Her Majesty's Troopships: HMT Empress of Canada, HMT Queen Mary, and RMS Olympic

Her Majesty's Troopships, RCN 1931–1949

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo, Bo N80)

RMS (HMT) Empress of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1 June 1936.  

RMS Empress of Canada was an ocean liner built in 1920 for the Canadian Pacific Steamships (CP) by Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Company at Govan on the Clyde in Scotland.  She was 653 feet long.  This ship was the first of two CP vessels to be named Empress of Canada, and regularly traversed the trans-Pacific route between the west coast of Canada and the Far East until 1939.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, she was converted for use as a troopship.  Her defensive arrmament consisted of a 6-inch gun right aft with a 3-inch AA gun sited above it.

She was one of the ships in the first Australian/New Zealand convoy, designated US.1 for secrecy, destined for North Africa and at that time not yet fully converted for full troop capacity with few ships of the convoy carrying more than 25% more than their normal passenger load.  Empress of Canada departed Wellington on 6 January 1940 with the New Zealand elements, joined the Australian ships and arrived in Aden on 8 February from where the convoy split with all ships heading for Suez.

She continued to transport ANZAC troops from New Zealand and from Australia to the war zones in Europe until sunk.  The return voyage from Europe was not less dangerous than the trip north had been.  On 13 March 1943, while en route from Durban, South Africa to Takoradi carrying Italian prisoners of war along with Polish and Greek refugees, the SS Empress of Canada was hit on the starboard side by a torpedo from the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, and quickly developed a list and lost all power.  She was struck at midnight approximately 400 miles (640 km) south of Cape Palmas off the coast of Africa.  Within an hour another torpedo hit and she sank soon after.   Of the approximate 1800 people on board, 392 died.  The final casualty toll was 44 crew, 8 guards and 340 passengers, ironically many of them Italian prisoners of war.  An SOS had been transmitted and a Catalina flying boat found the lifeboats the next day.  Rescue boats finally collected 1,360 survivors and took them to Freetown.

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo, CVA 371-1053)

RMS (HMT) Empress of Canada.

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo, CVA 447-2190.2)

RMS (HMT) Empress of Canada.

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo, CVA 99-1619)

RMS (HMT) Empress of Canada.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3331327)

A Canadian machine gun crew aboard His Majesties Troopship (HMT) Empress of Canada, taking part in Operation GAUNTLET, the Spitsbergen raid, en route to Spitsbergen, ca. 19-24 August 1941.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3331328)

A Canadian crew aboard His Majesty's Troopship (HMT) Empress of Canada, taking part in Operation GAUNTLET, the Spitsbergen raid, en route to Spitsbergen, ca. 19-24 August 1941.

HMT Queen Mary

(William Carey Photo)

HMT Queen Mary.  Although not in service with  the RCN, she carried many Canadian soldiers to Europe after being converted to serve as a troopship during the Second World War.  The RMS Queen Mary was an ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line when the vessel entered service.

In late August 1939, Queen Mary was on a return run from New York to Southampton.  The international situation led to her being escorted by the battlecruiser HMS Hood.  She arrived safely, and set out again for New York on 1 September.  By the time she arrived, the Second World War had begun and she was ordered to remain in port alongside the Normandie until further notice.

In March 1940, Queen Mary and Normandie were joined in New York by Queen Mary's new sister ship Queen Elizabeth, fresh from her secret dash from Clydebank.  The three largest liners in the world sat idle for some time until the Allied commanders decided that all three ships could be used as troopships.  Normandie was destroyed by fire during her troopship conversion.  Queen Mary left New York for Sydney, Australia, where she, along with several other liners, was converted into a troopship to carry Australian and New Zealand soldiers to the United Kingdom.

In the Second World War conversion, the ship's hull, superstructure, and funnels were painted navy grey.  As a result of her new colour, and in combination with her great speed, she became known as the "Grey Ghost".  To protect against magnetic mines, a degaussing coil was fitted around the outside of the hull . Inside, stateroom furniture and decoration were removed and replaced with triple-tiered (fixed) wooden bunks, which were later replaced by "standee" (fold-up) bunks.

Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were the largest and fastest troopships involved in the war, often carrying as many as 15,000 men in a single voyage, and often travelling out of convoy and without escort. Their high speed and zigzag courses made it virtually impossible for U-boats to catch them.

After the war end and after delivering a load of war brides to Canada, Queen Mary made her fastest ever crossing, returning to Southampton in only three days, 22 hours and 42 minutes at an average speed of just under 32 knots (59 km/h).

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3399036)

HMT Queen Mary at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1946.

(British Library, PD)

RMS Olympic with splinter camouflage, 1919.

RMS Olympic. Although not in service with  the RCN, she carried many Canadian soldiers to Europe after being converted to serve as a troopship during the First World War.  She was a British ocean liner and the lead ship of the White Star Line's trio of Olympic-class liners.  Unlike the other ships in the class, Olympic had a long career spanning 24 years from 1911 to 1935. Her service as a troopship gained her the nickname "Old Reliable".  She returned to civilian service after the war, and served successfully as an ocean liner throughout the 1920s and into the first half of the 1930s, although increased competition, and the slump in trade during the Great Depression after 1930, made her operation increasingly unprofitable.  The Olympic was withdrawn from service and sold for scrap in 1935; demolition was completed in 1937.

RMS Olympic with splinter camouflage.

RMS Olympic with splinter camouflage.

War artist Arthur Lismer captured the return of the troopship RMS Olympic to Halifax harbour following the First World War. RMS Olympic's multi-coloured dazzle camouflage, added in 1917 at the height of the German U-Boat threat, was intended to make the ship more difficult to identify and target.  The painting also provides a glimpse of the busy Halifax dockyard, Canada's principal First World War naval base.  Pressed into service in 1915, RMS Olympic became one of the war's most famous troop ships.  Affectionately known as "Old Reliable," Olympic would carry over 200,000 British, American, and Canadian troops to and from the fighting fronts.

In the early hours of 12 May 1918, while en route for France with U.S. troops under the command of Captain Hayes, RMS Olympic sighted a surfaced U-boat 500 m (1,600 ft) ahead.  RMS Olympic's gunners opened fire at once, and the ship turned to ram the submarine, which immediately crash dived to 30 m (98 ft) and turned to a parallel course.  Almost immediately afterwards Olympic struck the submarine just aft of her conning tower with her port propeller slicing through U-103's pressure hull.  The crew of U-103 blew her ballast tanks, scuttled and abandoned the submarine. RMS Olympic did not stop to pick up survivors, but continued on to Cherbourg.  Meanwhile, USS Davis had sighted a distress flare and picked up 31 survivors from U-103.  RMS Olympic returned to Southampton with at least two hull plates dented and her prow twisted to one side, but not breached.  It was subsequently discovered that U-103 had been preparing to torpedo RMS Olympic when she was sighted, but the crew were not able to flood the two stern torpedo tubes.  For his service, Captain Hayes was awarded the DSO.

In August 1919 Olympic returned to Belfast for restoration to civilian service.  The interiors were modernised and the boilers were converted to oil firing rather than coal burning.  This modification would reduce the refuelling time from days to hours; it also gave a steadier engine R.P.M and allowed the engine room personnel to be reduced from 350 to 60 people.  During the conversion work and drydocking, a dent with a crack at the centre was discovered below her waterline which was later concluded to have been caused by a torpedo that had failed to detonate.  The historian Mark Chirnside concluded that the faulty torpedo had been fired by the U-boat SM U-53 on 4 September 1918, while the RMS Olympic was in the English Channel.

‍

(Britannica Photo)

The Queen Elizabeth entering New York City's harbour, c. 1945–47.

Royal Mail Ship Queen Elizabeth was converted to a troopship at Esquimalt, British Columbia. Once completed the passenger liner was capable of carrying 15,000 troops per voyage & would become one of the most hunted U-boat targets. The first Queen Elizabeth, which was the sister ship of the Queen Mary, was one of the largest passenger liners ever built. Launched in 1938 and used as a troopship during the Second World War it enterered the regular transatlantic service of the Cunard Line in 1946. The ship was 1,031 feet (314 metres) long and 118.5 feet (36 metres) wide and had a draft of 38 feet (11.6 metres) and an original gross tonnage of 83,673. The Queen Elizabeth was retired in 1968 and sold for conversion to a seagoing university, but it burned and sank in January 1972 during refitting at Hong Kong.