HMCS NAPANEE

Mrs. Angus L. Macdonald, wife of the Minister of National Defence for Naval Services, sponsored HMCS NAPANEE at her launching in the yard of the Kingston Ship Building Company Ltd., at Kingston, Ontario on 31 August 1940.  The namesake town is only twenty-five miles from Kingston and was doubtless represented on the occasion.

The ship was a “Flower” Class corvette.  Her keel was laid on 20 March 1940 and she was commissioned on 12 May 1941.  She measured 203 feet in length, 33 in the beam and drew 12 feet, displacing 1,170 tons.  Her armament was one four-inch gun forward, a two-pounder pom-pom aft and twenty-five depth charges with two rails and two throwers.  After having her forecastle lengthened in 1943, she also had two 20-mm Oerlikon guns, two more depth-charge throwers and carried seventy depth charges.

Her ship’s company adopted, as an unofficial badge, a profile drawing of the head of an Indian chief in war paint and bonnet devouring a U-boat stern first.

NAPANEE arrived at Halifax on 18 May 1941, and after a period for final adjustments to her gear and to work up her crew, she sailed on her first operational assignment, local escort for a transatlantic convoy, on 18 June.  She was soon transferred to the Sydney Force and remained with it until the end of September when she was allocated to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force, based at St. John’s, Newfoundland.  She continued in this hard service, escorting convoys to the longitude of Iceland at first, later into the Western Approaches to Britian, until 20 May 1942 when she arrived in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, for refit.

The work was complete by 20 July and, after a call at Halifax, NAPANEE returned to St. John’s where her first two assignments were escorting in a freighter damaged by a torpedo and HMCS ASSINIBOINE who had rammed and sunk a U-boat after a bitter fight on the surface.  Then she tried to salvage a Supermarine Walrus amphibious aircraft, but it sank after two days of towing.  At the end of August, NAPANEE returned to the steady plodding of the convoys.  It was not monotonous, for at year’s end she was present at one of those disasters that gave the Battle of the Atlantic its terrible quality.  Convoy ONS-154 was beset by eighteen U-boats.  They sank fourteen of its forty four ships, damaged one and only broke off the action because they ran out of torpedoes and fuel.  The escort sank one submarine, U-356, and all share the credit because in such a confused action it is impossible to determine which of the many attacks damaged or finished off the enemy.

The winter of 1942-43 was the worst part of the convoy war, and by May the U-boats were driven from the North Atlantic.  In September they returned armed with acoustic torpedoes, but never again came near cutting off supplies to Britain.  NAPANEE also left the convoys for the summer for a major refit at Montreal where she remained from 22 May to 21 October.  After a period for training at Pictou, Nova Scotia, the ship sailed from Halifax, escorting a convoy, on 31 December 1943.  After eight hard months on the convoy routes she returned to Pictou for another refit.  This time she did her ”working up” at Bermuda and made the passage direct from there to St. John’s, Newfoundland, arriving on Christmas day, 1943, to return to convoy duty.  This time, however, she was attached to the Western Local Escort Force, plying from St. John’s to Boston or New York.  This assignment continued until the end of the war in Europe, 8 May 1945, and afterwards because it took time for all the submarines to surrender.

NAPANEE returned to Halifax from her last convoy on 31 May.  After landing her stores at Sydney, Cape Breton, she was paid off at Sorel, Quebec, and turned over to the War Assets Corporation on 12 July.  She was broken up for scrap at Hamilton, Ontario, in 1946.

HMCS NAPANEE’s career is typical for a Canadian corvette of the Second World War:  she was built in haste, run hard for four years and discarded as soon as the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic was finished because submarines had developed so that the corvette could no longer counter them.  They were, however, the ships of the hour in 1941 and 1942, the main strength of the convoy system.  NAPANEE’s service will earn the battle honour, ATLANTIC 1941-45, for any subsequent ship of the name.

Naval Historical Section,

Canadian Forces Headquarters,

Ottawa 4, Ontario.

21 April, 1965.