The Tribal class were ordered by the Canadian Naval Staff's intent to build a stronger, permanent force.

[3] Canada chose the design based on its armament, with the size and power of the Tribal class allowing them to act more like small cruisers than as fleet destroyers.

Canadian Tribals were a foot longer than their British counterparts and carried an auxiliary boiler for heating and additional power requirements.

By the time the second batch of Canadian-built Tribals, Cayuga and the second Athabaskan, began construction, Canada was capable of providing the steel.

[8] The destroyer was propelled by two shafts driven by two Parsons single-reduction geared turbines powered by steam created by three Admiralty-type three-drum boilers.

[9] As built, Nootka was fitted with six quick firing 4.7-inch (119 mm) Mk XII guns placed in three twin turrets, designated 'A', 'B' and 'Y' from bow to stern.

A depth charge thrower was set high on each side of the superstructure ahead of the tripod main mast.

The contractor had been overwhelmed by the complexity of the design and the engines for the first Canadian Tribal, Micmac arrived only one full year after the ship's launch.

She was one of the ships assigned to take part in Operation Scuttled, the training exercise designed to sink U-190, a German U-boat that had surrendered to the RCN at the end of the Second World War.

However, before Nootka and her fellow ships could find the range on the submarine, the aircraft of the Naval Air Arm successfully attacked the vessel and sank her.

There the two destroyers left the aircraft carrier and toured the north, visiting Churchill, Manitoba, becoming the first RCN warships to penetrate Hudson Bay.

For the first three months of 1951, the three Canadian destroyers in theatre spent the majority of their time screening aircraft carriers and performing inshore patrols.

Later in May, the destroyer transferred to the east coast, performing bombardment, aircraft carrier screening and patrol missions.

During one inshore patrol around the islands on 26 September, Nootka sank a North Korean minelaying junk, rescuing its crew of five.

[26] She returned to Halifax on 17 December 1952 via the Mediterranean Sea, having become the second Canadian warship to circumnavigate the globe and the first destroyer to do so by the Suez Canal.

Her last deployment was for a NATO exercise in Bermuda in fall 1963 where she sustained hull damage while docking in strong winds.