CITIZEN SAILORS: HMCS SACKVILLE.
Surely not another preserved WW2 warship? We’ve got plenty in the U.K. already (yawn!). Maybe, but from hundreds built as sturdy dependable escort craft, the Sackville is the only Flower-class corvette left in the world.
She’s in Halifax, Nova Scotia as Canada’s Naval Memorial, a WW2 combat veteran and latterly a museum ship open to the public. And the top of the gangway has a mural of Disney’s sailor-suited Donald Duck, broom in his hand sweeping up U-boats – the ship’s battle ensign. Other ships had them: HMCS Shawinigan, for example, had a battle ensign of a bulldog tearing apart the Nazi flag.
But in recent times – and in another nod to Hollywood, HMCS Sackville was showcased as an American destroyer in the 2020 Apple film Greyhound. Starring Tom Hanks, the film focuses upon the Battle of the Atlantic and the extreme rigours of life aboard an escort ship.
The Sackville, built at St John’s Shipbuilding Yard, Newfoundland, and launched in 1940, was the place which knew the stormy North Atlantic. So after numerous convoys the ship returned to both Halifax and Liverpool, Nova Scotia, both on active service and for refit. Indeed during the longest and most complex naval battle in history, Sackville also refitted in Galveston, and Derry in Northern Ireland.
Her crew had a high percentage of reservists and citizen sailors – this latter group represented volunteers from all walks of life – whilst most reservists came from the Merchant Marine, by 1945 other ships had volunteers up to half of the ship’s company who had never been to sea before.
Some of her engineers were recruited from shoreside railway steam engineering; whilst the means of propulsion were very similar, the living and working conditions were anything but that – and as reservist AB, Patrick Onions (ret) put it:
‘We would slide down the back of a giant wave, again to be met by another giant wave that would engulf the ship. With water entering the ship she even became difficult to steer’ (1)
Not only were the ‘green’ crew from the traditional seafaring communities of Halifax, St John’s and Vancouver, but also farm boys on the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan – which was obviously a major shock to be battered around the North Atlantic on a corvette otherwise known as a ‘tin-can.’
Still, at this point, it is worth noting that not all volunteers were welcome. For to Canada’s shame there was a policy of excluding applicants to the Navy from indigenous people as they would be of ‘non-white, non-European appearance.’(2) Strangely, there was no such racial barrier in the Army or Royal Canadian Air Force where thousands of First Nation men and women signed for the military, some from various tribes such as the Mohawk, Inuit and Iroquois achieving distinction in battle.
In comparison, the Canadian Navy totalled just nine indigenous First Nation crew members.And although women volunteers figured highly in terms of numbers, none were allowed to serve at sea.
Anyway, sea training began at a purpose-built centre at St John’s, Newfoundland and all volunteers would learn everything from keeping quarters ship-shape to the quick removal of depth charge primers in event of their own ship being hit.
So after a wintertime work-up the ship first experienced the savagery of war as she rescued 29 survivors from the torpedoed Greek ship Lily off Newfoundland in March 1942. At 7 knots speed Lily was slow, unarmed and straggling from the main convoy, and eighty years on there are few reports of Sackville’s mostly inexperienced crew’s responses to the rescue except that they acted decisively, which no doubt hardened their feelings against yet another cowardly U-boat attack.
Subsequently, in the summer of 1942, Sackville’s vigilance in convoy ON115 gave no quarter when her crew caught U-43 with a series of depth charges which badly damaged the sub. The following day the ship attacked another, U-704, as it dived causing the U-boat to break off its attack.
That same day, Sackville discovered U-552 on the surface and blasted a four-inch shell through her conning tower – followed by a depth charge, the sub nearly sank, but ultimately struggled back to France albeit with massive damage.
It couldn’t have been reassuring though to know the Canadians had poor equipment to work with. A British officer later commented:
‘Sackville’s three U-boats would have been a gift [total loss] if it had been fitted with newer radar.’As it was, the corvette relied upon her presence to deter U-boats from surfacing and if they did so, both depth charges and her gun were used against the aggressor.Failing that, orders were always given: ‘prepare to ram.’
Despite the non-appearance of newer radar, the crew wouldn’t have shed many tears had they known that U43 – their first one that got away – was finally destroyed by an American plane off the Azores a year later.
But in any case, what was needed was less the ability to sink U-boats than skill at defending the convoys. Also a certain amount of luck, which is narrated by one of the ship’s citizen sailors, Larry Hartman, a crew member who quit High School at 17 years old to join the Canadian Navy recalls:
‘When the depth charge went overboard we heard a tremendous explosion, and it was later figured that the depth charge hit near or onto a torpedo that was approaching’, he recalled. *A torpedo aimed for them prematurely destroyed by one of their own depth charges: Dame Fortune intervened there for sure, but of trans-Atlantic convoys which Sackville escorted, only 4 convoys suffered loss from a total of 30.Which is a tribute to all of her ship’s company, and that Canadians bore the brunt of 1942 attacks was officially acknowledged by the Royal Navy Monthly Anti-Submarine Report which stated:
‘That they did so with a fleet manned largely by reservists is to their credit.’
However, in May 1944 the vessel escorted convoy HX-297 to Derry, but on arrival inspection revealed a serious leak in one boiler. Repairs unsuccessful, a decision was made to sail her back to Halifax and convert her into a loop-layer, laying anti-submarine cables across harbour defences – this being continued until the end of the war.
And by this time, the submarine menace was much diminished to prompt a Canadian Navy quip that:
‘I wouldn’t want to live aboard a U-boat now – they’re really under pressure.’If this was a jocular remark it was ill-timed for U-boats still claimed kills on merchant vessels and warships alike – several just outside Halifax harbour in 1945.Maybe Sackville escaped destruction by changing from convoy escort to a loop-laying role, but of course, we’ll never know.
Fast-forward to the 1950’s and the ship took on an entirely new task insofar as it was converted into a research station for the Department of Marine and Fisheries, this continuing until 1982.
After which she became a museum ship – all maintenance and admin work is undertaken by volunteers and each first week in May she moves from the Naval dockyard to a summertime berth nearer town where thousands of visits take place.In 2010 Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh toured the ship, but as respect to its wartime civilian sailors, ex-crew dinners and reunions were always held – sadly however these are becoming less commonplace.
The ship is seen by many as symbolic not only of the birth of the Canadian Navy, but Canadian statehood together with its ideals of equality and justice, plus Canada’s role as a founder member of NATO.Indeed at the start of hostilities, Canada had just seven ships and 3,500 personnel, but by 1945 became the fourth most powerful Navy in the world.
As years go by, it appears that Sackville’s silent enemy is now rust and corrosion and in a strange irony it isn’t seawater which gushed over as she rode North Atlantic storms, but rainwater which is now penetrating everywhere.The trustees of the ship are now discussing a permanent construction, a canopy over her to exclude the effects of bad weather.Of course, this would cost money and we would hope that the Canadian government, and general public too would not see HMCS Sackville as celebrating militarism, but instead as a sentinel for democracy and freedom.
*Hartman being interviewed by Canadian Television in which he describes one of the ‘luckiest’ shots ever fired against the ship.
References:
(1) https://www.veterans.gc.ca>second-world-war>ponions My Life Aboard HCMS Sackville -Second World War, May 2019 (accessed 10.03.2022)
(2) https://http://www.veterans.gc.ca>aboriginIndigenous People in the Second World War – Historical Sheet , 12.04.2017 (accessed 08.03.2022)