History of the Royal Canadian Navy

A request to change name of the Naval Service of Canada to Royal Canadian Navy on 30 January 1911, brought a favourable reply from King George V on 29 August of that year.

The course provided a grounding in Applied Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Navigation, History and Modern Languages and was accepted as qualifying for entry as second-year students in Canadian Universities.

[4] To form the nucleus of its new navy, and to train Canadians for the country's planned fleet of five cruisers and six destroyers,[5] Canada acquired two ships from Great Britain.

The Royal Canadian Navy now found itself in limbo, with very limited funds for operations, two obsolescent cruisers, and no prospect of new ships being built or acquired.

[11] Immediately before the First World War, the premier of British Columbia, in a fit of public spirit, purchased two submarines (CC-1 and CC-2) from a shipyard in Washington.

On 5 September 1918, the Royal Canadian Naval Air Service (RCNAS) was formed with a main function to carry out anti-submarine operations using flying boat patrol aircraft.

A landing party was briefly sent ashore at Acajutla, but the situation there improved and the sailors saw no combat, although the two ships remained in the area until the end of the month.

By the outbreak of war in September 1939, however, the RCN still had only six River-class destroyers, five minesweepers and two small training vessels,[21][22][23] bases at Halifax and Victoria, and altogether 145 officers and 1,674 men.

[25] Although it showed its inexperience at times during the early part of the war, a navy made up of men from all across the country, including many who had never before seen a large body of water, proved capable of exceeding the expectations of its allies.

[26] Canada lost 24 ships in five different theatres: first was Fraser, sunk in a collision while evacuating refugees from France in 1940; Athabaskan, Regina, Alberni and Trentonian were lost in 1944 during Operation Neptune and cross-Channel escort duty; Louisburg and Weyburn sank in the Mediterranean Sea during the North African invasions of Operation Torch; eight ships were sunk protecting Canadian coastal waters Bras d'Or, Chedabucto, Clayoquot and Esquimalt (minesweepers), Otter and Raccoon (armed yachts), and Charlottetown and Shawinigan (corvettes); and nine ships were lost on Atlantic escort duty Margaree, Levis, Windflower, Spikenard, Ottawa, St. Croix, Valleyfield, Skeena and Guysborough (on loan to the RCN from the Royal Navy).

In the late winter of 1949, the RCN was shaken by three almost simultaneous cases of mass insubordination variously described as "Incidents" or "Mutinies": As noted by Dr. Richard Gimblett, researcher and himself a retired naval officer[28] the respective captains in all three cases acted with great sensitivity, entering the messes for an informal discussion of the sailors' grievances and carefully avoided using the term "mutiny," which could have had severe legal consequences for the sailors involved.

Specifically, the captain of Athabaskan, while talking with the disgruntled crew members, is known to have placed his cap over a written list of demands, which could have been used as legal evidence of a mutiny, and pretended not to notice it.

Defence Minister Brooke Claxton appointed Rear-Admiral Rollo Mainguy, Flag Officer Atlantic Coast, to head a commission of inquiry.

The Mainguy Report— described by Dr. Gimblett as "a watershed in the Navy's history, whose findings, recommendations and conclusions remain a potent legacy"—concluded that no evidence was found of Communist influence or of collusion between the three crews.

It was to have ramifications in the process undertaken in later decades, painful to many of the officers concerned, of deliberately cutting off many of the British traditions in such areas as ensigns and uniforms.

The Canadian ships' duties included "exciting but dangerous" shore bombardments and the destruction of North Korean trains and railway lines.

[31] At much the same time, the growing Soviet submarine threat led the RCN to update and convert existing ships to improve their anti-submarine capabilities.

The RCN intended to replace some of the capabilities lost with the retirement of those vessels with the General Purpose Frigate, but after disagreement over the direction of the service, the project was scrapped.

Using this technology, the St. Laurent-class DDEs were upgraded to destroyer-helicopter (DDH) vessels during the early to mid-1960s to accommodate recently acquired CH-124 Sea King anti-submarine helicopters.

[36] The improved capabilities conferred by these innovations contributed to Canada's NATO allies giving the RCN an expanded anti-submarine role in the North Atlantic.

Much of the RCN's experimental work in these fields was conducted in conjunction with the Defence Research Board, and it would later include experiments leading to the development of the fastest warship ever built, the 60-knot (110 km/h) HMCS Bras d'Or.

My mother was a naval vet, a former WREN, and at this transformative moment of national symbolism, she wept; with the lowering of the White Ensign something disappeared from her history.

[44] The 1968 unification of the Canadian Armed Forces was the first time a nation with a modernized military had combined sea, land, and air branches into a unified-command structure.

Despite a realistic fleet structure at the time, the Progressive Conservative minority government led by Joe Clark offered an expensive vision.

In 1984, DND requested a revision during the "Capabilities Planning Guide", which included a largely status quo fleet consisting of a 24 destroyers and frigates, four submarines, 12 mine clearance vessels, three support ships, 18 long range patrol aircraft, 18 medium range patrol aircraft and an unspecified number of maritime helicopters.

[49][50] After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of the Russian Navy in 1991, the Maritime Command plan to maintain the capacity to defend the Canadian interest in the region was based on a fleet consisting of four destroyers, 18 frigates, six submarines, three supply ships and 12 minesweeping vessels.

[51] On 23 October 1969 at 8:21 AM HMCS Kootenay suffered the worst peacetime accident in the history of the RCN during routine full-power trials when her starboard gearbox reached an estimated temperature of 650 degrees Celsius and exploded.

As part of Operation Apollo, Canada's military contribution to the international campaign against terrorism, 20 MARCOM vessels have been patrolling in the Arabian Sea in recent years.

On 14 December 2010, the Canadian Senate passed a motion urging the federal government to change the name of Canada's naval force from Maritime Command to a title that included the word "navy."

When British and Canadian foreign policies began to diverge in the 1950s (highlighted by the two countries' different roles in the Suez Crisis), having an ensign identical to the Royal Navy's became less satisfactory.