The Long Voyage and Short Life of Kingston-built HMCS Thiepval

When I heard about the Kingston Historical Society's January presentation by Dr Duncan MacDowall featuring the short life of HMCS Thiepval built at the Kingston Shipyards, I knew I had to tune in via Zoom! I'd presented some of the facts of the Kingston phase of the plucky ship's life in that linked post, not knowing its full history. As some of the first ships built for Canada's fledgling navy, steel was sourced in the US, engines in England. Challenges like a wartime economy and labour shortages contributed to the ships' protracted completion schedule, as did fitting out in Sorel, QC after a tow from Kingston to avoid freeze-up in late-1917.

After the war, a decommissioned Thiepval sailed through the Panama Canal to the West Coast, performing coastal patrols from Esquimalt, BC. Recommissioned as an RCN ship in 1923, by 1924 the vessel was part of the support system for a competition to fly around the globe by famed Royal Air Force pilot S/L Archibald Stuart-McLaren. The HMCS Thiepval carried spare parts and more importantly 3,500 gallons of fuel in the spring of that year.

Tonight's presentation filled all that in, and its exploits were quite daring and something Kingstonians and Canadians should know more about. A colourized photo of HMCS Thiepval near Kamchatka (above) Russians aboard with Canadian crew showing one of the vessel's life preservers:

The globe-circling Vickers Vulture planes met their end, with spare plane G-EBGO salvaged and placed on the Thiepval's deck, an ignominious end to the Kingston-built ship's 35,000-km voyage.

In 1930, a northern voyage took the vessel to the Broken Island Group near Barkley Sound where it hit a rock. Now a diveable wreck, this sketch shows the vessel's current disposition, showing the rock ridge it had fallen off that spelled its end.

Lots o' links:

• HMCS Thiepval and the Race Around the World
• The Remarkable Journey of HMCS Thiepval
  
• HMCS Margaret Brooke's modern-day voyage to the Antarctic
• Presenter Dr Duncan MacDowall's RCN connection - his father naval Captain John MacDowall
• The RCN in WWI - a good, concise history