PORT COLBORNE, ON – A solemn tribute to the men and women of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Merchant Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force who served and gave their lives during the Battle of the Atlantic was held in Port Colborne Sunday. Royal Canadian Naval Association Niagara Region hosted the service.
TOP: Ceremony with CSL’s Frontenac in the background. [CSL] LOWER: Canada Steamship Lines ship Magog, left, was sunk by a German U-boat in the Atlantic Ocean on July 5, 1940, while the Waterloo was bombed and sunk by a German air force plane off England’s east coast on July 10, 1940.
[Marine Historical Society of Detroit]
Seburn, a 35-year naval veteran who spent seven years in submarines, said the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest military operation of the Second World War, spanning the entire conflict.
“Essentially, it was the battle to get goods and personnel, equipment and ammunition over to Great Britain, and eventually Europe, to carry on the war and fight the Nazis. Without that effort, there would have been no D-Day, no Dieppe, no liberation of the Netherlands. All operations that the Canadian Expeditionary Force took part in.”
He said the war led to a massive fleet expansion, making Canada’s Navy the third largest in the world. The merchant marine also expanded during the conflict with the support of shipyards in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
“Associated with Port Colborne is the fact that the merchant marine was made up of some of the lakers that plied the Great Lakes. They were pressed into service for ocean-going service out in the North Atlantic. Those crew members came from within the Niagara region.
“Some of the shipping companies that lost ships and crew are well known: Canada Steamship Lines (CSL), Great Lakes Carriers, Gulf Lake Navigation, Imperial Oil, Paterson Steamships and Upper Lakes Shipping, representing 31 ships and 245 personnel, mostly from Niagara.”
On its website, CSL has pages devoted to its vessels used in the First and Second World Wars.
The company, which was 26 years old in 1939, contributed 15 freighters, often called canallers, to the war effort on saltwater, approximately a quarter of its entire fleet of cargo ships. The post said all of the donated vessels were small — each only about 75 metres long — because they were designed to transit the small canals that predated those of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest military operation of the Second World War. CSL said the majority of its canallers requisitioned during the conflict were used in British coastal waters, where they replaced larger ships that moved to longer routes.
Thousands of kilometres away, at least three CSL canallers were assigned a different task, no less crucial, carrying bauxite, used to make aluminum for planes, from mines in northeastern South America to a trans-shipment center in the Caribbean Sea. The bauxite run proved to be very dangerous for the canallers; two of the CSL ships in the trade were sunk by German subs, the same number as the company’s losses to enemy action off the British and Irish coasts.
The company’s other war loss occurred during the first naval conflict in Canadian waters since the War of 1812, the little-known Battle of the St. Lawrence. That name referenced two crucially important waterways — the lower St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence — where, according to the Canadian Military Journal, German submarines torpedoed 21 merchant ships and five warships between 1942 and 1944.
Of the 10 CSL canallers that survived the war, four — Anticosti, Granby, Knowlton, Oxford — participated in the Normandy invasion. Neither these ships nor any other survivors returned to the CSL fleet.
CSL’s bulk carrier Frontenac was docked nearby, and at the end of the tribute, Captain David Ogle offered a respectful master salute from the ship. The passage of the fleet’s Baie St. Paul further marked the moment.
Welland Tribune, CSL
Find out more about CSL ships that served in WWII here
