By T.W. Paterson
Burying her slim bows in the waves, the old ‘four-stacker’ HMCS St. Croix knifed through the stormy Atlantic. The date was Sept. 20, 1943.
Earlier, a Coastal Command aircraft had reported attacking a German submarine, and now St. Croix closed to investigate, her straining engines rattling every rivet and loose plate…
Upon reaching the U-boat’s last reported position, Lieut.-Cdr. Andrew H. Dodson, RCNR, ordered speed reduced to employ her Asdic. As officers and lookouts scanned the oppressive twilight with powerful binoculars, her sensitive Asdic went to work, probing the depths for a lurking unterseeboote.
Minutes later, an explosion erupted starboard aft as an acoustic torpedo ruptured her thin hull. Within seconds, a second torpedo smashed into her wounded stern, in the stoker petty officers’ mess. Radioing for help, stricken St. Croix wallowed in the waves pouring black smoke and injured men screaming for aid…
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Launched USS McCook in January 1919, the first HMCS St. Croix was one of the 50 First World War vintage ‘four-stackers’ traded to Great Britain by the United States in their famous destroyers-for-bases pact of 1940. Unable to man each of the newly acquired — and desperately needed — ships at that time, Britain turned over seven to Canada, and USS McCook and five sister ships arrived in Halifax on Sept. 20 of the same year.
Recommissioned HMCS St. Croix, the old destroyer was completely overhauled and refitted for a war that had passed her by in speed, armament and design. Much of her topweight had to be reduced to make her suitable for operations in the stormy North Atlantic.
To “signify the U.S.-Canadian relationship,” St. Croix and her sisters each were named after rivers, which for part of their course, form the border between the two Nations. A sixth was christened HMCS Annapolis; the seventh retained her royal Navy name of Hamilton.
With consorts HMCS Santa Clara and HMCS Niagara, St. Croix sailed for Great Britain on Nov. 20, 1941, but a hurricane forced Kingsley to return to Halifax for repairs while his companions completed the hectic passage. At sea once more, now under command of Lieut.-Cdr. Dodson, St. Croix served this period conducting escort and patrol duties, later joining the Newfoundland Escort Force.
However, still not fully operational, she again entered dry dock for refit, not returning to duty until the following spring, when she joined the Mid-Ocean Escort Force that operated between St. John’s, Newfoundland and Londonderry, North Ireland.
On July 23, 1942, while sailing in the escort of a westbound convoy, St. Croix experience her first encounter with the enemy, a wolf pack of 10 submarines. Wheeling to the attack, she engaged, but without success. The following afternoon, she made her first kill. When her lookout spotted two submarines running on the surface, Cdr. Dodson rang for full speed and began pursuit. One U-boat immediately submerged and escaped, but the other remained on the surface until Dodson had closed the range to 6,000 yards.
Dropping depth charges, St. Croix made two runs over the U-boat’s proximity and was returning for a third when Dodson was informed that the sea was littered with debris. A massive oil slick and air bubbles confirmed that the battle was ended. Their victim ultimately was identified as the U-90. When the battered convoy finally reached the United Kingdom, it had suffered two ships sunk and one damaged, to St. Croix’s kill.
Escorting another England-bound convoy, St. Croix and her companion watch dogs were attacked by 13 U-boats. In five days, the convoy lost 11 transports and sister destroyer HMCS Ottawa, which went down soon after being torpedoed. A month later, St. Croix returned to St. John, New Brunswick, for repairs, not returning to active duty until early the following year.
On her first assignment after refit, a United Kingdom convoy speeding to the support of the North African campaign, St. Croix detected a U-boat on her Asdic. Two hundred miles off the Spanish coast, corvette HMCS Shediac made five depth charge attacks without success. St. Croix assisted Shediac in making two more passes, when contact was lost.
Both ships, however, were convinced that the submarine had been sunk, but the subsequent Admirably decision read, “probably slightly damaged”. Years later, an examination of captured naval records revealed that they’d destroyed the homeward bound U-87.
Days later, southwest of Portugal, another attack by U-boats. Four ships were torpedoed. Fortunately, only one sank, while the others ultimately made it to Gibraltar under tow. Back in Halifax once more, weary St. Croix underwent another refit then returned to active duty. Another Atlantic crossing and she was assigned to an offensive being planned for the Bay of Biscay.
During her first patrol with this strike force, the U-boat campaign entered a terrifying new phase. Armed with lethal acoustic torpedoes, the submarines, which had been recalled from the North Atlantic, put to sea again—with orders to sink escorting worships.
While steaming through the Atlantic, St Croix’s new group was ordered to assist a westbound convoy that was under a blistering U-boat attack. In the fierce days-long battle that followed, three U-boats were sunk at the loss of six merchantmen and three escorts, plus two warships damaged through accident.
St. Croix was one of the escorts lost in this disastrous chain of sinkings. She went down on the evening of Sept. 20, 1943, on the third anniversary of her dropping anchor in Halifax to serve under the White Ensign. While investigating the report of a U-boat, she stopped two torpedoes when she slowed to employ her Asdic.
Answering her urgent distress signals, frigate HMS Itchen steamed into site 20 minutes later. But before she could reach St. Croix’ side, the disabled veteran was struck by the second torpedo and broke in two, her aft-section sinking quickly. As men rowed, paddled and swam for their lives, the forward section turned stem uppermost and slipped beneath the oily and wreckage-strewn waves.
Closing to the attack, HMS Itchen had to leave the survivors to be picked up by HMS Polyanthus. Then Polyanthus became a second victim. She filled quickly, her few survivors joining those of St. Croix in the bloody sea as the Itchen pursued a U-Boat lurking ahead of the convoy. Minutes later, a torpedo penetrated Itchen’s forward magazine and the frigate disintegrated. Within minutes, she was gone.
Of HMCS St. Croix, HMS Polyanthus and HMS Itchen, there were but three survivors — Stoker William Fisher of the St. Croix, and two men from the Itchen.
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The ‘Unsinkable’ HMCS Saguenay
HMCS Saguenay was the “first warship specifically built for the RCN,” and was affectionately remembered by Second World War naval veterans as the ship that “torpedo or collision couldn’t sink….” Commissioned May 22, 1931, she was the last word in naval warfare, being distinguished by such ultra-modern features” as steam heat and refrigeration.
Dropping anchor in Halifax Harbour, her new home, on July 3 of the same year, Saguenay joined HMCS Champlain to form the Eastern Destroyer Sub-Division. At that time, Canada’s Navy consisted of all of four destroyers and several smaller craft, divided between the two coasts. The little squadrons met each winter in the Caribbean, where training exercises were held.
In those peaceful years before 1939, Saguenay’s most distinctive service was escorting First World War veterans to historic Vimy Ridge in France, where Canadian troops had earned immortality 20 years earlier. Canada’s famous war memorial was unveiled in 1936, inspiring the pilgrimage. Officiating over the stirring ceremony was King Edward VII, and HMCS Saguenay’s royal guard was “the first mounted by the RCN for a ruling British monarch”.
Her crew again honoured royalty the following year, at the Spithead naval review during the coronation of King George VI, and yet a third time in June 1939, when the royal family visited Canada.
Then it was war, and Saguenay began the most glorious stage of her career in the service of our country. Within a week of the declaration of hostilities HMC Ships Saguenay and St. Laurent escorted the first convoy to the United Kingdom. The next two months saw her serving in the Caribbean with ships of the Royal Navy. A busy year later she cleared for Great Britain with orders to join other RCN vessels in sweeping the vital western approaches clear of enemy submarines. During this voyage, she picked up 32 survivors of a torpedoed freighter.
Early Dec. 1, 1940, while escorting a 30-ship convoy, 300 miles off the Irish coast, she was struck by a torpedo. Twenty-one men died and 18 were wounded in the blast, but Saguenay wheeled to the attack, firing at a surfaced U-boat. The raider had to dive to safety as Saguenay charged, guns blazing.
But Saguenay was seriously wounded. Her officers and most of her men had to board a British destroyer while a skeleton crew worried the injured ship to port. Five days later, upon being safely berthed in a British harbour, she’d added another distinction to her growing list — the first Canadian warship to be torpedoed.
In dry dock for months, her recommissioning was a hectic one — the pursuit of the German pocket battleship Bismarck. But she was forced to drop the chase when she ran out of fuel.
Called home, she reached St. John’s, Nfld. in June 1941 to join the Newfoundland Escort Force. Shortly afterwards, Saguenay steamed to Placentia Bay to participate in escorting Prime Minister Winston Churchill who was homeward bound from the Atlantic Conference with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aboard the battleship Prince of Wales.
Saguenay was almost lost in January of the following year during a three-day storm in the North Atlantic. She had to limp, a virtual wreck, into St. John’s. Only after three months of refit was she able to sail again.
In November 1942, assigned to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force, she made her last patrol while escorting the Lady Rodney, a former passenger vessel. Upon making a U-boat contact, 10 miles south of Cape Race, Newfoundland, she closed the enemy’s position at full speed. In the storming darkness, her lookout failed to spot the other ship until moments before the collision. With a scream of tortured metal, the merchantman Azra plowed into her starboard quarter — amputating her stern.
When the severed tail section went down, the depth charges exploded, shattering the Azra.
But it would take more than the loss of her stern to sink the Saguenay and she eventually made port. Ironically, the Azra was lost, victim of the destroyer’s depth charges. Although she still floated, Saguenay’s seagoing days were ended. The Admiralty decided she wasn’t worth making operational again, and relegated her to training duties at HMCS Cornwallis. With her severed stern sealed by heavy steel plates, she was towed to the peaceful waters of Annapolis Basin, to begin duty as a gunnery retraining vessel.
There, she became known by the successive classes as HMCS Standstill — a far cry from when she sailed the seas as Canada’s newest and best worship.
With the return of peacetime, Saguenay’s life was over and she joined many of her younger sisters in a final voyage to scrapyards. In June 1945, Rear Admiral L.W. Murray, C.-in-C. Canadian Northwest Atlantic, paid tribute to the destroyer in an address to her last crew, “I much regret the passing of the first destroyer built for the Royal Canadian Navy, a ship with an enviable record both in peace and war, and hope that before long another ship will bear her name and carry on her tradition.”
In December 1956, Admiral Murray’s plea become reality with the commissioning of the second HMCS Saguenay, the fourth of Canada’s ‘atomic age’ destroyer escorts.
T.W. Paterson is an author and historian. For more, check out twpaterson.com