Chapter Thirteen

When I completed my B.A., I was commissioned with the rank of Acting Sub-Lieutenant. This was the lowest commissioned rank but when I obtained my M.D. I would be automatically promoted to Lieutenant in the Medical Branch. (Surgeon Lieutenant). While in my first year of Medicine, I heard about a new venture based at H.M.C.S. Star in Hamilton. The navy was bringing some minesweepers up from the coast to provide new-entry training on the Great Lakes. Reserve Officers were invited to apply for summer employment. As a commissioned officer my salary would jump to $225 a month – again with room and board and all found.

Even though we complained about the cramped living conditions on board ship, and the perennial chicken-shit (the pettifogging regulations and overbearing CPOs didn’t even warrant the respectable name of horse-shit) it was a good life in many ways. I decided that this would be a great way to spend a summer and earn some hours towards my Watchkeeping Certificate. I transferred from York to HMCS Star, partly because that is where the GLTC was based and partly because my parents were still living in Aldershot and I was using that as my permanent address.

1954, Summer on the Great Lakes

In Medicine, the exams are later than they are in most other courses so I was not available for duty until the beginning of June. I arrived early on a Monday morning (0730h is the usual starting time, Divisions are sharp at 0800) and was told that I was posted to HMCS Kentville, a Bangor minesweeper tied up at the jetty near the base. My thoughts ran back to that first summer in Halifax when I had gone to Wolfville and the town of Kentville is just a few miles down the road. I also looked it up and discovered that HMCS Burlington, that ship I had seen commissioned in Grade 6, was also a Bangor. Sadly for the town of Burlington, it did not survive the war.

Shortly after we had settled in, we were all ordered over to the base to meet the newly appointed Flag Officer GLTC, a certain Commodore Budge. Everyone had heard of Captain Budge who had taken over H.M.C.S Ontario shortly after the mutiny on board. He had refused to be piped on board, the traditional greeting of a new CO. Instead, he had stood on the jetty and dressed down the crew roundly, using gestures and much profanity, before he would even step on board and accept the command. We were on our guard.

Budge was true to form. He began quizzing us immediately on our knowledge of the navy and the job we were to perform. If we didn’t give satisfactory answers, he would have a little tantrum, then settling down abruptly would move down the line and say “next?” During one tantrum he hit the wall so hard that his fist went right through the plasterboard into the next room. He looked a bit cowed, but only for a moment. He turned abruptly and said to the chief by the door in a quiet voice: “See that that is fixed. They don’t make bulkheads like they used to.”

H.M.C.S. Kentville

Our commanding officer was a senior lieutenant who was due for promotion to lieutenant-commander. He was very much a salty and not used to the narrow confines of some shipping channels on the Great Lakes. Also the system of buoys in marked channels was reversed from the system in salt water. He also liked to keep at least two miles separation from commercial shipping and this was impossible on the Great Lakes. He appointed me Navigating Officer and I would also take my assigned turn as Watchkeeper.

I will never forget one time when I was in bad odour. I was on the bridge as we steamed up the long channel from Kingston towards the buoy which marked the commercial channel at the east end of Lake Ontario. Several lake freighters were approaching the buoy from the lake and it seemed we would arrive at the buoy at about the same time as they did. I was treating this the way I would drive a car towards a turn in the road. Finally the Bos’n on the bridge suggested politely that I should call the old man because we were within two miles of commercial shipping. I had overlooked this and our CO was none too pleased with me.

Living in Hamilton and Aldershot, I had often gone down to the canal to watch the big ships come in. I had also sailed on Lake Ontario and seen the lake freighters with their bluff bows pushing the water up in front of them and leaving a heavy wake behind. In a small sailboat, you gave them a wide berth because the bow wave could easily swamp a small boat. What our captain pointed out which I had not realized was that these large freighters only had a single screw. They were not very manoeuvrable, and at cruising speed could take a couple of miles to stop in an emergency. Also, a single screw ship with the screw just in front of the rudder tended to turn to starboard and this was counteracted by setting the rudder slightly to port while under way.

However when going astern, the screw pushed the water the other way so the rudder became almost useless. The natural reaction when you want to stop is to put the engine full astern. With a single screw, this would cause the ship to veer to port and with the rudder useless there would be almost nothing that could be done about it. Our CO pointed out that in close quarters, these behemoths could not manoeuvre the way our Bangor could. Except for corvettes, which were single screw based on commercial whaling ships, all warships were twin screw and the larger ones would have four. A good ship handler – and our CO was an excellent ship handler – could place the ship alongside the jetty with very little manoeuvring just like parking a car.

Just a few years ago I saw the movie Titanic. I was fascinated during the scenes of the great ship taking its final plunge, to note that the ship had three screws, one in the centre immediately before the rudder. All of my former CO’s description and advice came flooding back to me. I recall the commands given on the bridge of the Titanic when the iceberg was sighted. All engines were put full astern and the rudder was put hard aport. With all engines full astern, the rudder would be useless. If I understood the ship-handler CO’s advice, the captain of the Titanic would have been better to stop the engines – at least the middle one – and to steer the ship around the iceberg. He might have still hit it but it probably would have been a glancing blow which may not have ripped the whole side out of the ship. I often wondered if they had a good ship handler consulting to the board of enquiry after the disaster.

The cruises were 10 or 11 days long and were started every two weeks. This was to match the schedules of the new entry seamen who were usually working with only two weeks’ vacation. The first cruise was to Prince Edward Bay near Picton. This seemed to be a popular spot for regattas and we were there on several cruises. We stopped at many ports on both sides of Lake Ontario over the summer. I remember Sodus Bay, Oswego, and Sachet’s Harbour in New York State. It is noteworthy that this was the first visit of a Canadian warship to Sachet’s Harbour since the War of 1812. In July we had a cruise through the Welland Canal into the upper lakes. This took longer so our plan was changed to pick up another group of new entries in Port Arthur for the cruise back.

I remember at Sachet’s Harbour, we were invited to a reception at the local US Naval Reserve station. I was still using my cadet uniforms (no. 5Bs) with sub-lieutenant shoulder boards. Because this do required dress uniforms (no. 5s) I had to borrow a jacket from one of the other officers which didn’t fit me too well but served the purpose. In the War of 1812, Sachet’s Harbour had been the base for the US Navy on the Great Lakes. There were paintings and pictures of famous ships and famous battles. I was embarrassed to realize I knew almost nothing of those battles. The war on the lakes is hardly ever mentioned in Canadian history books. When I got back to Hamilton, I was off to the naval outfitters to get a tiddly dress uniform so I wouldn’t get caught again.

On Kentville, the original SU radar had been replaced with a commercial version made by Sperry. It had a great cumbersome antenna about 3 feet above the deckhead of the bridge (Bangours had a closed bridge) and you could feel the vibration when it was operating, which was all the time while we were at sea. It was always breaking down, usually at most inopportune moments such as when we were coming into port or were navigating a channel with other ships about. Our electrical bos’n got pretty good at fixing it on the fly. More than once, while underway, I was climbing over him crouched beside the radar cabinet as I tried to do the pilotage that the radar was not doing for me.

We were accompanied by two other Bangor, HMCS Digby HMCS and a couple of fairmiles from HMCS Star and York. The fairmiles were manned by reserves who had little ship-handling experience. I remember one of them rammed the coal jetty in Sault Ste. Marie trying to pull up alongside. There was some rough weather on Lake Superior which is big enough that in the middle you could be in the ocean – there is no land to be seen in any direction. This knocked the fairmiles about but they are rugged and seaworthy so they came to no harm. In Port Arthur, we tied up for several days while we loaded the new group. I also visited Jim Neelin’s parents who took me out to their camp north of the city. I remember I went out for a paddle in the canoe and I guess I took longer than I thought because they were upset with me when I got back as they were waiting to drive back into town.

On the way back we stopped in Buffalo. I was Officer-of-the-Deck that day and the fairmiles were leaving us early in the morning to go back through the Welland Canal. They planned to slip from the jetty at 0400h to beat the daily rush through the canal. The CO’s had indicated that it was not necessary to wake me to pipe them off so I didn’t request a wakeup call. There was a visiting officer from CANFLAGLANT with us and he had been visiting ashore, arriving back just in time to see the fairmiles pulling away with no OOD on the quarterdeck to pipe them off. I was in deep doo-doo.

I learned a valuable lesson from that. I should have insisted on following the proper protocol despite the assurances of the fairmiles captain that I didn’t need to. At the very least, I needed something in writing to support my decision. But even more important, I did not defend myself very well before our CO. Officers are not put on report the same as enlisted men, but there is a process before the captain which allows me to defend my actions. I said nothing in my defence—thereby obliging the CO to assign me extra duties. I found the other officers willing to come to my defence but I didn’t give them a chance.

My memories of the Kentville will always be connected to Rochester. In August there was a tattoo sponsored by the US Naval division in Rochester. My picture album diary records what happened. Kentville was selected to take the Gun Running Team from HMCS York to a competition in Rochester with the US Naval Reserve Unit. It was a lovely day and on Saturday, the York Team beat the US Team in running, setting up and firing small cannon. We had lots of visitors on board who had not seen a Canadian warship before. We were scheduled to leave at 1200h on Sunday.

Because we were pointed upriver, the CO tried to turn around in the harbour. He went ‘slow ahead port’ and used the after spring (line) to swing the stern out. Then it was ‘slow astern starboard’ and ‘port 15’. The ship began to move out. By the time we were mid-harbour, the ship was across the harbour, moving towards the shelving shale bank on the opposite side. Then it was ‘slow ahead port’ and ‘stop starboard’. Number One said “We are still moving astern sir.” The CO barked out commands in short order……

(As navigating officer, it was my job to keep the log. I could barely keep up):

……“half ahead starboard, half ahead both,”…..

(After a pause during which we seemed to be moving even faster towards the bank)

……“full ahead both,” (then) “stop everything, midships”……

There was a grinding shuddering crunch as the quarterdeck lifted up onto the bank. Dead silence on the bridge. There was also dead silence among the crowd of spectators on the bank to see us off. Digby towed us off the bank. We had faired both screws and bent the rudder so it was stuck at 10 degrees of port. The nearest dry-dock which could do the repairs was in Kingston – some 80 nautical miles away. We were towed by Digby but because the rudder was jammed and the port screw was so badly bent that it vibrated and could not be used, we went across the lake with the starboard engine going slow astern just so the ship would not veer off to port and break the tow line. The crossing took almost 24 hours.

We could not get into the dry-dock until the next morning so we moored in Kingston Roads just off the mouth of the Cataraqui River. Even that seemed somehow jinxed. I was on the bridge as usual and Number One was in charge of the fo’csle crew. Mooring involves putting down both anchors some distance apart and allowing the ship to ride half way in between. If the ship swings at anchor the cables will cross and could become quite twisted, requiring a swivel to be inserted where the cables cross. This is quite a complex procedure so the CO decided that since we were only there for about 12 hours, we would untangle the cables in the morning.

The next morning, the cables were twisted so they had to be taken apart and cleared. Then downwind anchor is raised as the cable for the other anchor is paid out. After that the windward cable is winched in, bringing the ship around. The wind was coming up so the CO was anxious to be under way as soon as the anchor was on board. He shouted down to the fo’csle: “Report clear anchor.” The First Lieutenant shouted something back but it didn’t sound like clear anchor. The CO shouted: “Say again!” Number One walked over and said quite distinctly “Foul Anchor, sir.” A very rusty wire rope was wound all around it and appeared to be attached somewhere under water. We were already beginning to drift toward the harbour, so the fo’csle crew was working frantically to clear the anchor. We decided that another ship had used wire rope on their anchor, and when they had a problem recovering it, just cut it free and left it there. I hated to think what the bottoms of busy harbours really looked like.

We were in dry-dock for over a week. Finally the screws were back and re-installed. The dock was flooded and we were afloat again. Of course there had to be a Board on Enquiry for a serious incident like this. It was especially embarrassing for our CO who was an excellent ship-handler and also who was about to be promoted to Lieutenant Commander. As part of the investigation, we took the ship out onto the lake to go through the commands which I had recorded in the log with times. It was fairly calm and we dropped a couple of buoys to mark where the jetty and the shelving bank would have been. Following the CO’s orders, the ship behaved beautifully turning and stopping just where it should. We didn’t even get to the ‘full ahead’ command. There was no explanation for what had gone wrong.

But we all knew. The WWII smaller ships were mostly fitted with reciprocating steam engines, a classic design from the First World War or before. Only the larger newer ships, such as the Tribal Class Destroyers had steam turbines. We affectionately referred to these relics of WWI as knee-action turbines. Many smaller ships were fitted with diesel engines later in the war – Digby was diesel but Kentville was steam.

Engines in a twin screw ship rotate in opposite directions so that the problems of single screw ships of thrusting of the stern to port or starboard is neutralized. An old reciprocating steam engine is open so you can see the crankshafts and connecting rods whirling around. The whole engine can be reversed by setting the steam intakes to a different position and you can see the crankshaft stopping and then beginning to rotate in the other direction. An experienced Engine Room Artificer can tell whether the ship is going ahead or astern by noting which way the engines are rotating. He doesn’t have to check the settings on the gauges.

But we didn’t have an experienced ERA. He was a very part-time reservist like many of the rest of us. We think that he got mixed up and didn’t notice that the engines were turning the wrong way. Of course in the Board of Enquiry, he insisted that he had done everything right and his crew backed him up. So much for the findings of the Board of Enquiry.

In early September, the ships were due to return to Halifax. I remember planning to go to our cottage in Haliburton for the weekend and then come back to see the ship off the next week. As navigating officer I was responsible for seeing that the chart corrections were up to date. I didn’t get finished until midnight and then picked up my gear and headed up to the cottage. It was about 175 miles and I didn’t get there until about 4 in the morning. My mother was none too pleased that I made noise coming in and woke her up.

1955, The Next Summer on the Great Lakes

Things were better organized the second year. I was designated as a training officer and there were more regular force members of the crew. This year they had two Algerine minesweepers which were bigger and had more room for our various activities.¹ Also, the training requirements were much stricter so that we had to provide reports on each recruit and the exact training he had received. Inspections were frequent.

H.M.C.S. Wallaceburg

As officers we had other duties on the ship. I was placed on HMCS Wallaceburg. Our CO was an Irishman Commander Jones, a very senior officer who was close to retirement. But he certainly knew the navy well and we learned a lot from him. Many things were similar to the first summer but we had more old salties in the crew and the officers. Cruises were similar to the previous summer, 10 to 11 days with a few days between to get ready for the next one. I created a chart of the Great Lakes area on which I marked the various cruises. I think that I still have it somewhere.

One day, the skipper said to me: “Deadman, you’re from around here. Where the hell is Wallaceburg? We’ve been ordered by CANFLAG-GL to go there. The town fathers heard that their namesake is cruising the Great Lakes and they want to give a reception or something.” I had a rough idea that it was somewhere near Windsor but when I looked it up on the charts, it was just up the Thames River from Lake St. Clair. The old man took one look at the narrow, shallow river on the chart with shoals, and many twists and turns and said: “What’s he think I’m sailing? A canal barge? Tell him to go f… ah… scrub that. Tell them that if I go aground, they will have to take the responsibility.” We never heard any more about that cruise.

I recall a better cabin which I shared with the other training officer. The wardroom was bigger and I brought my phonograph on board so we could play records. On one cruise we went to Chicago and during an open house on board, one of the visitors got talking to me and said he would take me out to see the Chicago Cubs play a team from Philadelphia. He brought his whole family along. Philadelphia won but what I mainly remember was that I was bored at the game.

There seemed to be long pauses during which the players paced around and stared at each other. Then the umpire would say “Play ball” and there would be a hit into left field followed by furious activity in which the player would be safe on first. Then the players would all stand around and look at each other for a while longer. I was reminded of the comments of some of my friends when I said that I played cricket at TCS. Major League baseball had to be more boring than cricket. However my host was very generous and I thanked all of them very sincerely for a lovely time.

Also in Chicago we went to see the latest Cinerama film. In Detroit we saw the Broadway road company of The King and I, and I then went out to buy the record. In Duluth, a bunch of us went to a party and the other officers all claimed that they got laid. My claim that I almost did was not seen as too impressive. One of the guys said that he had laid his date in the captain’s chair on the bridge. This was seen by most as an impossible feat but knowing this guy, I tended to believe him.

Alcohol also featured in every shore leave. One time in Sodus Bay about five of us at a table began buying rounds. I could not keep up. After about four, I was definitely under the weather. The other guys seemed completely unaffected. On another visit to Detroit, the officers were invited to the new US Naval Reserve establishment. It was quite a party. I remember an enormous bowl of shrimp and I had my fill. Drinks were flowing freely and I guess I had my share of that too. When the party showed signs of breaking up about midnight, one of the American officers invited us all over to his apartment to continue the party. We all piled into cars to go over there.

By this time I was not feeling too well. I tried to swallow some ginger ale but soon rushed to the bathroom and brought up everything – shrimp, crackers, hors d’ouvres, potato chips, peanuts – the lot. I probably brought up some of the drinks too because I immediately felt better. Soon we were moving on to another place but I stuck to ginger ale for the rest of the evening. After some of the guys were starting to go home, the driver of the car I was in said to me: “I think you are the most sober, you’d better drive.”

There were six in the car, three of us from the ship. I heard people say to me, “turn right, turn left, stop here.” Presently I looked around and the only others in the car were my two buddies from the ship, both sound asleep. I drove back to the naval establishment where Wallaceburg was tied up and persuaded the guys to get back on board. I then parked the car and took the keys over to the commissionaire at the gate telling him: “I don’t know whose car this is but I’m sure he will be looking for it in the morning.”

In 1954 we still had grog. Grog is pusser rum which was issued to every man on active duty every day. At noon, the designated officer and the Boatswain and another witness went down to the spirits locker to draw the amount of rum for the daily rum issue. The locker was small, the rum was cut from 160 proof and you could get drunk just breathing the fumes. Each man got a tot of 2 oz. which had to be diluted with water or pop before the issuing officer. Rum that has been diluted below about 40 proof will go sour and become undrinkable in a few days. The dilution was important so the seamen couldn’t store it up and then go on a big toot later.

The whole rum issue was fraught with problems. We had a problem in the stokers’ mess. The rumour mill had it that certain stokers had been saving their tot. One day the issuing officer became suspicious and when a stoker came for his tot, he poured something out of a coke bottle into it and turned to go. The officer asked to see the coke bottle. The contents were not coke but rum. So this man was diluting his tot with rum so it would not go sour and he could store it. A locker search of the stokers’ mess turned up a lot more rum. They could all have had a good toot on their tots.

As a medical student, I assumed the role of medical officer on board. I felt very inadequate to the task. This was real medicine, not the theoretical stuff I was learning at school. I was called down to see a petty officer in the engine room who was vomiting blood. Even I, just going into third year could tell he had a bleeding ulcer and could exsanguinate if not treated. We called an ambulance but we still had to get him out of the engine room. There was a vertical ladder at one end which went up to a narrow hatch about 16 feet above. Finally we strapped him onto a stretcher and hoisted him vertically through the hatch. This was the kind of experience I would never get in school. It also emphasized the effects of alcohol in work situations.

I also learned the crazy things people do when they are drunk. On one of our cruises, we paid a visit to the US Naval Reserve Base in Oswego. That evening, the entire crew was invited to the Seamen’s Mess at the base. The officers were accommodated in the wardroom and a great time was had by all. Later that night, we were informed that two of the seamen were in the local jail and the Navy had notified Washington who had involved the Canadian Ambassador. The Canadian Consul from Albany came over. Apparently two of the seamen, quite drunk, had broken into a trophy case in the main lobby of the reserve base, stolen several trophies and broken a couple of others. Fortunately, they were not part of our trainee group; they were reserve force from Halifax.

This was an international incident. The men were released to naval custody the next day and were marched on board ship in irons and we immediately made sail for Star. This was too serious for Captain’s Report so they appeared before the Flag Officer, Great Lakes. Fortunately for them, it was not Commodore Budge. Had he been the flag officer in 1955, they would probably still be in cells today. As it was, they were demoted, and sent back to Stadacona in custody. I never found out what happened from there.

In August, we had Hurricane Connie. Unlike Hurricane Hazel in 1954 which was entirely torrential rains by the time it reached Ontario, Connie had both wind and rain. As we left for Sodus Bay on a cruise, we were warned to expect heavy rain. But as we sailed down Lake Ontario towards Rochester, the storm hit with winds of Force 3-4 and driving rain enough to put dints in the steel plating. Wallaceburg still had a World-War-II vintage SU radar. It worked well enough for ordinary things but could not cut through the storm which blanked out three quarters of the screen. Visibility was down to 50 yards at times and the waves began to kick up.

Algerines were quite sea-worthy so we were not worried that we couldn’t handle the storm. We were worried that we would not have enough sea-room to either run before the storm or head into it. Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes, about 30 nautical miles across near Rochester and about 160 nautical miles from east to west but it gets a lot narrower at the eastern end. That may seem like a lot, but when you cannot see where you are going and the radar is largely blanked out, it is not all that much. We forgot about Sodus Bay. We sailed east with the mainly southerly winds and tried to get a fix by HFDF.² That didn’t work very well either. Because we were in a cross-wind, the ship rolled alarmingly. On a steady course, the screaming winds caused us to list 20° to port. I have pictures in my album to prove this.

We were in a pipe-down for close to 24 hours. It was interesting to see how new-entries responded to this. Some seemed terrified and cowered in the mess-deck. Some were so violently ill that they had to be restrained from rushing to the rail, a rather dangerous thing to do in this weather. One trainee seemed to really enjoy this. At mess time, when few were interested in food, he was going around asking others if they didn’t want their supper, could he have it? The navigating officer who was on the bridge most of this time was a salty permanent force lieutenant who was most embarrassed to find he was quite sea-sick. He claimed he was never like this on the ocean. They all had lost their sea-legs on the relatively calm Great Lakes. I never really developed them all summer.

As the winds gradually backed to the east and what we presumed to be the eye of the storm passed over, we were able to find our position north of Sodus Bay, and not too far from the gunnery range off the Prince Edward Peninsula, we decided to ride it out a bit longer and then as the winds had subsided somewhat, turn back to Hamilton. B0y the time we cleared the Burlington Canal pierheads by noon the next day, the sun was just peeking through.

Back to GLTC Base

Wallaceburg, Portage and Minas were returning to Slackers at the end of summer training. Most of the reserve officers and men left the ship at Star in early September but as we were down to a skeleton crew for the trip back, I decided to go with Wallaceburg as far as Montreal to help with the canalling. From there, they were in the broader St. Lawrence River and Estuary so the need of extra hands was not as great.

We sailed the second week of September. As we pulled away from the jetty in front of H.M.C.S. Star, I felt some nostalgia for the summer and could see that other crew members, many of whom I had got to know well, were feeling it too. The trip to Kingston was very familiar to me after two summers. Then we sailed past Wolfe Island in the international channel between many of the Thousand Islands. There was a lot of shipping and we appreciated the extra manoeuvrability of the twin screws. The heavy wake of the big lake freighters sometimes seemed almost as bad as the waves in Hurricane Connie but they were over quickly. There were also very strict speed limits in the narrow channels.

As we passed near one of the smaller islands, we saw a group of cottagers on the beach cooking supper on a large bonfire. They waved and we waved and it was great. Then No. 1 called out, “Look out for our wake!” we looked astern and saw that the ship’s wake was mounting the beach and running along behind us until it dowsed their bonfire and forced them to all run up the beach. We never found out what they thought of the Canadian Navy after that.

Before the days of the St. Lawrence Seaway, there were a series of small canals to skirt rapids at several places along the river. We took on a pilot at Prescott because some of the parts of the river were very tricky if you were not used to them. We ran the rapids near Cardinal because the pilot figured that our ship could save time by not using the old canal. We went through the old Cornwall and Soulangues canals and then into the wider water of Lac St. Louis near Beauharnois. Then into the old Lachine Canal which ran right through Verdun and into Montreal harbour. Wallaceburg, Portage and Minas were all on the same jetty in the old harbour. That night, the officers took me to the famous strip club where Lily St. Cyr was holding forth. I had never seen anything like this in Toronto. Vive la Montréal. It was great. The next morning, I took a taxi to the Windsor Station and a train for my home. My friends on Wallaceburg sailed for Slackers and their homes.

Notes:

1 Bangors were 180 feet long and about 800 tons. Algerines were 230 feet long and 1100 tons. Frigates were 301 feet long and 1600 tons. Tribal Class Destroyers were 360 feet long and about 2500 tons.

2 High Frequency (radio) Direction Finder.