HMCS Sans Peur Refit and Role
Heroes Remember
HMCS Sans Peur Refit and Role
It was really against the law, international law,
to have United States or anybody give Canada warships.
So we didn’t have any warships. And So Sans Peur was,
that had come from England on a trip with the Duke
of Sutherland and he had a bunch of VIPs with him and
when he was in Vancouver he got a communication from British
Admiralty to get his people back to England and leave
the ship there. So that’s exactly what he did.
Anyway, it was a beautiful thing. It was just, when I first
saw it was in the harbor all white, all white.
It was just, it was made for a queen really and it had
all these little state rooms and private baths in them
and it was just gorgeous. Anyway, the British Admiralty gave
it to Canada to use and they took it to, I think it was
Vancouver where they did the ship building and they
refitted it and it didn’t need any deck reinforcements
like all the other ships did because it was all steel.
When I got on the ship, I knew that it was destined to go
through the Panama Canal and around to Eastern Canada.
to be patrol work and training because the ship had been
converted to have three or four different types of
anti-aircraft guns and depth charges and pom poms they
called them and so it was going to be on patrol and at the
same time it was going to be used for training because
all the ships were... This ship was about the size of
a corvette or mine sweeper and most of the corvettes
and mine sweepers were being used out on the Atlantic because
there were an abundance of Nazi submarines on that coast at the
time. So our ship was used for patrol work and training.
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