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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, June 5, 2024: Three Princes

 

Above we see a great original Kodachrome showing a naval rating, bosun pipe and boat whistle in the belt, checking the wicked edge of a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife held by a soldier from the Canadian 1e Régiment de la Chaudière aboard the landing ship infantry (medium) HMCS Prince David (F59), June 1944, with one of the ship’s landing craft from No. 529 Flotilla, LCA No. 1059, providing background. The CRs would go in on Juno Beach on D-Day as part of the 8th Canadian Brigade and continued to fight in North West Europe until the end of the war. Meanwhile, seven out of No. 529’s eight landing craft would be sunk that day.

As for Prince David, she had already seen lots of campaigning in WWII from the Aleutians to Martinique and had lots more to come.

The Three Princes

In 1930, Canadian National Steamships company, which had started a decade prior as an offshoot of the Canadian National Railway Co, ordered a trio of new three-funneled from Cammell Laird of Birkenhead, England, for use on Canada’s West Coast. These ships, augmenting the cramped older CNSS Prince George (3,372 GRT, circa 1910) and CNSS Prince Rupert (3,380 GRT, circa 1909), would be fine coastwise liners, at some 6,893 GRT and some 385 feet overall.

Powered by 6 Yarrow water-tube five-drum boilers powering twin Parsons geared turbines, these new liners could make an impressive 22.5 knots (23 on trials at 19,000 shp) and carry a mix of 400 passengers (334 first class in above deck cabins and 70 in belowdecks steerage) as well as light cargo and mail. They would be named Prince David, Prince Henry, and Prince Robert.

The three new vessels, completed for $2 million each, were delivered in the “Dirty ’30s” while the Great Depression was at its peak and soon suffered from a doldrums of low bookings and hazardous operations, sending them into a series of longer cruises to the West Indies and Alaska, with Prince Henry suffering from a six-month grounding off Bermuda that saw her sold to the rival Clarke Steamship Company of Montreal in 1937 and renamed under that house line as SS North Star.

Meet Prince David

Our subject was named, not for royalty, but after Mr. David E. Galloway, a vice president of Canadian National Steamships.

With the downturn in cruise ship bookings in the late 1930s, Prince David was laid up in Halifax in 1937 in fairly bad shape– then allowed to get worse. The below notes after an inspection by RCN surveyors on the liner as well as her two sisters in 1939 as the beat of war came to the world.

War!

Finally purchased for a song (the repaired North Star/Prince Henry for $638,223; Prince Robert for $738,310; and Prince David for $739,663) in late 1939, they were sent to be overhauled and refitted for service as armed merchant cruisers. Additions included stiffened deck sections for six deck guns (four Vickers 6″/45 BL Mark VIIs and two 12-pdr 3″/50 18cwt QF Mark Is) as well as magazines, searchlights, and a battery of assorted light machine guns left over from the Great War.

The main guns allowed a 2,000-pound broadside per minute gauged at five salvos.

A few depth charges (but not listening gear) were installed for counter-submarine work.

Prince David and her two sisters were the largest ships in the RCN for most of World War II, a distinction only eclipsed when Canada acquired the brand-new light cruiser HMS Minotaur (53), transferred to Royal Canadian Navy in July 1944, which dutifully became HMCS Ontario (C53), soon joined by Uganda, who kept her name when she was recommissioned 21 October 1944– Trafalgar Day– but replaced HMS with HMCS.

The specs as AMCs: 

Prince David would be commissioned on 28 December 1940, three weeks after Prince Henry which broke out her duster on 4 December, while Prince Robert, who was in better material shape than her sisters, joined the RCN on 31 July 1940.

Prince David, assigned to the Royal Navy’s America and West Indies Station would conduct workups and escort a few Halifax-to-Bermuda convoys (BHX 109, BHX 113, and BHX 135) in 1941 between searching for Axis blockade runners as far away as Trinidad and Martinique. This included a brush with the Vichy-French tanker Scheherazade (13467 GRT, built 1935) and chasing a possible German warship– thought to be a Hipper-class cruiser but later believed to be either the auxiliary cruiser Thor (HSK 4) or a U-boat supply ship. Her sisters Prince Robert-– who bagged the zinc-laden 9,200-ton German steamer Weser off the coast of Mexico– and Prince Henry who haunted Callao for German ghost ships, were on similar missions at the time.

Prince David also helped convoy the fast troopship HMT Durban Castle, carrying among other passengers the exiled Greek royal family, including King George II, who was being spirited from Alexandria to England via Durban and the Cape of Good Hope– earning Prince David’s skipper a Greek War Cross in a gesture of Hellenic gratitude.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Prince David was transferred with her sisters to British Columbia in early 1942 where the “Esquimalt Force” was to provide some defense of the Canadian Pacific Coastline from the marauding Japanese that were making moves into the Aleutians and taking pot-shots via submarines of the California and Oregon coast. I-26 shelled the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island and I-25 torpedoed and shelled the 7,000-ton British-chartered freighter SS Fort Camosun off Cape Flattery, with 31 survivors rescued by the Flower-class corvette HMCS Edmundston. Hence, Japanese subs were definitely in the area.

The trio of Princes would spend the next 18 months patrolling a line covering Vancouver-Victoria-Prince Rupert and making a show of it for the local populace. To give them some more teeth, they picked up ASDIC sets and additional depth charges.

In August 1942, with the Americans, assisted by the Canadians, moving to kick the Japanese out of the Aleutians, badly needed convoy escorts to free tin cans for front-line service. To answer the call, Force D was formed at Esquimalt from the three Princes along with the two Flower-class corvettes HMCS Dawson and HMCS Vancouver.

Sailing for Kodiak on 19 August and beginning their first convoy escort to Dutch Harbor two days later, over the next two months the Princes, augmented by a couple old American four-piper destroyers as the smaller Flowers were relegated to ASW patrol off Adak, would shepherd over two dozen small (under 12 ships) unnamed convoys back and forth between the two ports as close to the coast as possible for the 350-mile run, hugging the fog-covered narrow passengers and channels of the Alaskan peninsula and the Fox and Iliasik islands. The convoys were typically made up of a Prince paired with a four-piper.

By the time the force was released on Halloween 1942, Prince Henry made 11 convoy runs, Prince Robert 13, and Prince David 10. A few submarine contacts resulted in depth charge runs, but no losses were incurred.

Sent back to Esquimalt, the Princes were soon back on patrol off Vancouver, continuing into March 1943.

LSI Days

With their role as blockade runner/surface raider hunters aged out by the first part of 1943, and more effective new destroyers coming on line for use as escorts, by this stage of the war, the Admiralty had decided to equip each Prince for more worthwhile service with five twin Mark XVI 4-inch high angle guns, two quad 2 pounder pom-poms, six 20mm Oerlikons, and extra pair of twin .50 cals, and four depth charge throwers. It was even put forth that the Mark XVI’s could instead be new 4.7-inch DP guns as a 4.7-inch suite would allow a broadside of 3,600 pounds per minute judged at five salvos per gun, plus her high-angle enough that they could be used in an AAA role.

However, as the retrofit would have cost some $7 million for the class, and funds were scarce, it was decided to rearm Prince Robert alone for $2 million for a fit that included the above guns (with twice the number of 20mm mounts as well as Type 291 radar and Type 242 IFF).

Then, the Admiralty would simply convert Prince David and Prince Henry to landing ships for a more paltry $450,000 each.

The LSI conversion meant keeping the ASW weaponry, landing their 6 and 3-inch guns in favor of two twin 4-inch high-angle mounts, 10 single-barreled 20mm Oerlikons, and two 40mm Bofors. Radars, Types 272, 253, 285, and 291, were also added. Signals, cipher, and surgical suites were greatly expanded.

Side davits for eight landing craft– manned by a dedicated 5 officer/50 rating detachment– were installed. The craft would be a mix of typically six Canadian-made unarmed 58-foot LCAs and two British-made machine-gun fitted 41-foot LCS(M)s. Each of these embarked forces as a semi-independent RN Flotilla, No. 528 (Lt R.G. Buckingham, RCNVR) in Prince Henry and No. 529 (Lt J.C. Davie, RCNVR) on Prince David, a mix of forces that would sometimes prove…rowdy.

Prince Henry and Prince David, after receiving their conversions in Vancouver, would go through the Panama Canal and, after a stop in New York, cross the Atlantic as convoy escorts for UT7 in January 1944– with David full of 437 American soldiers. They would then spend the next five months prepping for Overlord.

On 2 June at Southampton, Prince Henry loaded 326 troops (including 227 of the Canadian Scottish Regiment) while Prince David embarked 418 (a mix of Régiment de la Chaudière and 5th Bn Royal Berkshire Regiment along with some RM/RN beach control party/clearance members) and set out for their staging areas that night, played out to sea by the Canadian Scott’s pipe band.

By 0500 on D-Day, as part of Group J-1, a bugle call stood the troops going ashore on deck and the first landing craft were lowered by 0620, with David’s boats making for their beach at Bernieres-sur-Mer (Nan White) and Henry’s headed for Courseulles sur Mer (Mike Red) for H-Hour which on the Juno area was 0755.

Of No. 529 Flotilla’s eight landing craft, LCA 985, 1059, 1137, 1138, 1150, 1151, and 1375; and LCS (M) 101, all except 1375 would be sunk off Normandy.

With their troops landed by mid-morning, Prince Henry and David were dispatched back to England to embark on a second wave, each laden with casualties recovered from the fighting ashore. Prince David, the first LSI from Overlord to make Southampton on D-Day, carried 40 wounded and three dead, and arrived at the dock at 2230, received by waiting ambulances. The ships, however, had arrived back with their davits empty and at least three boat crews missing.

Prince David and Prince Henry would make another eight cross-channel sorties in support of Overlord, in all, landing 5,566 men between them.

Outfitted with the recovered LCA 1375, her only original landing craft, and her davits filled with other recovered LCAs and LCS(M)s, Prince David, along with her sister Prince Henry, would be transferred to the sunny climes of the Mediterranean where they would get ready to repeat Overlord along the French Rivera in the form of Operation Dragoon.

Prince David and Henry would become part of the Sitka Force, which would put ashore assorted special operations troops during Dragoon.

Prince David would carry over 1,400 Free French troops home during Dragoon in three waves, similar numbers repeated by Prince Henry.

Then came operations in Greek waters. Between September 1944 and January 1945, she made no less than 11 runs back and forth to Aegean ports, landing no less than 1,400 British Army, and 1,000 Free Greek troops (along with the Greek prime minister) while repatriating 400 Italian POWs.

Damaged by a mine on 10 December 1944, off Aegina Island, Greece, she continued her mission and landed her troops despite a 17-foot hole in her hull.

In all, between Overlord, Dragoon, and Greece, Prince David carried no less than 7,043 officers and men in 19 journeys.

Repaired at Bizerte, North Africa, she left in March 1945 to refit at Esquimalt, from where she would join the British Pacific Fleet for the final push on Tokyo. However, the war ended while she was still pier-side in British Columbia.

Taking off the warpaint

Prince David would be paid off on 11 June 1945 and laid up at Vancouver. Sold to Charlton, she would be refitted for the migrant-run trade as Charlton Monarch, she soon suffered an engineering casualty off Brazil in 1948 and was subsequently scrapped.

As for her sisters, both survived the war, with Prince Robert assisting in the liberation of Hong Kong in 1945 after service with the British Pacific Fleet, and was paid off in December 1945. Sold to Charlton two years later, she began cut-rate migrant voyages as SS Charlton Sovereign, packed with as many as 800 European refugees headed to Australia and South America, later being sold to an Italian shipper and operated as SS Lucania. She was broken up in Italy in 1962.

Prince Henry, loaned to the Royal Navy in April 1945, would continue to serve under Admiralty orders until July 1946. Henry was bought by HMs Ministry of War Transport for $500,000 and, renamed Empire Parkeston, would carry British troops between Harwich and the Continent for another decade, taking a break for use in the Suez in 1956, carrying elements of 16 Parachute Brigade. Withdrawn in September 1961 after an airbridge was put in place for replacements to the British Army of the Rhine, she was broken up at La Spezia the next year.

As for Canadian National Steamships, they got out of the boat business altogether in 1975.

For more detail into the “Three Princes” during RCN service, a circa 1986 236-page volume is online at a Canadian Forces website.

Epilogue

The best memorial to HMCS Prince David is her For Posterity’s Sake webpage.

While in Esquimalt in July 1942, Prince David was used to film several extensive scenes for the 1942 Paul Muni and Anna Lee war romance “Commandos Strike At Dawn” which appears in the third act. These included not only troops loading on deck and the vessel shoving off but also underway.

Two of Canada’s three official war artists embarked on Prince David during the war to observe ops, and their works survive.

Famed Canadian painter and war artist, Alex Coleville, was aboard Prince David for Dragoon and produced at least two from this period which are now in the Canadian War Museum.

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Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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