Posts Tagged ‘Corvettes at sea’

“Adventure and serving your country, what a drawing card, eh?” said my wife as she examined the photo of the 17-year-old sailor and put it on the scanner. “Wow!” It’s a remarkable Second World War story. From only 13 ships when war broke out in September 1939, the Royal Canadian Navy mushroomed to 332 warships, becoming the third largest Allied navy in the war. Morley Barnes of Georgetown, Ont., was typical of the young men and boys who volunteered, swelling the number of full-time sailors from 1,800 to 100,000. Most went to sea and the majority had time in a corvette. Designed [...]

On June 26, 1940, just two days after France formally surrendered to Germany, the first Canadian-built Flower-class corvette, His Majesty’s Ship Trillium, slipped into the St. Lawrence River from the Vickers shipyard in Montreal. Nine more corvettes for the Royal Navy followed from Quebec yards over the next eight weeks. By the end of August 1940, these ships had been joined by seven Royal Canadian Navy corvettes, including the first produced by Ontario and British Columbia builders. But getting hulls in the water proved much easier than getting ships into action. In fact, it was another nine [...]