Navy - History.

FC231.G4 1990 359700971 C90-093284-8

Endpaper illustrations: Alan Daniel

McClelland & Stewart Inc.

Printed and bound in Canada

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COLONIES AND CONFLICT

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THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE WAR OF 1812

THE SEAGOING CENTURY

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The House will cordially approve of any necessary expenditure designed to

THE COUNTRY DIVIDED

THE NAVY BEGUN

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THE ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE OF CANADA

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BRITAIN DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY ON 4 AUGUST 1914. SO, WITHOUT A

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bloody scenes - bombardments of Vancouver and Victoria, attacks on the

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THE EAST COAST PATROLS

issue of conscription and an election looming in late 1917, politicians were

crippled naval, shipping, and transport operations at a most crucial time,

THE BATTLE OF 1918

THE ROYAL CANADIAN NAVAL AIR SERVICE

A USN-RCN-RN meeting in Washington in April, 1918, had put things

THE MERCHANT SHIPS

THE NAVY’S PLACE

minimum local defence: eight submarines, four destroyers, eight anti-

THE WAVY NAVY

THE MERCHANT FLEET

NEW SHIPS, NEW LIFE

He passed the educational tests and worked up rank by rank to retire as

PLANS AND POLICIES

three-masted schooner, HMCS Venture, commissioned as a new entry seamen’s