Vol. 65, No. 1 spring 2020 8 Manning the Ships


During World War II Canada had three navies: the professional Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), whose offi cers joined as teenage cadets and apprenticed in the RN; the RCN Reserve (RCNR), professional merchant mariners who were called up on the outbreak of war, many from retirement; and fi nally the RCN Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR), thousands of young men who signed up ‘for the duration’. In time the RCNVR became the professionals of the RCN and many of its ranks rose to command, but in 1940 most had never even seen the ocean, much less sailed upon it. Hal Lawrence, in his biography A Bloody War, said “…the RCNR are sailors trying to be gentlemen, the RCNVR are gentlemen trying to be sailors, and the RCN are neither trying to be both!”


As the war progressed, Canada’s navy grew from less than 2,000 to over 100,000 personnel. T e RCN eventually became as good as any navy in the world through skill and sacrifi ce inherited from centuries of traditions of supremacy and leadership at sea. However, during the early years most of the professionals were employed aboard Canada’s destroyer fl otilla which sailed to Britain in 1940, or in training establishments and the Naval Staff ashore. T ere were not enough leſt to fi ll the key positions in the eighty new corvettes that fl ooded down the St. Lawrence, so they were manned largely by RCNVR sailors with no more than a few weeks of basic training, who learned their new jobs as they went along.


T e fi rst corvette captains were RCNR, and oſt en they were the only offi cers aboard who had been to sea and who could use a sextant to navigate the ship. T ere might be less than half a dozen professional engineers and seamen on board. T e few taught the many how to tend boilers, operate machinery, make and read fl ag and blinker signals, lower, row, and hoist boats, swing the lead, steer the ship, handle guns and ammunition, load and fi re depth charges, and all the other minutiae required to man and fi ght a ship of war. During the winter of 1940 to 1941 they learned their business while conducting patrols off


Halifax and Sydney, and while escorting convoys about 400 miles east to where the ocean escort of an old battleship or armed merchant cruiser took over as protection against the mid Atlantic threat from surface raiders.


Reports dated 1941 indicate that corvettes


demonstrated “seamanlike handling” and could withstand “without material damage the heaviest gale in the North Atlantic”. During these voyages the men discovered their ships were also wet and uncomfortable. Too short to span the Atlantic swells, they rose up one side of a wave and buried their bows in the trough of the next, green seas fl ooding the well aſt of the fo’c’s’le and soaking the mess decks. Corvettes also rolled with abandon. Many sailors were seasick for the duration of their voyages. Some never found their sea legs and had to be invalided ashore. At Action Stations, hatches were opened and a hoist rigged to pass ammunition from the magazine to the 4-inch gun, giving the sea access to the lower decks. Hot food, when it could be prepared, had to be carried from the galley forward along the main deck, oſt en arriving cold and ‘salty’. T e heads discharged directly overboard, so concluding one’s business became a matter of careful timing. T e sailors and their possessions were oſt en wet through for most of a two or three week voyage, and the inability to bathe soon gave the mess decks a fug of vomit, unwashed bodies and wet woolen clothing that could not be eradicated until the ship came into the lee of the land.


Early Operations


In May 1941 the RCN was asked to establish the Newfoundland Escort Force (NEF) based at St. Johns, so anti-submarine escort could be provided all the way across the Atlantic. By the end of that year nearly sixty of Canada’s eighty corvettes, including the ten built for the RN, plus the RCN’s destroyers, were committed to the mid-ocean convoy system instead of the inshore duties originally planned, and in an area known for freezing gales and persistent fog. T e NEF was organized into escort groups consisting of four or fi ve corvettes and two destroyers, aided by the British ability to route convoys away from known wolf pack locations. By the fall of 1941 the USN also


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