HMCS Vancouver (1918)
 The Vancouver
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HMCS Vancouver (D86) was a destroyer of the Canadian Navy , which the destroyer HMS Toreador of Thornycroft S-Class from 1917 to 1919 for the Royal Navy was built. The destroyer was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1928 . Mainly used as a training ship , the Vancouver was separated in 1936 and canceled the following year.
History of Vancouver
The construction contract for the HMS Toreador was awarded in June 1917 to the shipyard of John I. Thornycroft & Company in Woolston near Southampton . For the shipyard, Toreador was part of the second order for three more S-class destroyers . The first two orders were built from May 1917, the three following from November 1917. The five destroyers were delivered between August 1918 and December 1919. The shipyard, which built torpedo boats from 1873, specialized in destroyers. The shipyard was allowed to continue building destroyers deviating from the plans of the Admiralty even during the war. The shipyard built slightly different versions of the war series ( M- , R- , S- , V- and W- Class ).
The Thornycroft S destroyers, completed between August 1918 and December 1919, displaced 1,087 tons and were slightly larger than the ships of the Admiralty Draft. They were 275 ft 9 in overall length (266 ft 9 in pp), 27 ft 4 in wide and had a normal draft of 9 ft. The fuel supply could be up to 350 ts. There were no deviations in the machinery, three oil -fired Yarrow boilers and Brown Curtis geared turbines , and the weapons equipment. The Thornycroft boats Tobago and Speedy exceeded 38 knots in their test drives.
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In the Thornycroft Specials, the gun on the forecastle had a slightly elevated position, the funnels were also slightly higher and the destroyers came a bit higher out of the water than the destroyers according to the Admiralty draft. The two individual light torpedo tubes at the end of the fore were rigid and mounted sideways and shot through a small opening in the side paneling. The problems of the open and somewhat rotatable arrangement on the other ships were thus avoided.
At the shipyard, four destroyers were V- and W-class under construction that were delivered by 18 June 1918 and three flotilla of Shakespeare class , which were delivered between October 1917 and February 1919th During the construction period of the S destroyers, Thornycroft received orders for two modified W-class destroyers with 127 mm guns and four other flotilla commanders in the spring of 1918 (only Keppel and Broke were actually completed).
After the keel laying of the new building N ° 969 together with the sister ship Torbay (BauN ° 968), the later HMCS Vancouver was launched on December 7, 1918 as HMS Toreador and was delivered in April 1919. The ship was assigned to the reserve in Portsmouth after the trial period . When in 1927 the destroyers Patrician and Patriot of the Royal Canadian Navy urgently needed to be overhauled, the Canadian government decided to build two modified destroyers for their areas of operation by Thornycroft and to borrow two unused S-class destroyers. Toreador and Torbay were prepared for the Canadian Navy in 1927 and taken over in Portsmouth on March 1, 1928. For the first time, the destroyers were to be given names with a reference to Canada and named after the discoverers George Vancouver and Samuel de Champlain . To avoid confusion to the destroyer HMS was Vancouver the V-Class in HMS Vancouver renamed
Use at the RCN
The two destroyers, taken over by the Canadian Navy, crossed the Atlantic together, only to separate in the West Indies and to call at their stationing ports. While the Champlain (ex HMS Torbay ) went to Halifax on the Canadian east coast , Vancouver ran through the Panama Canal to the west coast to the local naval base Esquimalt . There she served as a training and training ship for reservists in the Royal Canadian Navy. In this function, the ship visited a number of ports on the Pacific coast.
In 1931 another destroyer came to the station on the Canadian west coast with the new Skeena . In 1931 the British Foreign Ministry asked Canada to send one of its ships to El Salvador to protect British citizens and property after a military coup until a Royal Navy ship could arrive. The Royal Canadian Navy sent the two destroyers to Central America on the west coast, which were to be run for maneuvers with the Royal Navy in the Caribbean. They had already left Esquimalt on January 5th, 1932 and left Manzanillo on the 19th with a course to the Panama Canal. On January 23, 1932, Vancouver and Skeena called at different ports in Salvador. Vancouver ran to Port La Union in southern Salvador, where it took delivery of fuel and supplies. The telephone request from the British Chargé d'Affaires to land a landing party was not followed. The ship stayed in the port of La Union for two days and then marched to the main port of Salvador to Ajacutla in the north, where the Skeena was also located. An uprising has now taken place in the surrounding area. Armed sailors were also given ashore there and a group of officers traveled inland to observe what was going on there. The Salvadoran military suppressed what later became known as La Matanza , the butchery . After US ships arrived on January 27, the Canadian destroyers continued their voyage on January 31. The announced replacement by the cruiser Dragon of the America and West Indies station of the Royal Navy did not come. This mission is said to have been the only one in which Canada should have landed. When the two destroyers were waiting in front of the Panama Canal to pass into the Caribbean, the two destroyers were called back to their Esquimalt base and the joint exercises with the ships on the east coast were canceled.
Originally, the destroyers on the west coast were not involved in any major maneuvers and did not make long trips like the units on the east coast, which regularly made trips to the West Indies in winter. In the 1930s, the Vancouver was also sent to the Caribbean for exercises with the sister ship Champlain . The training voyage to the Caribbean in 1934 led to the longest voyage of an RCN ship to date through Vancouver . The destroyer also took part in a week-long maneuver of the British Home Fleet with the three other Canadian destroyers.
End of Vancouver
In the post-war years it was customary to overhaul an active destroyer thoroughly and comprehensively every six to eight years (so-called D2 refit). Vancouver , completed in 1918, had never received such an overhaul. When naval engineers extensively examined her and her sister ship the Champlain in 1934 , significant flaws were found and the investigation revealed that the overhaul of the two destroyers would cost $ 165,000. Since the ships had to be returned in good condition after the loan agreement with the British government, an additional $ 50,000 had to be spent on a safe crossing of the North Atlantic in addition to a normal overhaul. Canada was determined to return the S-Class destroyers to the UK as they were considered obsolete. The United Kingdom initially insisted on the demolition there, but then agreed to the demolition in Canada, as there were doubts about a safe transfer there too. It was also agreed to leave the dismantled weapons in the inventory of the Canadian armed forces.
Vancouver and her sister ship were decommissioned on November 25, 1936 and canceled in 1937. The two destroyers were replaced in the spring of 1937 by the British destroyers Crescent and Cygnet, renamed Fraser and St. Laurent .
The sister ship the Champlain
In addition to Toreador / Vancouver , its sister ship HMS Torbay was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1927 to replace the M-class destroyers Patrician and Patriot . Torbay was renamed Champlain after the discoverer Samuel de Champlain . The destroyer stationed in Halifax was used similarly to its sister ship but on the Canadian east coast. from mid-1931 the exercises often took place with the newly arrived Saguenay building . In contrast to the ships on the west coast, the Canadian ships on the east coast made regular trips to the Caribbean in winter. These voyages were not purely recreational, so the Champlain had to travel in January 1931 due to a severe storm and lost her masts and two dinghies. The ship suffered significant damage and one crew member was seriously injured. In 1934 the exercises took place in the Caribbean together with Saguenay , Skeena and Vancouver . It was the Royal Canadian Navy's longest and most extensive exercise to date, including a week-long training session for the four destroyers with the Royal Navy's Home Fleet. In 1936/1937 Champlain also left the RCN and was canceled.
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981. Ian Allan, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- Fred Dittmar, Jim Colledge: British Warships 1914-1919. Ian Allen, 1972, ISBN 0-7110-0380-7 .
- William Johnston, William GP Rawling, Richard H. Gimblett, John MacFarlane: The Seabound Coast: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Navy, 1867-1939. Dundurn Press, Toronto 2010, ISBN 978-1-55488-908-2 .
Web links
- HMCS Vancouver (1st of name) (D05 / F6A / H55) / S-class destroyer
- 8. DISTRIBUTION OF DESTROYERS 1919-1939
- 5 Thorneycroft "S" Jane´s 1919, p. 102
- HMS Toreador (1918)
- "S" destroyers (SIMOOM) (67 (2), 1918-1924)
- VANCOUVER destroyers (1919/1928)
- HMCS Champlain (1st of the name) (D17 / H24 / H25 / F50)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jane's Fighting Ships : 5 Thorneycroft "S", p. 102
- ↑ Watson: BETWEEN THE WARS: ROYAL NAVY ORGANIZATION AND SHIP DEPLOYMENTS 1919-1939. 8. DISTRIBUTION OF DESTROYERS 1919-1939
- ↑ Saguenay and Skeena
- ↑ a b c HMCS Vancouver (1st of name)
- ↑ a b Johnston u. a .: The Seabound Coast. P. 1009.
- ↑ Johnston et al. a .: The Seabound Coast. P. 1029f.
- ↑ The Invasion Of El Salvador
- ↑ Johnston et al. a .: The Seabound Coast. P. 1037
- ↑ a b Johnston u. a .: The Seabound Coast. P. 1052.
- ↑ Johnston et al. a .: The Seabound Coast. P. 1078.