Canadian Military Intelligence History: 1939-1945, Royal Canadian Navy Intelligence

Royal Canadian Navy, Intelligence during the Second World War

(Author Photo)

HMCS Assiniboine ramming U-210, 6 Aug 1942, painting by Tom Forrestal, in the Wardroom, CFB Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Naval Intelligence began to grow as an entity in Canada after the Royal Navy was charged with leading intelligence operations in Halifax during the First World War.  In 1921, Canada joined the British Worldwide Intelligence Organization, with the establishment of a North American Station and Directorate of Naval Plans and Intelligence.  Naval Intelligence in Canada, however, remained virtually non-existent until expansion of the size and role of the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.  The Directorate of Naval Intelligence emerged in 1939 and played a crucial role in the Allied effort to support convoy operations, intercept and analyze hostile radio communications, and confront the U-boat threat during the Battle of the Atlantic.  Naval intelligence specialists also participated in the Special Branch, with officers wearing light green patches on their uniforms to denote their membership.  The Naval Intelligence Division had subsections dedicated to general intelligence, foreign intelligence, ship movements (VESCA), naval information, the national distribution authority, mercantile intelligence, Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS), and meteorology and oceanography.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4821040)

HMCS Regina, Corvette K234 June 1942.

Naval intelligence and trade protection in the Atlantic and Pacific during the war was an allied effort involving the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.  Canada, having officially taken over responsibilities for operational command in the North West Atlantic on 1 May 1943, relied on its Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) at Naval Services Headquarters in Ottawa.  The Trade, Intelligence and Signals Division, along with the OIC, remained in place until the end of the war.

(DND Photo)

LCdr John Barbe-Pougnet de Marbois, Royal Navy Reserve.  Jock de Marbois was born on an island near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, but ran away to sea at the age of 12.  By the time he was 17, he had been around the world twice in sailing vessels and had survived two shipwrecks and a bloody mutiny in which the Capt and all the ship’s officers died.  During the First World War he had served as a British liaison officer aboard a Russian cruiser and had fled the Bolshevik revolution with his fiancée, a Russian countess.  After the war, he settled for a time in Nigeria before finally coming to Canada.  He spoke French, Spanish, German and Russian fluently, and had a smattering of Arabic, Turkish, and about a dozen Far Eastern languages.  On 10 September 1939, acting on the authority of Canada’s Minister of National Defence, Commander Jock de Marbois of the Naval Service Signals Division inaugurated what he called the Foreign Intelligence Section. Its task was to undertake Operational SIGINT (codenamed “Y”), high frequency directional finding, and plotting the positions of submarines and surface vessels. Traffic would come from the naval stations at Gloucester, Ontario, and Cloverdale, New Brunswick, as well as from various Department of Transport sites.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4090411)

Captain (N) Eric Sydney Brand (1896-1991), Officer - Order of the British Empire (OBE), was a Royal Navy Officer who served in Canada during WWII with the Royal Canadian Navy as the head of the Directorate of Trade and Intelligence Division.  Captain (N) Brand was born at Ipswich, England.  He joined the Merchant Navy College, HMS Conway, as a cadet in 1909 and transferred to the Royal Navy through the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in 1911.

During the First World War he was mentioned in dispatches at the Battle of Jutland while serving in HMS Valiant and was promoted Lieutenant in 1916.  He later qualified as both G and dagger N (RN designations).  He was promoted Commander, RN, on 30 December 1929.  He served as Staff Officer (Operations) to the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, and Chief Staff Officer to Admiral Commanding Coast of Scotland (1938-1939), where he was responsible for all war plans and preparations in the Command.  On 22 June 1939 the RN loaned Captain (N) Brand to the RCN to serve as the Director of Plans and Intelligence.  Soon after this appointment, he was also given the responsibility of organising the Trade Division at Naval Service Headquarters to handle the Royal Canadian Navy’s contacts with the merchant shipping of all nations.  He was promoted to Captain (N) on 1 July 1941.  He held these two posts until 14 April 1946, when he retired from active service in the rank of Captain.  His naval career lasted thirty-five years.

In 1946 he was appointed Controller of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Shipping under the Department of Labour.  During 1946-1947 he was special assistant to the Minister of Reconstruction and Supply on the drafting of legislation to establish a Canadian Maritime Commission.  Brand later served as a special assistant to the Minister of Mines and Resources on immigrant transportation, as Executive Director, the Canadian Maritime Commission, and, finally, as the Director of Marine Operations, Department of Transport. Brand served as the first Director of the CCG College at Point Edward, Nova Scotia in 1965 and was made Honorary Commodore of the CCG.  Captain (N) Brand He made his home in Ottawa, where he died on 22 November 1991, at the age of 95 (three months after hip surgery).

For his military service he was awarded the OBE in the rank of Officer as per Canada Gazette of 5 June 1943 and London Gazette of 2 June 1943; the American Legion of Merit in the Degree of Commander on 30 March 1946; the French Croix de Guerre avec Palme en Bronze on 27 November 1946; and Chevalier - French Legion of Honour, on 27 November 1947.  In addition to his wartime medals he received a Medal from the HM King of Sweden for his services to humanity.

(DND Photo)

Commander Charles Herbert Little RCN, CD, FRCGS (11 December 1907 - January 10, 2004) was Canadian Director of Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and an author. He was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and continued Germanic studies at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating in 1932. On his return to Canada, he married Ruth B. Harrison of Rothesay, New Brunswick. He taught at Upper Canada College until he joined the Royal Canadian Navy at the outbreak of the war in 1939. Little presented himself at HMCS York in Toronto, but after he mentioned that he was a teacher of German and that he had just returned from a trip to Germany, he was immediately sent to Ottawa. Upon his arrival he was asked to go through some captured German documents, some of which seemed to describe a weapon. Those papers were sent to London and were found to be partial plans for the new magnetic mines being used by the German Navy. During the war he served as Director of Naval Intelligence on the Naval Staff. Because of his position he was one of the few Canadians to handle Ultra decrypts. After the defeat of Nazi Germany he was allowed to enter combat and was sent to join the British Pacific Fleet. He remained in the Navy until 1959, helping to develop the University Naval Training Division and the Regular Officer Training Plan. After leaving the Navy he became a federal civil servant. From 1964 to 1971 he was Chief Editor of the Royal Commission on Pilotage. He died in Ottawa at the age of 96. He was buried at Fernhill Cemetery in Saint John, New Brunswick.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, PA 141636)

ML Q095 escorting U-190, Bay Bulls, Newfoundland, 14 May 1945.

(Library and Archives of Canada Photo, PA 116940)

U-190 flying the RCN white ensign, aerial view.

 (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4821052)

HMCS Loch Alvie with surrendered U-boat, 1945.

(Jim Stewart Photo)

U-889 after her surrender in May 1945.

(State Library of Victoria, Australia Photo)

HMCS Ontario (C32), ca Feb 1951.

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