HMCS Poundmaker (K675)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

HMCS ''Poundmaker'' was a River-class frigate that served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. It saw action as a convoy escort during the
Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade ...
. She was named for the Poundmaker Cree Nation of Saskatchewan. After the war she was sold to Peru and renamed ''Teniente Ferré'' in 1947. ''Poundmaker'' was ordered on 1 February 1943 as part of the 1943–1944 River-class building program. She was laid down on 29 January 1944 by Canadian Vickers Ltd. at Montreal, Quebec and launched on 21 April later that year. She was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 17 September 1944 at Montreal.


Background

The River-class frigate was designed by William Reed of Smith's Dock Company of South Bank-on-Tees. Originally called a "twin-screw corvette", its purpose was to improve on the convoy escort classes in service with the Royal Navy at the time, including the Flower-class corvette. The first orders were placed by the Royal Navy in 1940 and the vessels were named for rivers in the United Kingdom, giving name to the class. In Canada they were named for towns and cities though they kept the same designation. The name "frigate" was suggested by Vice-Admiral
Percy Nelles Admiral Percy Walker Nelles, (7 January 1892 – 13 July 1951) was a flag officer in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and the Chief of the Naval Staff from 1 January 1934 to 15 January 1944. He oversaw the massive wartime expansion of the RCN and ...
of the Royal Canadian Navy and was adopted later that year. Improvements over the corvette design included improved accommodation which was markedly better. The twin engines gave only three more knots of speed but extended the range of the ship to nearly double that of a corvette at at 12 knots. Among other lessons applied to the design was an armament package better designed to combat U-boats including a twin 4-inch mount forward and 12-pounder aft. 15 Canadian frigates were initially fitted with a single 4-inch gun forward but with the exception of , they were all eventually upgraded to the double mount. For underwater targets, the River-class frigate was equipped with a Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar and depth charge rails aft and four side-mounted throwers. River-class frigates were the first Royal Canadian Navy warships to carry the 147B Sword horizontal fan echo sonar transmitter in addition to the irregular ASDIC. This allowed the ship to maintain contact with targets even while firing unless a target was struck. Improved radar and direction-finding equipment improved the RCN's ability to find and track enemy submarines over the previous classes. Canada originally ordered the construction of 33 frigates in October 1941. The design was too big for the shipyards on the Great Lakes so all the frigates built in Canada were built in dockyards along the west coast or along the St. Lawrence River. In all Canada ordered the construction of 60 frigates including ten for the Royal Navy that transferred two to the United States Navy.


War service

After working up in Bermuda in November 1944, ''Poundmaker'' was assigned to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force escort group C-8 as a trans-Atlantic convoy escort. She served in this capacity until May 1945, when she returned to Canada to undergo a tropicalization refit in preparation for service in the southern Pacific Ocean. The work was completed at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on 20 August 1945 and she was paid off on 25 November later that year at
Sydney, Nova Scotia Sydney is a former city and urban community on the east coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada within the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Sydney was founded in 1785 by the British, was incorporated as a city in 1904, and dissolv ...
. She was taken to Shelburne and laid up for disposal.


Postwar service

''Poundmaker'' underwent a minor refit at
Dartmouth Dartmouth may refer to: Places * Dartmouth, Devon, England ** Dartmouth Harbour * Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States * Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada * Dartmouth, Victoria, Australia Institutions * Dartmouth College, Ivy League university i ...
in 1947 at the cost of $200,000 after being sold to the
Peruvian Navy The Peruvian Navy ( es, link=no, Marina de Guerra del Perú, abbreviated MGP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with surveillance, patrol and defense on lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean up to from the Peruvian littoral. Addit ...
. From there she sailed to Peru where she was recommissioned as the ''Teniente Ferré''. In 1954 she was sent to the United States to have her armament and fire control upgraded. She was renamed as ''Ferré'' in 1953 and was discarded in 1966.


References

;Notes ;References *Macpherson, Ken; Burgess, John. ''The ships of Canada's naval forces 1910–1981 : a complete pictorial history of Canadian warships.'' Collins: Toronto, 1981. {{DEFAULTSORT:Poundmaker, HMCS River-class frigates of the Royal Canadian Navy 1944 ships Ships built in Montreal