Two major developments that spring changed the situation dramatically. The first was that the United States entered the war in April, making it obvious that there must be Canadian-American cooperation in the defense of the shared Atlantic coast and the protection of merchant shipping. The second was that David Lloyd George, who had become prime minister in December 1916, finally succeeded in forcing the admiralty to organize merchant shipping in defended convoys.
Long resisted because the naval “experts” thought convoys just provided a larger target, this decision “proved to be the key to victory.”[14] Within three months, shipping losses fell from 25% to less than 1%, meaning that Britain was no longer in danger of being starved out. Germany, however, still was because the British naval blockade of its ports remained effective.
Transatlantic convoys began sailing from Hampton Roads (Virginia), New York, Halifax, and Sydney in July 1917. As the system developed, the Sydney convoys were reserved for slow vessels, while the fast troopships and merchant vessels sailed from Halifax. A reorganization of the convoy system in March 1918 transferred the Halifax convoys to New York and instituted convoys of medium-speed troopships and merchant vessels from Halifax. Meanwhile, the Sydney convoys were shifted to Halifax when the St. Lawrence froze up during the winter months. British and American cruisers escorted the convoys all the way across the Atlantic, and smaller anti-submarine vessels joined as the convoys approached the shores of Europe.
Coordination of the many authorities at convoy ports in both Canada and the United States was the responsibility of the commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy’s North America and West Indies Squadron, Vice Admiral M. E. Browning, who was succeeded in February 1918 by Vice Admiral W. L. Grant. Browning and Grant spent most of their time in Washington liaising with the U.S. Navy Department, but both visited Halifax and Ottawa regularly. Indeed, Roger Sarty says that “on many of the most important questions they, rather than Admiral C. E. Kingsmill, director of the Canadian Naval Service, acted as the senior naval advisors to the Canadian government.”[15]
The Admiralty attempted to avoid any potential difficulties with Canadian jurisdiction in local waters by keeping its command and control offices outside of the country. The Royal Navy’s main intelligence center for the northwest Atlantic was in St John’s, Newfoundland—not then part of Canada—even though its main operational base was in Halifax. This meant that the commander of the British cruiser force operating from Halifax had to have his signals relayed through St. John’s. At the same time, he discouraged local intelligence officers in Halifax from communicating directly with Ottawa. Thus, Kingsmill found himself trying to operate a navy in wartime in “something of an intelligence vacuum.”[16]
When British Rear Admiral B. M. Chambers was sent to Halifax to take charge of assembling the Halifax and Sydney convoys, he sensibly moved the regional intelligence center to Halifax, thus consolidating both intelligence and operational activities in one place, though still under Admiralty control. The Canadian government, determined by now to assert its autonomy at least to some extent, then promoted Rear Admiral William Story to Vice Admiral and made him superintendent of the Halifax Dockyard, in order to make clear that Chambers was not also in charge of local shore establishments and vessels.[17]
Early in January 1918, the Admiralty warned that it expected the Germans to launch a submarine offensive in the western Atlantic in the spring. When Grant frankly admitted that his ability to protect troopships and convoys was limited, the assembling of convoys going to Europe was moved from Sydney to Quebec City, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence Patrol and escort services at Sydney were strengthened. Troopships coming from Europe were similarly diverted to Quebec City, New York, and New England ports. Convoys sailing from Halifax now rendezvoused at sea beyond the danger area with American convoys assembled at New York and Hampton Roads.
The submarine offensive began in May and lasted into August, but little damage was done to the merchant convoys. One ship that the U-boats managed to locate was the Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship that was torpedoed and sunk by U-86 off the coast of Ireland on June 27, 1918. Attacking hospital ships was against international law, of course, and it was also against the standing orders of the Germany navy. Accordingly, the German government insisted that the ship had struck a mine, but there were survivors who reported the facts.
What made the incident worse than it might have been was that, after sinking the ship, U-86 surfaced and machine-gunned the survivors in their lifeboats. The result was that of the 258 crew and medical personnel on board, only 24 survived. Among the dead were Lieutenant Colonel Thomas MacDonald, the Canadian physician who commanded the ship, and all fourteen Canadian nursing sisters who had been on board. This was the worst Canadian naval disaster of the war and had a profound impact on public opinion not only in Canada but in Britain and the United States as well.[18]
It is clear that the effective management of merchant shipping, including the high level of British-Canadian-American cooperation, was remarkably effective. It was even reported that the captain of U-117 actually somewhat plaintively asked the captains of ships he did stumble across where the steamer routes were! Some of the credit for this success must go to the Canadian navy because, as Roger Sarty says, its existence helped to make the convoy system possible.[19] The fact that Admiralty had cracked the German navy’s wireless code and was therefore able to keep the Canadian and American navies well informed at all times on the movements of enemy submarines undoubtedly contributed significantly to this success.
Unable to attack convoys, the submarines attacked merchant vessels sailing alone and local fishing boats, easy but militarily worthless targets. This may explain why the 1918 anti-submarine campaign was virtually forgotten for many years and was not even mentioned in the official history of the navy published in 1952.[20] But the three U-boats that operated off the Atlantic coast certainly caused much concern in coastal communities and among fishermen. U-151, for example, attacked three American schooners south of the Delaware River in May 1918 and had destroyed twenty-two vessels by the time it returned home. Two more submarines, U-156 and U-140, were also active in the area. In addition to sinking ships, they laid mines, one of their victims being the USS San Diego, which went down near Sable Island in July. In all, 110,000 tons of shipping were sunk between Cape Hatteras and Newfoundland between May and October 1918.[21]
In view of the fear generated by submarines, it should be acknowledged that their attacks on fishing vessels were usually very gentlemanly affairs. They surfaced and came alongside the fishing vessels and allowed their crews to depart in their dories—sometimes after giving them a tour of the submarine and even lunch—before sinking the vessels. Because fishing boats did not have wireless, the first news anyone had of their fate came when their crews rowed into the nearest port, whereupon they regaled the local press with accounts of their adventure.
One dramatic case involving U-156 occurred in August when it stopped a steam trawler, the Triumph, near Canso. After allowing its crew to take to a lifeboat, it placed a German crew on board with two light guns, wireless equipment, and a supply of bombs. It then proceeded to sink five schooners on August 20 and two more the next day, after which it headed home, only to strike a mine in the North Sea, making it the only German transatlantic raider that failed to return safely from North American waters.
Before heading home, however, U-156 was involved in an incident that understandably caused considerable embarrassment to the Canadian navy. HMCS Hochelaga, leading a naval patrol, came across the surfaced submarine just south of St. Pierre in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Instead of immediately attacking, it turned away to wait for the other vessels in its patrol to catch up to provide assistance, the captain fearing that attacking the submarine alone might be suicidal. Needless to say, by the time the other vessels arrived, U-156 was gone. Thus, in the only direct confrontation between a Canadian naval vessel and a German U-boat during the war, the Canadian naval offic
er in charge failed to do his duty.
The Hochelaga’s captain, R. D. Legate, was promptly court-martialed and dismissed from the service. To be fair, the Hochelaga was only a converted yacht with very light armament, but at the same time a surfaced submarine was highly vulnerable and lightly armed as well. More significantly, Legate was not a professional navy officer. Before the war he had served as fourth officer on a ship that serviced the undersea telegraph cable.[22] As Milner points out, the leniency of the court martial suggests that he was treated “with some consideration” because his superiors understood the limits of their personnel, “both in quantity and quality.”[23] Still, as Sydney’s Daily Post commented, Legate had been given an opportunity “that is given to very few men more than once in a life time. It was within his grasp to bring honor not only to himself but to other members of the service,” but “he hesitated and—he lost.”[24]
By now the Canadian navy had sixty vessels based at Sydney, including those allocated to the St. Lawrence Patrol, and forty at Halifax. As well, the U.S. Navy lent Canada an old gunboat, the USS Yorktown, which patrolled the Grand Banks fishing grounds off Newfoundland. Most of these vessels were new; however, some did not yet have their guns mounted, and many of their personnel were newly recruited and had received little training. At the same time, however, the vessels were being better supplied with depth charges, and hydrophones were being installed as quickly as they became available.
Meanwhile, when representatives of the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and U.S. Navy had met in Washington just after the U.S. declaration of war to draw up a comprehensive plan for coastal defense, they had all agreed not only that a beefed-up naval presence was necessary but that it should include the use of aircraft. Because Britain could not spare any planes and Canada didn’t have military aircraft, this meant that the U.S. Navy would have to play a major role in Canada’s coastal defense, at least temporarily.
At a second meeting that took place in Boston on April 23, 1917, attended by Rear Admiral Spencer Wood, commander of the U.S. First Naval District, and Admiral Kingsmill, it was agreed that the U.S. Navy would take responsibility for coastal patrols and anti-submarine operations as far north as Lockeport, Nova Scotia, and that two American torpedo boats and six sub chasers would be dispatched to Halifax and placed under the operational control of the Canadian navy.[25]
The Canadian government would obviously have to be consulted about any plan to have the U.S. Navy operating in Canadian waters and even establishing shore-based air patrol stations. The Admiralty’s approach was, however, somewhat devious. It cabled Ottawa advising that Flight Commander John Barron, a Canadian serving in the Royal Air Force but then stationed in Washington, could visit Ottawa to offer advice if the government was contemplating the use of aircraft in the anti-submarine campaign. This message completely surprised Canadian officials because they hadn’t been contemplating this matter at all. The Admiralty then followed up by offering a preliminary plan for coastal air patrols of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to be undertaken by the U.S. Navy until Canada could get its own service organized. The Canadians may have been uninformed but they were not stupid, so they promptly agreed to form a Canadian naval air service. The British Air Ministry was asked to send over an officer to organize and command the coastal defense program, and Lieutenant Colonel J. T. Cull, who had served in the RNAS before the formation of the RAF, arrived in June 1918.
One of Cull’s first recommendations was that the government not call the new force the Royal Canadian Naval Air Service because he thought Canada should be thinking not just of supplementing coastal defense but of creating an air force that would contribute to Canadian defense generally. Nobody had bothered to tell him that the government had already decided to form a Canadian air force as well. As will be discussed in Chapter 13, this decision indicated that the government had decided to follow the American example of having separate air forces for the army and navy. The British had started the war with two separate organizations but had merged them into the Royal Air Force in the spring of 1918.
The RCNAS was not officially established until September 5, although recruiting began in August. More than 600 applications were received in short order, and 80 recruits were almost immediately sent to Boston for seaplane training and another 18 to England for airship instruction. Tragedy struck en route when the service suffered its first casualty with the death at sea of nineteen-year-old Flight Cadet Willet Vancleaf Bedell from acute pneumonia.[26]
While the air stations at Dartmouth (across the harbor from Halifax) and North Sydney were being built and the new Canadian naval airmen were being trained, the Americans provided aircraft and pilots. Lieutenant Richard E. Byrd, who later became famous as an aviator and polar explorer, commanded the Dartmouth base, over which he raised the stars and stripes on August 19. That fact, and Byrd’s designation as Officer-in-Charge, U.S. Naval Air Force in Canada, would have horrified Borden and most other Canadians even a year earlier.[27]
Six days later, two Curtiss HS2 flying boats made their first flights over Halifax, not only surprising the city’s residents but causing some consternation to the local coastal defense commander, who complained to his superiors that “no information has reached us regarding the addition of this service to the garrison. This I would be glad to get,” he commented dryly, “as the fortress is equipped with anti-aircraft defenses.”[28]
This lapse reflected a larger problem. While cooperation among the British, Canadians, and Americans was obviously desirable in principle, the task of organizing a Canadian naval air arm was complicated by the fact that Cull and his colleagues were ex-naval officers functioning under the British General Officer Commanding the RAF in Canada (with headquarters in Toronto) for discipline and the Canadian Director of the Naval Service in Ottawa for administration purposes. American authorities in Washington were also involved, of course, so communications were circuitous.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that the Canadian naval air service was of greater interest to the Admiralty than it was to the British Air Ministry, which gave the scheme rather low priority. According to Kealy and Russell, “general indifference and dilatoriness combined to give the officers the feeling that they did not belong to anybody and were fighting a losing battle. It is a tribute to the initiative and patience of Colonel Cull that he managed to achieve as much as he did.”[29]
U.S. Naval Air Service patrols began at once, and by the end of the war, six flying boats were in operation, escorting convoys for up to eighty miles from port and carrying out coastal searches, but the planned dirigibles and kite balloons never arrived. Although there were no contacts with enemy ships or submarines, there was one casualty: Lieutenant R. S. Johnson, who was serving at the North Sydney station, died in the Spanish influenza epidemic which swept North America at this time.[30]
The end of the war on November 11 aborted the development of the RCNAS. The men training in Britain and the United States were brought home, the RCNAS was disbanded on December 5, and the Americans were gone before Christmas. The distribution of costs still had to be worked out, however, and as a result of negotiations that took place in Washington, the U.S. donated twelve flying boats and four kite balloons to the Canadian government, which in turn purchased all American ground equipment. Complimentary messages were exchanged all round, “and it was generally agreed that the first joint U.S.-Canadian venture in the field of naval aviation had been highly successful.”[31]
Marc Milner argues that, while Canada’s status had been greatly enhanced as a result of the contribution made by the Canadian Corps in Europe, this could not be said of the Canadian navy. “Indeed, after four dreary years of effort, no Canadian warship had even traded shots with the enemy, no lasting traditions had been established, and no public consciousness or support had been won.” For the navy, he concludes, the war was “a wasteland of missed opportunity in all respects except one. All federal parties now accepted that Canada needed its own proper
navy.”[32]
This seems rather harsh. While the Royal Canadian Navy had not destroyed any enemy submarines in coastal waters, neither had the U.S. Navy, and that was because the institution of merchant convoys with naval escorts—including ships of the Canadian navy—had essentially neutralized the submarines. It needs to be remembered too that, thanks to the politicians, the navy had virtually not existed in 1914, and it was never given any real warships that could be expected to engage in naval combat.
The navy that did emerge in the course of the war was designed to patrol coastal waters and escort merchant shipping, and, as Roger Sarty points out, its contribution must be measured
not only by the number of merchantmen that sailed safely and on schedule but also by the fact that Great Britain did not have to divert one major anti-submarine warship from the critical battle in the eastern Atlantic to protect the coastal waters of Canada and Newfoundland.[33]
At the same time, the Canadian navy carried out “the mundane and unobtrusive work of shore staffs, who organized shipping, developed defended ports and secure anchorages, regulated patrols, monitored wireless communications, and provided support for British cruisers that secured adjacent waters.”[34]
As for the RCNAS, it was created too late in the war to actually accomplish anything, but if the war had continued into 1919 or even 1920, as many thought it would, it would have made a useful if modest contribution to the ultimate victory. Kealy and Russell, perhaps struggling to find something positive to say, credit the government for its “foresight and determination in going ahead with the scheme at all.”[35] What can be said with certainty is that the cooperation between the RCNAS and the U.S. Naval Air Service constituted a remarkable and unprecedented instance of wartime military cooperation between Canada and the United States that few would have thought conceivable in 1914.
Canada's Great War, 1914-1918 Page 24