Eighty years ago today — June 25, 1940 — the first Canadian ship was sunk in the Second World War. It was the HMCS Fraser, based in Esquimalt.
The men who died on the Fraser included 12 from Greater Victoria.
Most people had known, of course, what war would bring; memories of the casualty rate in the Great War were still fresh. We had been readying ourselves for a fight for months, with the rising tension in Europe in the late 1930s leading to an inevitable conclusion.
The threat of war prompted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to tour Canada in the spring of 1939, reinforcing our country’s ties with England. During that visit, the king presented his colours to the western command of the Royal Canadian Navy.
Three months after that, Fraser and her sister ship, HMCS St. Laurent, were at a celebration in Vancouver on Aug. 31, 1939, when it became obvious that war in Europe was imminent.
They were ordered to leave immediately for Halifax, and then to proceed to Europe. That posed a problem, because the ships were filled with visitors attending a civic reception. Those visitors had to be quietly escorted to shore without raising suspicion.
When the two ships left, they did not stop in Esquimalt, but proceeded directly to the Pacific Ocean.
Some family members who had said goodbyes, thinking the sailors would be gone just a few days, never saw the men again.
The ships were in the Panama Canal when war was declared on Sept. 10, 1939, and, after a short stop in Halifax, carried on across the Atlantic. As a result, they were in active service almost from the start of the war.
On June 25, 80 years ago today, Fraser collided with another vessel at the mouth of the Gironde River in the Bay of Biscay, off the French coast.
Citing naval secrecy, the two Victoria newspapers did not provide many details about what Fraser was doing at the time.
The local men killed included:
• Arthur Ernest Archer, 31, who lived at 617 Frances St.
• Richard Roy Bodger, who was just 31 but had already been in the navy for 14 years. He was survived by his parents, his wife and a daughter.
• Archibald Henry William Conway, 29, who left a wife and four children, all under seven years old.
• William Miller Gagnon, 25, who was called up on duty just three days after his marriage to Bernice Benallack of Esquimalt.
• James McKinley Johnston, 25, survived by his wife and a baby daughter.
• Archibald Kennedy, 20, who was survived by three sisters, his mother and his father, Alex, who signed up with the Canadian Scottish a few days before he received the news of his son’s death.
• Clifford Melvin Logan, 21, who left his parents and two brothers.
• Joseph Lee Paul Marcotte, 35, who was survived by his wife.
• David Marr, 30, who left a wife and two small children.
• Arthur James Moore, 28, an Albertan who moved to Esquimalt when he joined the navy, and who was survived by his wife.
• Thomas Watt, 38, who had served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War. A former member of the Victoria team that won the Canadian soccer championship, he was survived by his parents, three brothers and a sister.
• Richard Christopher Farr Wright, 19, who had joined the navy the previous summer.
Fraser was one of four ships in what was known as the “Fraser class” of ships. The 1,355-ton ship had four 4.7-inch guns, seven smaller guns and eight torpedo tubes. She joined the Canadian fleet in 1937.
“The loss of a destroyer is a minor incident in a war of this magnitude, but on this occasion it brings the struggle closely home to this Dominion, and particularly to the naval port on the Pacific Coast where the Fraser had been based up to the time she left here for Halifax and subsequently the European waters,” the Daily Colonist said in a solemn editorial on June 29.
“So soon as may be another destroyer should be acquired to replace the Fraser, and to assist in maintaining Canada’s part in naval warfare.”
Soon enough, another destroyer joined the Canadian fleet. HMS Diana had been part of the Royal Navy for nine years, but was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in September 1940. The Diana became HMCS Margaree, and many of the officers and men assigned to it were survivors of the sinking of the Fraser.
On Margaree’s first convoy assignment, the ship was cut in half in a collision with a merchant ship, the Port Fairy. This time, 142 men died; only 34 were rescued.
The casualties included 86 of the men who had survived the sinking of HMCS Fraser, and some, such as Ralph Leslie Clarke and Edward Lomas Skinner, who had been seriously injured when the Fraser sank.
Some men, including F.G. Ralph, Harry Leggett and Owen Clover, survived the sinkings of both Fraser and Margaree.
The Margaree sinking, which occurred when both vessels were running without lights at night because of enemy activity in the area, represented the greatest single loss of life suffered by Canadian forces at that point in the war.
It took almost a week for the news of the sinking to reach Victoria. On Oct. 29, the Daily Colonist devoted a full page to photographs and short biographies of those who had died.
“The sympathy of a nation will go out to all those who are grieving today because of the loss of loved ones,” the Colonist said in an editorial. “It has been voiced officially by the prime minister, and the feelings he expressed will find an echo in all hearts.”
The Royal Canadian Navy was tiny when the war began, with just six destroyers — four of which were on the Pacific coast at the start of hostilities — as well as five minesweepers, two small training vessels, and 1,800 permanent personnel with 1,700 more in the reserves.
By the war’s end, 90,000 men and 6,500 women had enlisted — making the Canadian navy the third-largest Allied naval force — and there were 471 fighting ships. A total of 1,797 navy personnel died during the war, with 319 wounded and 95 taken prisoner.
Our navy was at the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, providing support for the landing forces.
The Canadian navy fought in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, on the northern route to Murmansk, in the English Channel, on the North and Irish seas, and in the Pacific Ocean. The primary role of the navy through the war, however, was to protect the convoys crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The last navy ship to be sunk during the war was HMCS Esquimalt, which was based in Halifax. The ship was sunk by a German torpedo on April 16, 1945, while on an anti-submarine patrol. Forty-four men were killed in the sinking.
dobee@timescolonist.com
