You never used to hear the word “smokestack” in the normal vocabulary of the British or Canadian naval rating before World War II. Sometimes, when poking fun at his cousins in the U. S. Navy, he might make the mock pipe: “Away gasoline gig; liberty guys fall in abaft the after smoke stack.” The words gasoline, guy (except as a piece of rigging) and smoke-stack all being exotic, this was good for an occasional smile on the mess deck if not overworked. But, when the fifty over-age destroyers were acquired from the United States in the fall of 1940 in exchange for the leases on land for bases, the word four-stacker came immediately into use.
The Admiralty decreed that they should be known as the Town Class destroyers, and named 44 of them for British towns with namesakes in the United States and, where possible, in the territories where the bases were to be located as well. These ships were all commissioned in the Royal Navy, but except in official correspondence they were always four-stackers—unless it was “those flaming Yankee packets” or something even more incendiary.
One reason was their unusual appearance. So many funnels in one small ship had not been seen in European waters for a long time. Their British-built contemporaries, the “V” and “W” Classes, had two mismatched funnels, superimposed gundecks with all guns in the centre line, and a raised, widely flared forecastle. Their three-funnelled predecessors had almost all been scrapped, and all subsequent classes were developed from the “V and W’s,” showing a close family likeness.
The four-stackers soon acquired an unpleasant reputation on the lower deck in the British and Canadian navies. The chief cause of complaint was that they were fitted with bunks, and it was impossible to sling hammocks. To compound the felony, those in the officers’ cabins were provided with inner-spring mattresses. They were lively craft in a seaway, and the spring mattresses gave the weary watchkeepers an extra rough ride. After they had been traded for hair mattresses from naval barracks ashore, this situation was improved.
A more serious complaint was their rumoured unseaworthiness. In African waters, where I spent much of the war, we heard men drafted from escort vessels on the North Atlantic convoy route tell tall tales in which they claimed to have seen a four-stacker capsize in a blizzard off Iceland, or that the main engines of another had “fallen over” during a hurricane so that she broached to and turned turtle. When you try to come to close quarters with these deep sea stories, they seem to vanish, and the Admiralty’s presentation volume The Town Class Destroyers, which relates the history of each ship, records no case of foundering.[1]
Apparently, although they were very wet sea-boats, the worst that happened to any of them by stress of weather was the staving in of the bridge of HMS Buxton (ex-USS Edwards, DD-265) when she “hit a millstone.” The green sea fatally injured the first lieutenant who was on watch, killed the captain as he lay in his bunk, and swept a seaman overboard.
Old, uncomfortable, and top-heavy they might have been, but they did much service in dirty weather on the Western Ocean when Britain most needed flotillas. Rudyard Kipling set it out in the plainest of words when he wrote in the reply of the “Big Steamers” addressing the British Child: “if anyone hinders our coming, you’ll starve!”
Sir Winston Churchill, another master of plain words, in the first of his personal telegrams to Franklin Roosevelt, asked for “the loan of forty or fifty of your older destroyers to bridge the gap between what we have now and the large construction we put in hand at the beginning of the war. This time next year we shall have plenty … The next six months are vital.”
Financially it may have been an even trade, if you coldly balance the market value of the land and the ships, but strategically both parties made very handsome profits: the United States got the use of priceless bases and the ships did more than they were asked—six times more—for instead of bridging a six-month gap they carried on for three years. At the end of that time, in 1943 and 1944, they were paid off and used as training tenders or hulks, or laid up.
The ships themselves are now long gone, but their names are coming back into service—at least in the Royal Canadian Navy. Canada manned at least six at first and later took over a seventh from the Royal Navy. Canadian destroyers are usually named for rivers and five of the four-stackers were named for rivers on the border between the United States and Canada: Columbia (ex-Haraden, DD-183), Niagara (ex-Thatcher, DD-162), St. Clair (ex-Williams, DD-108), St. Croix (ex-McCook, DD-252) and St. Francis (ex-Bancroft, DD-256). Annapolis (ex-Mackenzie, DD-175), for some reason, was named in the British fashion after two towns, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, and Annapolis, Maryland, which were both, in turn, named for Queen Anne. The seventh, late USS Kalk, DD-170, was named Hamilton by the RN in honour of towns in Scotland, Bermuda and Ohio. When the RCN took her over she retained that name.
HMCS Columbia, named for the river that crosses the border from British Columbia to Washington, was one of the short range (“short-legged”) ships, but even they had to do a stint in British waters and in the Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF) at first. She was present when USS Kearney was damaged escorting a convoy south of Iceland—the first US ship damaged in action in the Second World War. After Pearl Harbor, when the U-boats began operating on the coast of North America, Columbia was transferred to the Western Local Escort Force (WLEF) and continued escorting ocean convoys on their passages between New York and St. John’s, Newfoundland.
In October 1942 she aided in the salvage of SS Mathew Luckenbach, and the following January she salvaged HMS Caldwell (ex-USS Hale, DD-133) adrift without screws. A year later, through error in navigation, she struck a cliff in Motion Bay, near St. John’s, Newfoundland, damaging her bows and killing one man. She was relegated to duty as a fuel and ammunition hulk for the rest of the war.
HMCS Niagara, named for the river forming the international boundary between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, was also short-legged, but she helped in the capture of U-570 to the southward of Iceland. The U-boat was later commissioned as HMS Graph. Niagara was transferred to the WLEF and in 1944 became a torpedo-firing ship at Halifax.
HMCS St. Clair was named for the river forming the international boundary between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair. She was employed first in the Clyde Force and the MOEF but, being short-legged, was transferred to the WLEF. In 1944 she became depot ship to the British submarines stationed at Halifax for anti-submarine training. Later she was used for fire-fighting and damage-control training.
HMCS St. Croix, named for the river flowing into Passamaquoddy Bay and forming the boundary between the Province of New Brunswick and the State of Maine, was the one long-legged boat in the flotilla and spent her whole career with the MOEF. She was in at the death of two U-boats: U-90 which she sank single-handed with two dashing attacks and U-87 to which she gave the coup de grace after HMCS Shediac had dropped several patterns of depth-charges.
After the lull on the North Atlantic convoy routes in the summer of 1943, St. Croix fell the first victim of the acoustic torpedo when the U-boats returned in September. HM Frigate Itchen picked up most of her company, but all but one lost their lives when that ship was sunk two days later. HM Corvette Polyanthus and two merchantmen were also sunk and a frigate and a freighter were damaged. Against this, aircraft sank one U-boat.
HMCS St. Francis, named for a small river on the boundary between Quebec and Maine, served in the MOEF and WLEF without ever having a chance of distinguish herself. In 1943, after many thousands of miles of steaming, her machinery and hull became so worn that she was attached to HMCS Cornwallis, the New Entry Training Establishment on Annapolis Basin, as a training ship.
HMCS Annapolis, because of an early boiler accident, did not operate beyond the station of the WLEF, where she put in three hard years of steaming. Her only adventure came after becoming a training tender to HMCS Cornwallis in 1944, when she salvaged SS James Miller, aground near Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy.
HMCS Hamilton was involved in a collision and a grounding, which kept her out of action until June 1941. Her activity too was confined to the WLEF, but she did sight a U-boat and make an inconclusive attack. In 1944 she became a tender to HMCS Cornwallis along with Annapolis and St. Francis.
The six survivors were finally paid off in the spring of 1945 and sold to ship breakers in the United States, but St. Francis cheated the knackers—she was sunk in collision off Cape Cod while in tow.
The four-stackers are gone but not forgotten. Their names are being revived and the battle honours they won have been inherited by new vessels. The names of Hamilton, St. Clair, and St. Francis have no prospect of being borne by ships in the near future, but Columbia, Niagara, and St. Croix are in commission and Annapolis is shortly to be built.
HMC Ships Columbia and St. Croix (each second of name) are two of the seven Restigouche Class destroyer escorts. St. Croix was laid down at the Marine Industries Ltd. yard at Sorel, Quebec, on 15 October 1954 and launched on 17 November 1956. She was commissioned on 4 October 1948. Columbia was built by the Burrard Dry Dock Company at North Vancouver, British Columbia. Construction started on 11 June 1953. She was launched on 1 November 1956 and commissioned on 7 November 1959. Both ships belong to the Fifth Canadian Escort Squadron based at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
HMCS Annapolis, second of name, is to be laid down in 1960, the fifth of the six Mackenzie Class destroyer escorts. The revival of this name among a group of “rivers” is made possible by the Annapolis River at whose mouth the town of Annapolis Royal stands.
HMCS Niagara, second of name, is not a sea-going vessel but a “stone frigate”—a shore establishment. By a pleasant legal fiction, naval establishments ashore are commissioned as HMC Ships. This was essential in the past when the law required that naval personnel be borne on the books of a ship and come under the authority of her captain for disciplinary and administrative purposes if they were to draw pay. Nowadays, in the Canadian service at least, the ship exists in spirit only and there is not necessarily any floating hull. Niagara is in Washington, D. C., and her commanding officer is the Naval Member, Canadian Joint Staff, Washington, at present Commodore O. C. S. Robertson, GM, RD, CD, RCN. Her complement includes all Canadian naval personnel serving in the USA: with the Joint Staff, with SACLANT’s Staff, in exchange or liaison appointments with the USN and on courses in USN schools. HMCS Niobe in London, named for one of the first ships in the RCN, fulfills a similar function in Britain.
Ships in Commonwealth navies who inherit their names from predecessors in the British service, also inherit the battle honours won by those predecessors. Columbia was the only four-stacker to come into this category. The first ship in the RN to bear the name was the Boston privateer Curlew, captured by HMS Acasta off Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, in 1813 and renamed. She was sold in 1820 and followed in 1829 by a paddle steamer used as a packet, trooper, and surveying vessel until 1857. The third of name was an auxiliary patrol trawler taken up for service in the North Sea in 1914. She was sunk in action with German torpedo boats on 1 May 1915. Thus HMCS Columbia’s battle honours are Belgian Coast 1914-15, Atlantic 1940-44.
St. Croix has been awarded Atlantic 1940-43, Niagara—Atlantic 1940-44 and Annapolis will probably be awarded Atlantic 1940—43. These appear on carven teak scrolls with the ship’s badge and motto to be displayed on the quarter-deck on suitable occasions.
HMCS Niagara’s badge, designed for the second of name, shows a star from the American flag and a maple leaf from the arms of Canada closely linked by a waterfall. This is to show her function of liaison between the two nations, but the seven ships with four stacks each were a much more lively and practical symbol of the close relationship.
[1] The “Town” Class Destroyers; the Story of the “Four-Stackers”; records of service of the fifty destroyers transferred from the United States to the Royal Navy or the Royal Canadian Navy in September, 1940, for service in the Second World War. London. The Admiralty. 1949. This book was published by the Admiralty for presentation to the towns after which the ships were named. Whether only fifty copies were distributed to the American towns or fifty or more went to the British and colonial towns as well I do not know. Since five of the Canadian-manned ships were named for rivers, their books came into possession of the RCN and one, that for HMCS St. Clair, is in the Library of the Department of National Defence in Ottawa.
It is a handsome volume bound by hand in blue linen and morocco with nautical motifs in gold on the spine. It is printed on one side of the page only with photographs of the ships pasted in on the blank pages.