RCN Battle Class Trawlers: HMCS Arleux, HMCS Armentières, HMCS Arras, HMCS Festubert, HMCS Givenchy, HMCS Loos, HMCS Messines, HMCS St. Eloi, HMCS St. Julien, HMCS Thiepval, HMCS Vimy, HMCS Ypres.

RCN Battle Class Trawlers

HMCS Arleux, HMCS Armentières, HMCS Arras, HMCS Festubert, HMCS Givenchy, HMCS Loos, HMCS Messines, HMCS St. Eloi, HMCS St. Julien, HMCS Thiepval, HMCS Vimy, HMCS Ypres.

HMCS Arleux

(RCN Photo)

HMCS Arleux was one of twelve Battle class Naval trawlers used by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN).  Named after the April 1917 Battle of Arleux, she was built by Canadian Vickers, at Montreal, and commissioned on 5 June 1918.  After the First World War, Arleux was transferred to the Department of Marine and Fisheries, but remained notionally a naval vessel until June 1922.  While Arleux was a fisheries patrol vessel, she often served as a mother ship to the east coast's winter haddock fishing fleet.  Reacquired by the RCN and re-commissioned in September 1939, Arleux was designated Gate Vessel 16 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1940.  Sold in February 1946, Arleux foundered in August 1948 off White Head Bay, Nova Scotia.

HMCS Armentières

(DND Photo)

HMCS Armentières, ca 1918.

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo)

HMCS Armentières, 27 May 1933.

(CFB Esquimalt Naval Museum Photo)

HMCS Armentières, Battle class trawler, ca 1930s.

HMCS Arras

(DND Photo)

HMCS Arras, ca 1918. HMCS Arras was one of twelve Battle-class naval trawlers that saw service with the RCN. The vessel entered service in 1918 near the end of the  and was used for patrolling and escort duties along the Atlantic Coast of Canada. Following the war, Arras was transferred to the Department of Marine and Fisheries where the ship was used as a fisheries patrol vessel. Following the outbreak of theSecond World War, the ship re-entered RCN service as a gate vessel. In 1943, the ship was heavily damaged by fire and was  in 1957.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3723980)

HMCS Arras.

HMCS Festubert

(DND Photo)

HMCS Festubert, ca 1918.

HMCS Ypres

(RCN Photo)

HMCS Ypres was also one of the twelve Battle class Naval trawlers used by the RCN.  Named after the 2nd and 3rd battles of Ypres, she was built by Polson Iron Works in Toronto, Ontario, and was commissioned on 13 November 1917.  Like many of the RCN's Battle class trawlers, Ypres was decommissioned in 1920.  After being recommissioned on 1 May 1923 as a training ship, in November 1932 she was again decommissioned and was placed in reserve. Refitted as a gate vessel in 1938 and recommissioned, Ypres was designated Gate Vessel 1, and formed part of the Halifax boom defences until 12 May 1940, when she was accidentally rammed and sunk by the British battleship HMS Revenge, but without loss of life.  After this incident, the crews of other gate vessels would pretend to make elaborate preparations for a collision every time the Revenge visited Halifax.  (Ken Macpherson and John Burgess, The ships of Canada's naval forces 1910-1993 : a complete pictorial history of Canadian warships, (St. Catharines, Ont.: Vanwell Pub., 1994), p. 25).

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