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The Visit of HMS Hood and the Special Services Squadron to Vancouver BC.
by John MacFarlane 2019
HMS Hood (Photo by Cyril Tweedale.)
Cyril Tweedale, took photographs and saved them in family albums which were recently sent to me in digital form. They each tell short stories of the British Columbia coast. The series of naval images are shared here and remind us of the sad ending of the two biggest vessels in the Squadron.
The Special Services Squadron was a group of Royal Navy vessels that included HMS Hood, HMS Repulse, HMS Danae, HMS Dauntless, HMS Delhi, HMS Dragon and HMS Dunedin. In 1923–1924, HMS Hood and the Special Service Squadron sailed around the world on "The Empire Cruise", making ports of call in the countries which had fought with the Allies during the First World War. During the tour HMAS Adelaide joined the group sailing on to Vancouver BC.
HMS Hood was named for a famous Royal Navy family that produced several generations of Admirals and Captains. The tompions in the muzzles of the guns carry the crest of the Hood Family – a crow carrying an anchor in one of its feet. The tompions kept seawater and debris out of the barrels when they were not in use for firing. HMS Hood was sunk during the Second World War in a famous surface action with the German battleship Bismark when was she was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank within 3 minutes, with the loss of all but three of her crew.
HMS Repulse at anchor in Vancouver Harbour. (Photo by Cyril Tweedale.)
The battlecruiser HMS Repulse lost an anchor which is said to still be located on the bottom of Vancouver harbour. She was later was sunk in company with HMS Prince of Wales in a naval engagement during the Second World War in the Pacific, off the east coast of present-day Malaysia. They were sunk by land–based bombers and torpedo bombers of the Imperial Japanese Navy on 10 December 1941.
The Flag Officer’s steam pinnace from HMS Hood (Photo by Cyril Tweedale.)
Capital ships carried a steam pinnace which was lifted in and out of the water with a crane. It was for the use of the Admiral and his guests to travel to shore or to other ships.
HMAS Adelaide (Photo by Cyril Tweedale.)
HMAS Adelaide joined the squadron in Australia.
RCN Destroyer HMCS Patrician. (Photo by Cyril Tweedale.)
Several destroyers – HMS Danae, HMS Dauntless, HMS Delhi, HMS Dragon and HMS Dunedin escorted the capital ships. However Christopher Cole identified this image as HMCS Patrician which had led the squadron into Vancouver Harbour.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John (2019) The Visit of HMS Hood and the Special Services Squadron to Vancouver BC. Nauticapedia.ca 2019. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Hood_HMS.php
Site News: May 08, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,807 vessel histories (with 15,646 images and 13,442 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.