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0 Naval historians tend to focus on action at sea, and in the early period of the Second World War they typically find much that is wrong with Canada’s burgeoning wartime navy. There is ample evidence—as we have seen in this series—that the fleet was unprepared...
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0 The corvette symbolized the Royal Canadian Navy’s role in the Battle of the Atlantic. At work is HMCS Battleford. PHOTO: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES The fall of 1941 was perhaps the toughest period of the war for the Royal Canadian Navy. It is hard to think...
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0 Three Canadian destroyers at Halifax, September 1940. PHOTO: NATIONAL DEFENCE, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA104338 The Royal Canadian Navy escorts that arrived in Newfoundland in May and June 1941 had more exposure to training programs than perhaps any other escorts in the early years of the...
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2 The first corvettes of the NEF head to St. John’s, Nfld., May 1941. PHOTO: LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA—PA037447 Until the spring of 1941, the Royal Canadian Navy had no clear indication that it would find its calling in the broad reaches of the North Atlantic....
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1 A burial board covered with the White Ensign is used to commit a sailor PHOTO: DAN BLACK This story doesn’t begin during the Second World War; it begins this year, on the first Sunday in May, with a bespectacled Arthur Taylor—now 85—standing on the portside...
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6 Commissioned in August 1941, HMCS Amherst served as an ocean escort for the three succeeding years. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MARC MILNER Few warships epitomize the Atlantic war more than the lowly Flower-class corvette. An auxiliary vessel hastily built to mercantile standards and pushed into service...
War at Sea
