Navy Archives - Legion Magazine

The greatest of the great

Hugh A. Halliday — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 19:38:11 +0000

As the War of 1812 was winding down, Britain launched HMS St. Lawrence, a battleship bigger than any other to have plied the Great Lakes before

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Criminal intent

Legion Magazine — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 20:16:18 +0000

The Great War attack on a Canadian hospital ship that helped set war crimes’ precedent

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Light my way

Douglas Theedom — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 16:19:40 +0000

Naval light signalling was an essential form of communications during the Second World War—and it may live on still

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U-boat man

Stephen J. Thorne — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 15:28:56 +0000

From hunter of Allied ships to PoW and Canadian entrepreneur, the incredible journey of Kurt Schönthier.

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Operation Drumbeat

Marc Milner — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 20:36:36 +0000

U-boats targeted East Coast shipping in the first half of 1942 In the early hours of Jan. 12, 1942, wireless stations around the North Atlantic picked up a distress call from the British passenger freighter, SS Cyclops. The 9,076-ton vessel with 181 people aboard was 230 kilometres southeast of Cape Sable, N.S., and had just been …

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The explosion that changed the Navy

Stephen J. Thorne — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 18:31:35 +0000

An overheated gearbox on HMCS Kootenay set off a fire that took nine lives The worst peacetime disaster in Canadian naval history occurred on Oct. 23, 1969, when nine crew were killed and another 53 injured in an explosion and fire aboard HMCS Kootenay. The incident marked the last time Canadian service personnel were required …

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Navy changes its junior ranks

Legion Magazine — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 16:15:24 +0000

The Royal Canadian Navy has renamed its junior ranks to better reflect what its commander called the “ever-evolving international and domestic contexts in which we live and operate.” As part of that effort, the navy has dispensed with its ‘Seaman’ ranks, renaming them the gender-neutral ‘Sailor.’ Vice-Admiral Art McDonald, the navy commander, said the service’s …

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The overzealous skipper

Marc Milner — Sun, 03 May 2020 12:41:17 +0000

When Nicholas Monserrat titled his classic account of the Battle of the Atlantic The Cruel Sea, it was no accident. Nearly half of the Royal Canadian Navy vessels lost in the Second World War succumbed to marine accidents. Patrol boat HMCS Adversus ran aground; destroyer HMCS Skeena dragged its anchor and stranded on the island of …

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War comes to Sydney Harbour

Tom MacGregor — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:38:54 +0000

Deserted and covered with graffiti for decades, the old concrete gun battery at Chapel Point in North Sydney on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island was restored last summer as part of a local project to create a 48.5-hectare park devoted to Canada’s military history. The project, to be known as the Atlantic Memorial Park, is …

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The sinking of SS Athenia

Francis M. Carroll — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:50:26 +0000

Britain declared war on Germany at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 3, 1939. At just after 7 o’clock that evening, Captain James Cook of the passenger liner SS Athenia joined his first-class guests for dinner. While the ship had actually gotten underway two days earlier—en route from Glasgow to Montreal via Belfast and Liverpool—Cook had felt that …

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