You may ask why I joined the Navy and a really definitive answer is not possible. I think it was that I shared with most prairie boys the desire to see the seas as different from the land. In my case I had the incentive of admiring Uncle Cliff who had served first the British Navy and later the Australian Navy in World War I. His colorful stories sort of glamorised it for me. I actually enlisted at the Winnipeg Naval Barracks, H.M.C.S. Chippewa after an interview with Commander Orde and his committee. I had a few days to buy uniforms, attend a Student Christian Movement camp on Lake Winnipeg and say goodbye to my parents. I can recall that we left from the C.P.R. station and that Dean Fetherstonhaugh came down to see us off; when pressed by our eager questioning he finally opined as the train was about to leave that he did not think any of our group had failed in their exams! Ross Waldron, our class Senior Stick was still on the platform when the train gave its starting jerk. We were in the last car so he put his shoulder to the car body in a mock effort to push us out of town, then hopped aboard and we were gone on what we knew would be a great adventure into dangers unknown!
A similar, but much less funny episode reportedly took place when German subs were prowling the gulf of St. Laurence taking pot shots at merchant ships silhouetted against the lights of a Gaspe village which did not heed the blackout instructions; the people there thought the war had nothing to do with them. One night a live German torpedo missed its intended target, tore up onto the beach in front of the village and exploded. They say the lights went out almost before the last echo of the explosion had died out!
My posting was to HMCS Protector II at Sydney. Protector I was the small original establishment on the city side but Protector II was a lovely new base on the north side of the harbour, built to permanent standards. The story was that it had been built as a refuge for a considerable part of the British fleet in the event that the Germans invaded Britain. I was assigned the two E.A.'s who were already at Protector I plus a couple of able bodied seamen for support. We were assigned a space in the brand new electrical building and given the task of setting up a proper Gyro Base to support those escorts operating out of Sydney. I got a small office built in one corner for myself and the files and planned to get a test swing built. I ordered grey paint for the shop floor (as delicate compass bearings do not like dust) and got two defaulters to do the painting. I set them to work in the morning, but when I returned in the afternoon, they were gone, the floor was but half painted and no paint was left. The Chief Electrical E.A. made a great show of looking everywhere for the paint (including the base dump) but no trace of it was found. Years later, on a train to Winnipeg I ran into Joe Cuthbert, a former Warrant Engineer who had been in Sydney when I was there. We set about reminiscing about old times, but as the laughs grew he finally could no longer restrain himself from tellling me what had happened to my floor paint--it had been "liberated" by the two young scoundrels under direction of the P.O.'s mess and used to paint their floors! I had to laugh at learning of the prank so long after, but must confess I was cross as the devil when it happened.
In addition to regular maintenance on operational ships coming into Sydney, North Sydney and Louisburg we had extended forecastle jobs on older corvettes going on at the Sydney shipyards. This included the installation of gyro compasses, the plans for which were sent to us by Atlantic Command in Halifax. When I scrutinised the plans I realized they were drawn for corvettes having the compass room on the starboard side whereas the one we were doing called for the compass room to be on the port side. It was not a big job to convert the plan to its mirror image, so I redrew it on that basis before giving it to the contractor (Comstock), but never thought to send it to Halifax for their prior approval as that would have held up the work Later I sent a copy of my plan back to Halifax "as fitted" explaining the need to reverse the plan they had sent. The result, was an unexpected letter from Lieut.- Cdr. Jack Marlowe, the head of Gyro Maintenance for the East Coast addressed to our base Captain in Sydney. This brought about a call for me to appear before said Captain, "Laddie" Mc Culloch, so named because he had a Scottish accent and addressed everyone younger than he as "Laddie".
He started by saying, "What's all this about your changing drawings without authorization?" So I told him the circumstances and my feeling that my action was correct in that it saved delay to the job. He reflected on what I had said for a moment then said,"Don't worry about it Laddie, you did the right thing and I'll see that the Halifax dockyard Commodore deals with it." I thought that would be the end of it, but the exchange had caused Marlowe's tail to be trod on by the Commodore so I was in trouble. Soon another letter came from Halifax posting me back to the Gyro Base there for "disciplinary observation". While this was done as a slap on the wrist I also believe that Marlowe didn't want to lose me (as Sydney was lining me up to replace the Lieut. RNVR, Fred ????, who had recently been transferred). What reinforced this belief is the fact that I was promoted to full Lieutenant on May 4, 1944 and placed in charge of the Halifax Gyro shop under Lieut.-Cdr. Marlowe.
However, before thus taking my leave of Sydney there are some interesting matters which I would like to recall and place in this record; no matter where one is things are always happening in wartime. One of these which brought home the grisly side of war was the case of a merchantman which had been attacked in a convoy and set on fire. She made her way into a bay near Sydney while still burning and we could see the column of smoke for miles. Some, but not all of her crew escaped. Some were trapped and tried to get out through the portholes which were too small so they were literally burned to death with their heads sticking out. Some of us went out to see the ship from the road, but fortunately we were not close enough to see the grimmer details! It was still close enough to give sobering thoughts to us all.
Another fire which cost no lives but put a severe crimp in the base activities was the burning down of our new main jetty. The fire was caused by droppings from pipe welding activity and it spread rapidly along the creosoted wooden construction. By the time a local fireboat arrived the fire was so intense there was no saving the structure and a substantial portion of it burned to the water. The heat was so intense that we onlookers had to shelter ourselves behind a beached whaler at a distance of two or three hundred yards! Only two or three ships were at the pier and they got away under their own power or were towed. I recall that one of them, a Bangor class minesweeper, HMCS "Red Deer", got her bridge scorched before pulling away.
While the jetty was being rebuilt we had to go to available wharves at Protector I, North Sydney and Louisburg to service the ships. On one bitterly cold winter day this meant a road trip to Louisburg to service a British Navy trawler. These trawlers, as their name implies were really designed as fishing boats and were smaller than corvettes, although similar in shape. They were equipped with submarine detection gear, depth charges and a gun and were used to some extent as escort vessels.
Louisburg as a port was a miserable place; the harbor only partly protected from Atlantic gales by a small island. It's civilian usefulness as a port was mainly to provide a backup fpr the steel company to import and export during those periods when Sydney harbor was blocked by ice. There was a rail line connecting Louisburg to Sydney. Once we had fixed the compass problem on the trawler she was supposed to sail for Sydney. The commanding officer of this small ship was a Lieutenant and he was one of those entertaining devil-may-care Englishmen, delightful characters to have around, but not always of the best judgement. Anyway, he decided to head out through the rough swells in the fading light aiming for the gap between the island and the shore. He got a bit off the channel and in the trough between two large swells we actually felt the keel momentarily scrape bottom. Had she gone hard aground there we might all have perished in that bitter winter night! In later years I recalled this incident most keenly while reading of Catain Queeg's grounding incident in the book "The Caine Mutiny".
So after relating these tales of death and destruction I should balance the account by telling of the wonderful social side of my stay in Sydney and Cape Breton Island. I must first comment on their enjoyment of self made music coming down from the Scots, the French and the Irish. I was introduced to it at first through a wonderful concert that local amateur performers gave us at the base, followed later by a party for the troupe in the wardroom. The degree of talent was really noticeable in them all, the pipers, the dancers, the singers and the tellers of Cape Breton jokes. I can still remmber the strathspeys and reels played by the fiddlers and especially a beautiful girl with dark hair who sang a most haunting version of "Gianina Mia".
Then there was the social life we enjoyed. People opened thier hearts to us and invited us to dances and parties. My roommate was a fellow from Halifax named Bert Tulk and we bought a second hand Ford so we could drive back and forth from the base to the city in order to atend these events. Our range was limited by the fact that there was extreme gas rationing and the tires frequently gave us trouble but it usually got us there. Two lovely girls I met there, Judith Williams and Peggy McLean and was able to escort them to house parties and dances. Another family we got to know was the Coffins, who had a couple of daughters, one of whom played the piano for our sing-songs. They gave me a hard time with the song which was popular that year and seemed to contain my name:
Mares eat oats and does eat oats, But little lambs eat ivy, A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?
One of the girls, Joan Coffin and one of our officers, Bob Galloway from Ontario were married in 1945. I never thought of marriage at any time during the war. I felt we were all afloat on the mad tides of this gigantic world wide struggle and that none of us could know where we might end up or even survive in one piece. Also I still thought of girls back in Winnipeg such as Nina Walley, Betty Emery and Pat Howard.
One more item of wartime beauty in Sydney remains to be mentioned, namely the spectacular display we could see each night across the harbor from the base where the trainloads of white hot slag from the steel works were dumped into the sea. The glowing material cascaded down a fifty foot slope and raised clouds of steam when it hit the water and towered hundreds of feet into the sky where they were then dramatically colored orange by the reflection from the molten slag.
Not only was Halifax the main naval base for Eastern Canada but it was the main port for forming up convoys and their escorts to carry munitions and other supplies for the allied cause in the European, Russian and North African theatres of war. Even walking up the streets was an experience; passing Seamen (both Naval and Merchantmen), soldiers, airmen and women in uniform. Also, one passed numerous ship's chandlers' shops with their wares of rope, anchors, pulleys, binnacles and brass instruments to say nothing of victuallers and food importers whose wares made the streets redolent with spices--it was like some sort of huge foreign bazzar.
In the dockyard 4 or 5 escort ships would be tied up at each jetty while they got repaired and restocked for the next voyage. All was hustle and bustle as each dockyard group did its job, such as blue overalled boiler cleaning gangs coming off looking like black-faced Hottentots! This scene was all played against the constant whine of crane and winch motors, the banging of anchor chains, the commands of officers and the curses of seamen and dockyard "mateys" with the whoop-whoop-whoop of the corvettes sirens as they arrived and left. Surely it was all a scene from Belzebub, but yet, in spite of its overall appearance of chaos, it all came together, welded by the common aim of all to "win the war"!
I was excited and glad to be part of it all and spent most of my evenings studying about the ships from available manuals. In the 14 months I was assigned to the dockyard, I was probably aboard 100 or more of our navy ships plus a handful of merchant ships whose compasses we would service if the civilian shops were short handed.
In our own shop we had 4 or 5 electrical officers, a Chief Electrical Artificer, about 20 E.A.'s and 4 or 5 ordinary seamen or leading hands. E.A.'s by definition and training were electrical tradesmen, most of whom had worked their trade as civilians before entering the service and learning all about the complexity of naval things electrical. One, whose name was Harry Stretton had been a jeweller in Hamilton while one came from City Hydro in Winnipeg and others had worked as radio mechanics or industrial electricians.
While gyro compasses were rugged in some respects with their heavy rotors spinning at thousands of rpm they were delicate in other ways. Worn or dirty mounting bearings could cause the compass to wander from true north and once it was restarted aboard ship it could take several hours of hunting back and forth before it settled out on True North. We had a swing in the shop on which compasses could be mounted and operated while the swing simulated the motion of a ship. This could show whether a compass was well balanced for regular operation or not.
While working at the gyro compass base I reported to Lt. Allan R. Yeoman, who was gyro base maintenance officer for Halifax. He in turn reported to Lt.-Commander Jack Marlowe, who was Gyro Base Officer for the whole Atlantic Command and as you will recall was the one responsible for getting me transferred from Sydney to Halifax for "disciplinary observation". He was a man who had been involved in installing radio antennas in peace time and was given a commission as a special services officer (light green sleeve stripe) because the senior command of the day was desperate for anyone who claimed to have technical knowledge. Al Yeoman on the other hand had had considerable sea-going experience on merchant ships of various types. Fellow officers I remember were Ray Martin, Roy Bunsten and Paul Dandeneau.
In April, 1944 I got a week's leave and decided to spend it on a visit to New York City. It was and of course still is the epitome of big time in the western world, a place that every one was aware of for its commerce, its arts and so it was very exciting for a young person like me to visit it. There was so much to see and do that I just kept going all the time, early and late. The subway was a marvellous new experience as to how to move around a large city; it really helped me to cover the maximum amount of ground! Among other things I visited the cloisters, (savoring the feel of theMiddle Ages), several night clubs, (both tin pan alley and old time music) the mayor's office, (Fiorello LaGuardia wasn't in). He by the way used to read the comics over the radio for a children's program. I took time to visit the Sperry Compass manufacturing plant in Brooklyn. This latter visit combined business with pleasure. The Canadian Navy was a large customer; practically all of our corvettes were equipped with the Sperry Mark XIV gyro. Of course I made the de rigeur elevator trip to the top of the Empire State Building where I took in the giddy view.
The Americans were very generous to all troops of the allied forces visiting New York so it was possible to get free tickets to a variety of things. So I heard Jose Iturbi play the piano in Carnegie Hall, got to the Metropolitan Opera House to hear Rise Stevens sing in "Der Rosencavalier". As my first exposure to grand opera I did not really like it that much. However, in later life after exposure to La Traviata, Aida and Carmen I have come to like it better and Fran and I now (1998) have been regular attendees for some years at the offerings of the Vancouver Opera Company. Also got to see the Rockettes and their wonderful show at Radio City Music Hall. So with mind and body so busy all week I came back to Halifax and the war much refreshed.
In our work we were having problems with the Meridian Ship's Log, which was a device fitted in the bottom of each ship to record the speed and distance travelled. The essence of the log was a small spinning propellor which actuated electrical contacts from which the information was transmitted to course plotters and ship's gunnery firing control apparatus; it was therefore vital to the ships ability to be accurate in firing its guns and knowing where it was, etc.. the poblem with the log was that sea water was getting in and shorting the contacts so they were ineffective. The log was manufactured by the Ontario Hughes Owens in Ottawa and they had tested the prototype in the Trent canal which of course was fresh water!
So over Christmas I was picked to go to Ottawa and work with the manufacturer to remedy the problem. We came up with the solution of filling the log with light grease with a means of keeping it under pressure as observed by a pressure gauge mounted inside the ship. I recall spending several days writing a new manufacturer's manual before getting back to the coast. On this trip I got a passage on a regular services aircraft called the Blueberry Express which shuttled key services people across the country on a regular basis. I recall how slowly the train far below appeared to be going compared to this marvelous swift new mode represented by the Blueberry.
We made a number of tests on various ships off Halifax with only middling success. One very interesting trip was a trial run to Bermuda in January 1945 on one of our new frigates, HMCS Prestonian, which was going to our work-up base (called HMCS "Somers Isles", named after the first British Naval person who had extolled Bermuda's virtues). She had been fitted with an improved Meridian Log and it was olur job to see how it performed on a longer voyage. It was a fairly routine trip as far as the log test was concerned, but it did have a few moments of excitement when I almost got washed overboard. It happened while I was taking a stroll down the port afterside of the ship in the evening; suddenly the bridge ordered a change of course and as the ship heeled over a big comber of a wave surged aboard. It gathered me up and washed me several yards down the deck until it left me hanging onto one of the stantion supports on the outboard side. The relatively low freeboard of the frigates on their after end made it relatively unsafe to be walking there in any kind of a rough sea. It taiught me a valuable lesson because I doubt anyone would have spotted or heard me had I been washed overboard! This was my first visit to a tropical climate and after the rough 3-day Atlantic trip it was a real thrill to enter the harbor on a fine sunny morning. I recall in particular how I gazed at the clear azure green waters and the style of the white painted buildings and my first time view of palm trees. As we did not have any real work to do once we got there Stan Clay (a Warrant Electrical Officer) and I were able to enjoy lolling about on the coral sand which had been ploughed up by American forces who were building a runway for an air base gotten from Britain in exchange for the old 4-stacker destroyers mentioned earlier in this chapter.
The return trip was made on the first available ship, which was HMCS "Penetang" a sister frigate of "Prestonian". It proved to be the most interesting voyage of my time in the Navy; as it turned out to be the closest I would get to actual hostilities. On the way down we had detected Asdic echoes which could have been a submarine, but after several depth charge runs the echoes did not disappear and when some debris came to the surface with a sign saying "Ladies Gangway we realised we had been attacking a sunken wreck! This was a false alarm but on the way back we ran into the real thing. As we arrived off Halifax we received information that a German submarine was in the vicinity and had torpedoed four merchant ships in a convoy as they got outside the harbor gates. One of them passed not far from our ship with her forward portion down and her stern in the air. We were given orders to join the hunt which by this time included a half dozen other warships from Halifax harbor. After much hunting and depth charging our radar conked out and when one of the other ships hunting the sub passed abreast of us at a distance of a few yards (it was getting dark) the senior officer of the group sent us into the safety of Halifax Harbor. Personally, though I was excited at the knowledge of being right in the midst of the real war, I was terribly sea-sick and even if the sub had torpedoed us I would have been glad of the relief!
The epilogue of this episode is that none of our ships got an Asdic ping on the sub. When they surrendered a few months later after V-E day it was learned that the Germans had found that if the temperature gradient of the sea water was more than a certain amount it would act as a barrier and reflect the Asdic pings before they got far enough down to detect the sub. By means of a temperature gradient measured from the top of the conning tower to the bottom of the ship a sub's crew could detect the existence of such a gradient and that's just what this sub did once he had done his dirty work and knew he was being chased!
At some point during the latter part of 1944 we underwent a change of command in the gyro base. It's telling would not be worthwhile except that the way in which it came about was rather unusual, so that it was a cause for some unseemly mirth for we officers who heard the details recounted in full by Allan Yeoman. The result was unfortunate for Lieut-Cdr. Marlowe, but it has to be said we lacked confidence in him and only thought the circumstances reflected the many sorts of strange goings-on which happened many times in the forces, and indeed could happen in any pressure grown organization which had gone from less than 5000 people to 100,000 in four brief but hectic years.
You will recall that I mentioned that the Meridian Log required grease under pressure to prevent the shorting of the contacts by the entry of sea water. Further to this we determined by experiment that the viscosity of the grease was important and Marlowe, along with the rest of us was concerned about how we could measure it as and give the crews guidelines to observe as sea temperatures varied. One of our ships was undergoing trials in St. Margaret's bay near Halifax and Marlowe went with her initially at least through interest in the performance of the Meridian Log. Unfortunately, he was over-imbibing in the wardroom, presumably breakiing the unwritten rule that said no drinking at sea. On coming on deck he accosted a senior dockyard officer who was also on board, and in a very unsteady way asked him how his "viscosity" was, which was a term probably not well understood by said officer and no doubt put him on the defensive. On top of this, as the ship approached dock where there were a number of onlookers including local civilians and women, Marlowe decided his bladder was overfull and he proceeded to relieve himself over the side of the ship in plain view of all. The senior officer witnessed this and considered the incident to be contrary to naval discipline and good order and certainly unbecoming to an officer. The result was that Marlowe was sent to St. John's, Newfoundland and retired 90 days later. Lieut. Yeoman was appointed to suceed him in Halifax. When Allan was interviewed by the senior officer concerned concerning Marlowe and the job, he reported back to us that the senior had said of Marlowe's escapade, "Insolent young puppy dog, breathing liquor fumes all over my face!" We never heard of Marlowe again except that he lived in Halifax to a ripe old age after the war.
So those of us who were dockyard landlubbers had it soft compared to the many at sea. We of course did get booted around a bit. I shared boarding accommodation with Ray Martin on my first stint in Halifax, then was berthed with the family of a dockyard foreman living in a poorly consructed wartime house, then shifted to a hastily constructed barrack block near the Hlifax shipyard and finally sharing a room with Bruce Junkin at H.M.C.S. Peregrine, named after the Peregrine falcons who used to live on top of the Sun Life building in Montreal. The connection was that the base administrative officer had been in peacetime a high officer in the Sun Life Insurance Co.. Peregrine had been an air force barracks before it was made available to the navy and they had left it to us thoroughly infested with cockroaches; we amused ourselves capturing them with upturned glasses at meal times. We of course did not take all our meals there, but once we were on full dockyard staff with the rank of lieutenant we availed ourselves of the privilege of eating lunch at the historic old Admiralty House in the grounds of H.M.C.S. Stadaconna."Ad. House", by the way now houses the Naval museum in Halifax which brought back many memories when I visited it in 1997.
Stepping back a bit, in June 1944 I got a couple of weeks of home leave in Manitoba where I visited relatives in Holmfield, friends in Winnipeg and my dear parents in Rivers. When I requested leave I was not aware that it would cover the period when the Normandy invasion was launched and in a way I felt guilty about being on leave when that key event of the war was going on with much participation of Canadian forces including a quite a number of our warships. However, I realize that the powers that be would not cancel leave for any of us not active right in the landings so as not to tip off the enemy that something really major was afoot. The main event at home was the marriage of my sister Mary to Flight Lieut. James F. Clark, who was an air force Navigating Instructor based at Rivers Air Navigation school. I was pleased to be able to atend their wedding all the more because it lasted for over 50 years until Jim's death in Aug. 1996. As a contemporary he will appear several times in these memoirs!
The legitimate part of it started with church parades in the dockyard (and elsewhere) plus military parades around the city. Early in the day I recall witnessing some of the parades with Eleanor Spence who was my best girl for most of my time in Halifax. We were on the far side of Citadel Hill and everything there was joyful and exhuberent, but not beyond the bounds of control for the celebration of such a happy event by the citizens of Halifax and the thousands of service men like myself who were based there or ashore from ships (both naval and merchantmen) which were in port. I went back to the dockyard for lunch and started to hear radio reports of disturbances in the city. After lunch I went for a walk along Gottingen St. and was horrified to see crowds had gone down the street smashing shop windows and looting. This mob started when they closed the wet canteen at Stadacona and the half drunk gang spilled out into the streets, some walking and some commandeering street cars!
When they got downtown they raided a brewery and the liquor stores and many poceeded to get really drunk. As I walked along with a couple of navy friends we came across such things as a matelot sitting on the curb with a whole case of stolen liquor offering a bottle of it to passers-by while imbibing freely himself. While the riots were a serious event which did tremendous amounts of property damage they were not really ugly insofar as people were concerned and there were some amusing incidents. The funniest one I saw was at the corner where Eaton's store was located. Here, in the centre of the intersection was a sailor, dressed in an officer's greatcoat which had been taken from Eaton's smashed display window. He was seated in an office chair behind a desk which had been removed from the nearby liquor commission and he had books and books of liquor permits (so precious to us all during wartime rationing) stacked on the desk in front of him. Having also obtained the official stamp and ink pad from the commission he was gaily stamping permit books and handing them out to all comers! After all the repressions of the war it was really laughable!
As the party grew in size and exhuberance ordinary citizens joined in, and some of them who had gone through over five years of denial of all sorts of goods helped themselves to the looting from the stores. They were one up on the servicemen in that they had homes to which they could cart off the larger items. The exreme case of which many were aware was the bootleggers who backed their trucks up to the liquor commission's main warehouse and loaded up with all kinds of booze, then carted it ot their basements. I'll bet some of the stuff was still being sold ten years after the war!
The Naval and Army provost corps and the city police were woefully unable to cope with the massive size of the disturbance. I saw a truckload of provost corps sailors tearing down the main street, bound for where I don't know. At least one city paddy wagon was overturned and so it went. Late in the evening, as the affair started to lose momentum I recall seeing Admiral Murray in a Naval staff car going along the streets with a loud speaker imploring all to go back to their barracks or their ships. It had some effect, but not much and so the army was called in from Debert to give a show of force. Next day they marched through the streets with rifles and bayonets on their shoulders and that was enough to quell the lawlessness along with the fact that a lot of people were too tired and hung over to be doing anymore partying. The most amazing thing is that in spite of thousands of drunken servicemen and civilians celebrating throughout the day and the night there was only one casualty; a navy Lieutenant-Commander died of a heart attack up on Spring Garden Road. I uessthe lack of casualties was due to the tremendous feelings of relief and elation which we all had because it marked the surrender of Nazi Germany a dark spectre which had terrorized the civilized world from the late thirties to VE Day!
The main footnote to the riots from a personal viewpoint was the awful feeling I got when I realized there was a complete breakdown of law and order, and that where repect for the law and lack of policing occurs then we humans can cause everything to go wildly out of control with absolutely unpredictable consequences. As I write of this in later life (1998) my heart goes out to the populations of places like Bosnia and Algeria where we have gangs of armed terrorists roaming the country for months and years and murdering dozens of innocent people at a time with the government, regular police and army unable to guarantee the minimum of normal safety for the population.
It was the ambition of most in the Navy to actually have the experience of going to sea as a part of the crew on a real fighting ship. For we technical officers engaged in dockyard work this wish fell on deaf ears, but with the cessation of the Battle of the Atlantic some of us could see that this opened a chink of opportunity as the work for Halifax dockyard was declining rapidly. Couple this with the fact that they wanted to send released RCN ships to the still raging Pacific war with Japan and that only those who volunteered could go there opened an only dreamed of opportunity for yours truly.
Accordingly, I volunteered for the Pacific and then had to find a ship. Obviously, to properly make use of an Electrical Officer required that it be to something with enough electrical gear such as a destroyer or larger. It so happened that a Fleet V class of destroyer with a Canadian Tribal class name, namely HMCS ALGONQUIN had arrived in Halifax for a heavy refit following rugged service escorting convoys delivering war materiel to the embattled Russians via the Bering Sea port of Murmansk. Having previously made my aims known to the drafting officer in Halifax I kept up my contacts with him. When Algonquin was first mentioned he said Electrical Lieut. Hector Tetu had already been named to her and my heart sank. However, after a few days the drafting Lieut. Cdr. called and said that Lieut. Tetu did not wish to volunteer for the Pacific as he had married just recently,and so the appointment was mine. So as a still young gung-ho officer without really worrying about the real dangers of being in a real war I got myself occupied with the affairs and repairs relating to Algonquin.
She was docked over at Jetty 5 and with dockyard maties and a state of taking apart and putting together again which goes with a refit she really looked a mess. So I had the job of taking up the A.& A. (Alterations and additions) list approved by Command and expediting the electrical portion of the list. Of course most of the actual work was done by the dockyard mateys. Many of the inbound ship's crew were on leaveor transferred and new crew not yet arrived. When it was finally declared that work was finished we threw a party on board for the mateys and the rum flowed. They had worked hard for weeks getting the ship in shape and free rum on the ship contrasted with strict rationing ashore so it was not unusual that some over imbibed. I can recall one laughable scene where an assistant foreman was seen to leave by the ship's gangway crawling on all fours and was only brought to his feet down the jetty by some of his mates' assistance!
By July she was repainted, the new crew assigned and ready for the various sea trials to ensure that everything was working well. By this time we had our new Captain, Lieut.-Commander Philip E. Paddon, an experienced RCN permanent force officer who did a good job without too much pushing people around. One special task to which we were assigned during the trials period was to go a short distance out to sea to meet the first major troopship returning the earliest army men to Canada after some four years of war. These were the survivors of France, Italy and Germany struggles and they were returning on the Isle de France. It was a foggy morning but with radar we picked the vessel up and were able to lead her proudly into harbor! Boy how those soldiers cheered to see us and dear old Canada once more!
However, before this happened I can recount what to me was the greatest act of personal valor that happened in my vicinity during my whole experience of the war. It was carried out by our ship's doctor, Surgeon Lieut. Bill Tidmarsh who dashed ashore almost immediatedly after the first explosion and with medical kit in hand went over to the shed where the Admiral's "barge" (a high powered large motor boat) was kept at the ready. There the duty seaman\mechanic gave in to Bill's obvious top priority as being greater than the Admiral's need and they sped off to the basin in case help was needed with immediate or other casualties. While in the event, only two had been killed in the initial explosion (which was that of an ammunition barge in the act of loading), Bill risked his life to go into what was a touch and go maelstrom all night as shells and rockets from the initial blowup continued to fly around the property and ignited many other separate stores of ammunition, depth charges etc. There was fear and danger that the whole magazine area would go up and those of us outside the area were only kept up-to-date by the magazine telephone operator. There was in fact one quite large explosion about three a.m.. I was on the bridge and sensed it was happening and ducked beneath the bridge parapet. The shock wave was so strong it was palpable and even though we were at least five miles from the magazine and behind Goat Island it knocked the wooden panel out of my cabin door down below deck in the after end of our ship!
The fireworks went on all night and we could see the headlights of long lines of vehicles jamming the roads on the Dartmouth side as people did their best to flee. The next day, after assurance that the firefighters had got everything under control we returned with our escaped fleet to harbor. It was a nice day and I got the job of going with the Bosun and the ship's cutter to escort the captain's wife ashore before we docked at the navy jetty. For safety Cdr. Paddon had kept her aboard all night feeling that was safer than letting her go ashore in Halifax.
A footnote is that I had taken my camera on this trip ashore and was able to get a best ever photo of our ship from the cutter (see photo). Later I had given copies to several others of our crew and was amazed, when attending the Naval Reunion in Penticton, B.C. in 1996 to see an enlargement of this very picture mounted on a table to get our group of former shipmates together!
In analyzing possible causes of the riots (besides celebrating the end of Hitler) it is a fact that many of the service men who were given V-E day off had nowhere to go once the wets closed. The civilian side were also taking a holiday and many restaurants were also closed. Halifax had no bars as such and few servicemen were members of private clubs where food and liquor were available. If there were more organized activities in which the men could participate they would not have congregated into a mob. This was proven in part by one of the large army barracks where the commanding officer ordered a social "parade" where the men were all served a beer and gotten involved in singing. In speaking to them over a loudspeaker arranged on the parade ground he gained their participation through such things as asking how many were veterans of World War I. There were enough to raise a resounding cheer and set the stage for the enthusiastic singing of all the favorites of that war, which our newer generation also knew quite well because our parents still sang those songs while we were growing up. Anyway, this went on all afternoon and the men were served a special dinner and a dance was arranged in the drill hall. Very few of the soldiers in this base were involved in the riots!
On the personal and social side of wartime in Halifax it is important to mention that we did keep fairly regular hours when working in the dockyard and really lived a fairly normal social life for young men of our age. Our shop group organized such things as ball games on the Common at the base of citadel hill, skating on the Dartmouth Lakes and a huge all day boating picnic at a lodge in Waverly. Perhaps an incident involved in getting beer to the party is worth recall.
The Petty Officers in our shop had arrange with the naval wet canteen at Stadaconna to provide a barrel of beer and I was asked if I could get a navy staff van to transport same to Waverly. I arranged for the van, but when it called at the "wets" the driver felt he might be breaking laws or rules of some sort in transporting beer so he called his boss who then called me.
I was really in a quandary and would certainly have suffered irredeemable loss of face with the whole staff if I had not been able to deliver the goods. Fortunately, after consulting all who were still in the shop I found someone who had an old Ford two-door car which therefore would have a front door large enough to admit a barrel of beer if the front passenger seat were removed. Our mechanically inclined staff had no problem removing the seat and so I was able to proudly escort the goods to the picnic and we had a whale of a time. All I had to do was padlock the spigot for a period after lunch so the boys wouldn'd get too happy and fall out of a boat or something!
As in Sydney earlier, the people of Halifax were good to us and we were made welcome in their homes and at the Waegwaltic Club down on the north-west arm. Paul Dandeno had rented a small sailboat called "Charmouta" one summer so we had some sailing. A particular girl whom I met, whose father worked in the dockyard, was Eleanor Spence. She was a very nice girl and I can remember her fondly as someone who had accompanied me to dances and other events while I was in Halifax. When she knew I was going to the Pacific she felt sad and so did I. But that is part of the sad side in war and I never entertained any thoughts of marriage until some time after the war when I could see that I could have a settled life. I found out some years later that she had married a Chief Petty Officer called Howie and that they lived in Chilliwack, B.C..
The other sadness in leaving for the Pacific was that my dear mother, probably feeling that she might never see me again wanted to come to Halifax to visit me. Because the place was becoming impossible with so many troops returning plus those of us who had been there all along there was a terrible shortage of accommodation. In later hindsight I must say I feel sad that I did not make an effort to see if I could not have obtained a room for her somewhere. She was after all justified in thinking that a Japanese "Kamikaze" or divine wind suicide pilot might get the Algonquin in the Pacific!
We arrived at Ponta Delgada in good shape to take on supplies plus buying goods from the local "bumboats". For us thirsty, ration starved Canadians it included buying about a thousand bucks worth of liquor, much of it being exotic liqueres such as Anisette which tasted like licorice and which we had never heard of before. As we were there for two days the local tailors would come aboard with a sewing machine and make you a set of tropical whites right there. We were all agog at these introductions to a European civilization so different from at home in Canada. I also got time for one shore excursion, walked through the town and saw donkeys loaded with two large baskets and a man driving them. I walked to the top of a hill and hired a taxi to come back. European driving habits, at least in the Azores were much different than at home; the driver kept his foot on the gas and his hand on the horn all the way down while chickens, kids and people scattered in front of us. People said as long as you blew your horn the responsibility was for everyone to get out of the way!
Next stop was at Gibraltar where were to get our Royal Navy instructions for proceeding to Malta. I was fascinated by my first view of "the Rock" and the "Gates of Hercules" as they were called in Grecian times. As we had a day ashore there I was able to walk to the summit of the Rock which was staffed by British artillerymen who manned the hidden guns to command the strait and who lived up there in barrack caves. A sergeant was kind enough to give me a cup of tea while I admired the view over to North Africa and looked down at the bull ring in La Linea, which was Spanish neutral territory.
We sailed for Malta and as we entered Valleta's Grand Harbour I recall the British love of ceremony. As we entered the harbour we spied a little building away up on the cliff and as we drew opposite the door opened and outstepped a bugler to blow us a suitable welcome. Because it was distant and high it made me think of a cuckoo clock! As we sailed in we were given salutes by many of the British warships in harbor.
Many reading this will perhaps recall that Malta had been heavily bombed during the war in Europe, first by the Italians and then by the Germans. One suburb of the Valetta was almost completely destroyed and was uninhabited. Downtown buildings including the opera house (see photo) were also destroyed. The navy's floating drydock was sunk in the harbor and we could only see the top of its walls, we saw the hulks of two beached and burned out destroyers just outside the harbor and there were hulks of sunken ships in the harbor itself. Ashore, there were so many lattice aluminum frames of German aircraft which had been shot down that they simply stacked them up like cordwood on empty lots where buildings had been bombed to rubble! This was a tribute to the lady anti-aircraft gunners who had "manned" the islands "ack-ack" platformsYes it was my first view of the destructiveness of war. Malta had certainly merited its George Cross earned in the war. One message which was not lost on me was that while a destroyer like Algonquin was a fairly important ship in our Canadian Navy, in this Mditerreanean bastion of battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers destroyers were only considered to be "Tin Cans" and highly disposable in sea warfare!
Though the war in Europe was over there was still much about that reminded one of the impact of that struggle in Malta. Certain types of food were still rationed and I can remember going ashore on Sunday to line up at a restaurant which was offering two eggs per customer for that day only. Also I went out to see Mustafa Cathedral (the third largest dome in Christendom) on another Sunday and went to a local restaurant offering apple pie. The pie looked fresh cooked and gorgeous but it was to my taste inedible, the pastry had been made with olive oil. This might be due to local tastes rather than butter rationing, but it was strange to me at the time. Another reminder that the war was only recently concluded was that we were selected to help ferry British and Maltese troops to a ceremonial freeing of Gozo Island which had actually been taken over by the Italians during the war. (see photo of our crowded foredeck).
But the main business of our time in the Med was to work up with a British destroyer flotilla before leaving for the Pacific war. This consisted of a number of naval exercises overseen by the local commander-in-chief's office who had the responsibility of passing or failing our efforts. We underwent gunnery practice, (both surface and anti-aircraft), torpedo practice, and putting troops ashore. We did well on the anti-aircraft shoot as we hit the target drogue (towed overhead by an aircraft) on the second try using our Bofors gun. On the surface we got our gun elevation controls mixed up and the shells hit the water right near the ship. Our gunnery officer signalled to the flotilla leader, "there will be a brief pause while we analyze this brilliant performance!" I helped analyze what had gone wrong and found out that our inputs for elevating the main 4.7 inch guns were going in from two sources. Once this was fixed we did a credible job of shooting at the canvas target towed by another ship.
One incident from the surface shooting which gave me a chance to use my gunnery training was when I was the officer in charge of Y gun at the rear of the ship. The gunnery control system with its sophisticated computer did all the calculations and the output to each gun was on two clock-like dials where the man training the gun and the man elevating the gun cranked their controls so as to keep their dial pointer lined up with the computer driven pointer. However, they had an optical aid which enabled them to see the target, and , inlooking through it it showed the gun barrel was pointing at the towing ship. At this they became alarmed and asked me to look. I did so and what they said was true. However, I remembered from my gunnery training under the R.N. Lieutenant at Cornwallis that shells fired from our guns would always drift to the right because of the effect of the spin put on them by the rifling inside the gun barrels. So, I had enough nerve to tell the gun crew not to disconnect the firing circuit but to report Y gun ready so the bridge pressed the firing button and all guns fired. Sure enough our shell drifted to the right and fell near the towed target rather than coming near the towing ship. Anyway, I was proud enough to have had the knowledge to let our gun fire and the gun crew repected me for knowing. What happens of course is that the Admiralty pattern computer made the calculations so as to take this drift phenomenon into account!
Another drill we had is worth mentioning because it giveas a good example of the English sense of- humor and their ability to quote from literature or the scriptures appropriately to almost any occurence. The drill was for us to send a platoon made up of our ship's crew ashore to attack a target on the land. This required that the ship's guns be used as artillery and fire over their heads in order to soften up the target. This kind of drill had to be done where there was no habitation and so we did it off the shore of North Africa at a place called Ras-El-Canaris where there was not much but desert. To carry this out we were supplied with an army artillery officer know as the Fleet Ordnance Officer or FOO. After our exercise was over we got a message that our FOO was to be transferred to another flotilla so our flotilla leader sent a signal to that flotilla saying:
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's FOO"
Within a couple of minutes we got back the reply:
"Many are called but FOO are chosen"!
So we all had a good chuckle over that one.
One type of trial that scared me more than any was the torpedo firing trial: this consisted of firing our torpedoes at other ships in our flotilla and them at us. This was done by stting the running depth of the torpedoes so that they would pass beneath the targetted ship without hitting it. Then the lookouts on our ship would notify the ship that they saw the torpedo pass underneath us, thus crediting the ship doing the firing with a "hit". What made this more scary was that one of the British ships in our flotilla lost one of their torpedoes because the controls to cause it to surface after its run had not been properly adjusted. While the warheads of the trial torpedoes were filled with sand rather than high explosives one of them could punch quite a hole in the thin plate that formed the hulls of ships like ours!
Of course things were not all work. With no enemy subs lurking in the Med when we were there it was possible to stop the ship for an hour for life saving drill, which was a thinly disguised cover for the ship's crew to enjoy a swim in the warm waters of the inland sea. We also got a day off to take an organized trip to Cairo. We were in port at Alexandria for some of our exercises so it was only needed for us to take the train up and back on the same day. The trip was really an eye-opener for we Canadians. On the way up we saw people living in mud huts with goats tethered on the roof and men and women dressed much as they would have been in biblical times. From the elevation of the Great Mosque we visited in Cairo I can remember how awed I was looking down on this huge maze of a city which at that time had about 3 million inhabitants. It boggles my mind to wonder what it's like to-day with a population reported at well over 10 million! The open air bazaar was also a culture shock for us, meats exposed to the air with no refigeration and flies crawling all over. We also enjoyed seeing the men sitting around smoking hookahs with the smoke bubbling through water to cool it before it was inhaled. A highlight of our trip was of course a visit to the Sphinx, the pyramids and getting to ride a camel. Back in Malta, I can report one last memory concerning the damage done to that island. This concerns the almost saturation bombing which the Royal Navy Dockyard underwent. Through getting to know the dockyard paint foreman I was given an escorted tour through the yard and saw a lot of the incredible damage which had been done to the facilities. Even here however there was a bit of English humor. It concerned a very large unexpoded German bomb which whas stood up on the surface near the entrance to the paint shop and lettered on it was the greeting, "From one painter to another, signed, Adolf Hitler".
Sometimes however, the boyish sense of English humor had bad consequences. As the new boys in Malta, we officers were invited to the wardroom of the cruiser "Ajax" which was anchored in the harbor as jetty space was scarce. They treated us with appropriate hospitality which was gin rather than rum. They told us that they liked "Nelson's Blood" (rum) well enough but drank gin because it was the "cheapest form of potable alcohol, old chaps". The sad side oif drinking too much gin at wardroom parties was that we heard they had not too long ago entertained themselves with a game of "follow the leader" which entailed chasing around the ship up and down ladders, etc. with a special trial of diving off the forward gangway and swimming to the after one. The black part of the tale, concerns the fact that when they sobered up in the morning they found they were short of one Lieut. Commander who had drowned! Nevertheless, Ajax was the most famous warship which I got to visit as she figured very importantly in the battle with the German "pocket" battleship "Graf Spee" off of Montivideo which resulted in the damaging and scuttling of the German raider early in the war
However, let me not get ahead of myself, we must first talk of the voyage home and some of the interesting events which befell us on what really amounted to a leisure cruise. First of all we stopped again at the Azores for fuelling; we were just there for a day this time and left just after dark sailing into the teeth of the heaviest gale I have ever experienced. The wind was howling in the rigging and the waves were very high; the worst part was that the channel for leaving required that we were headed in such a direction as to be in the trough of the waves and thus subject to severe rolling. I was on the bridge through this and she rolled up to 45 degrees as shown on the inclinometer at which point al of us had to hang onto something. However, once we got clear of the channel and could turn to face the wind it was not as bad and during the night the storm subsided.
Morning brought sunshine and a very calm sea. As the war was over economy measures had set in and we were limited to economical steaming speed to save fuel. This was 14 knots for our ship and our days of dashing about at 30 knots were over! Moreover as the submarine threat was gone there was no need for endless zig-zagging or streamiing CAT against acoustic torpedoes and so we were launched on a rather peaceful voyage taking 10 days to cross the lovely warm South Atlantic. We were able to feel the warm trade winds, saw flying fish hitting our ship, saw whales spouting and enjoyed the playful dolphins keeping up with us as they arched their graceful way along, swimming in the bow wave right next to the ship! We were young, had survived the terrible war and now had not a care in the world! In fact we thought our dear Cappy Haddon spent extra time awake for fear his predominately Volunteer Reserve crew might some how or other sink the ship.
About the only reminder of the war we had was the sighting of a Carley float with a couple of sharks circling around it. (Carley floats are a cheap type of raft carried by all ships during the war and which were quite easy to release in emergency). Our Captain came to the bridge and told us to circle in closely to see if the raft carried any survivors. None were found so we don't know if the sharks had earlier got them or if there was some blood on the float to attract them.
As we approached Trinidad we noticed the change in color of the water as the huge outflow from the Orinoco river made itself felt. It changed the color of the water into a lighter shade of tawny green-gold. It was also in this vicinity that we saw a huge hammerhead shark. I was on the bridge and just happened to see his shadow below the surface as he streamed aft running parallel to the ship. I was able to see his head clearly enough to identify the hammerhead shape on which his name is based.
We stayed in Trinidad for three days, mainly to clean and paint the ship so we would present the most favorable appearance on our return to Canada. The tropical climate still charmed me and I enjoyed getting out to walk around the town. Even the local club had a great long curving bar which was covered by the roof but otherwise open to the softness of the evening. As far as drinks went rum and coke was the most popular. And no wonder, a bottle of rum could be had for the same money as a bottle of coke to mix with it! That's why the well-known hit song of the time was about "Drinkin Rum and Coca-Cola!" As we walked along the jetty back to the ship we were accosted by some local girls. One of them sidled up to our first lieutenant, Dick Steele who was quite a big handsome man with a full beard. She looked up at him and said, "White man, does you-all want to be used? That was the cause of many a good laugh as we recounted the story to the others in the wardroom!
After Trinidad it was on to Balbao at the entrance to the Panama Canal. There we were boarded by an American pilot who greeted us with a yankee twang saying "I thought your ship was supposed to be a cruiser and here it's just a little ol' Tin Can". Our passage through the canal was fairly uneventful; we enjoyed seeing a few alligators sunning themselves on the banks, they were a new beast to us.
At Panama City we had time to go for an afternoon and evening ashore. The Salvation army arranged for a very interesting tour of various ancient ruins, the church containing a dazzling golden altar and the beach where it was not safe to swim because of sharks. In the evening we were treated to a concert put on by local singers and musicians. I was very impressed by how good they were and I still (1998) recall it as one of the best concerts I have ever attended!
Leaving Panama we sailed up the coast to San Diego where we spent acouple of days getting fuel and supplies including some new movie films for our shipboard projector. One evening, the local navy entertainment office got a number of American navy ladies to visit us for drinks in the wardroom. This was a novelty for them as the American navy did not allow liquor on board their ships. Later we took them out for dinner at a restaurant called El ????? which was located on the upper floor of the then highest building in the city. I remember that their trademark as advertised on their menu was "Drinking in the Sky". Visits to San Diego in later years to see Fran's sister Marie have revealed the building is still there but is now occupied by a religious organization. Moreover, its lofty "in the sky" idea has been fully eclipsed by numbers of tall new skyscrapers surrounding it!
So we headed north for home and sailed unauspiciously into harbor at Esquimalt. I do not remember that we were met with bands or crowds, afterall on this voyage we had not been engaged in battle nor earned any particular glory. It was late in November and I recall being surprised that roses bloomed alongside the nearest navy office right on into December, even though there was occasionally hoar frost on the jetty early in the morning.
Our main task over the next month was to de-commission or "mothball" the ALGONQUIN which was not needed for the planned peace-time force. This process consisted of too many details to mention here but they included using grease and tarpaulins for the guns, putting plastic around sensitive electrical and other equipment, sending all sorts of records to the shore offices etc., etc..
We had more leisure time ashore than earlier and got to do various things around Victoria such as attending dances. I also got my first ever sight of Mount Baker across the strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington state; little did I know that I would spend much of my retirement life in South Surrey only three blocks away from a spot where an excellent view of the mountain is available!
As our various tasks were completed we were allowed to take our departures and head for home. I left for home so as to get there before Christmas and Algonquin was de-commissioned on Feb. 6, 1946. While few of us ever saw her again, she was extensively modernised and re-commissioned Feb. 25, 1953 and served 14 years with Atlantic Command. She was paid off for the last time on the west coast April 1, 1970 and was boken up for scrap in Taiwan! After getting myself a new burberry in naval stores for use as a raincoat I left Vancouver on the C.P.R.. My main memory of the trip was the way the snow piled up on the telegraph wires through the mountains. I was met at the station in Winnipeg by Betty Emery with whom I had corresponded since leaving university. After a week I left for Rivers to rejoin my dear family, all happy to have got through the terrible struggle of the war with no casualties among our relatives. As far as my personal war record goes, in addition to my Canadian Services Volunteer and Canadian War Medals, I will only cite with pride the citation given me by our captain, Lieut.-Cdr. Haddon in connection with service on the Algonquin: "Electrical Lieut. Tivy has performed to my entire satisfaction, a zealous and efficient officer."