Royal Canadian Navy Sloops: HMCS Algerine, HMCS Shearwater

Sloops

HMCS Algerine

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3399834)

HMCS Algerine, sloop.  HMS Algerine was a Phoenix-class steel screw sloop of the Royal Navy.  She was launched at Devonport in 1895, saw action in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and later served on the Pacific Station.  She was stripped of her crew at Esquimalt in 1914, and transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1917, being commissioned as HMCS Algerine.  She was sold as a salvage vessel in 1919 and wrecked in 1923.

HMCS Shearwater

(DND Photo)

HMS Shearwater was a Condor-class sloop launched in 1900.  She served on the Pacific Station and in 1915 was transferred to the RCN as HMCS Shearwater, serving as a submarine depot ship until 1919.  She was sold to the Western Shipping Company in May 1922 and renamed Vedas.

The class was armed with six 4-inch/25-pounder (1 ton) quick-firing (QF) breech loading (BL) guns and four 3-pounder QF BL guns.  The guns were arranged with two on the forecastle, two amidships and two aft.  In 1914, two of her 4-inch guns were landed and used to defend Seymour Narrows in British Columbia after the First World War broke out.  The Condor class had a protective deck of 1–1 1⁄2 in (2.5–3.8 cm) to steel over machinery and boilers.  The guns were equipped with gun shields which had .22 in (5.6 mm) armour.

(City of Vancouver Archives Photo)

HMCS Shearwater.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3724033)

HMCS Shearwater, ca 1918.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3259181)

HMCS Shearwater, left and HMCS Rainbow, right on the British Columbia coast, 1910.

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