HMCS Thiepval

HMCS Thiepval was one of twelve naval trawlers used by the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). After seeing service on Canada's east coast at the end of the First World War, Thiepval was transferred to the west coast, where she spent the remainder of her career. In 1924, Thiepval visited the Soviet Union and Japan as part of the support efforts for a round the world flight attempt. Thiepval struck a rock and sank off the British Columbia coast in 1930, and her wreck has since become a popular attraction for divers.

Thiepval formed part of the Canadian naval response to Admiralty warnings to Canada about the growing German U boat threat to merchant shipping in the western Atlantic. Intended to augment anti submarine patrols off Canada's east coast, the RCN's Battle class trawlers were modelled on contemporary North Sea trawlers, since the standard types of Canadian fishing vessels were considered unsuitable for patrol work. The resulting design was a 130 feet (40 m) long vessel with a beam of 25 feet (8 m), a 13 feet (4 m) draught, and a top speed of , which made it roughly comparable to the Royal Navy's s. The QF 12 pounder 12 cwt gun that was the Battle class trawlers' main armament was considered to be the smallest gun that stood a chance of putting a surfaced U boat out of action, and they also carried a small number of depth charges. Built by shipyards on the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River at a cost of some $191,000 each, the trawlers were named after battles of the Western Front. Construction took longer than expected, and the ships entered service relatively late in the war. In addition to search and rescue patrols, the trawler also carried out fisheries protection work, sometimes seizing US fishing boats that had entered Canadian waters. Thiepval also carried out seal counts as part of the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911. On at least one occasion, she intercepted rum runners near the Alaska border. In her first few years on the west coast, Thiepval struck rocks twice: in 1920, near Prince Rupert, and in 1921 in Gunboat Passage near Bella Bella, but on both occasions suffered relatively little damage. After waiting in Hakodate for the flight to approach Japan, Thiepval headed back to the Soviet Union, where she waited for the aircraft and its crew in Petropavlovsk. After arriving on 24 July, the flight was delayed by bad weather until 4 August, when it departed on its next leg. Heavy fog forced an emergency landing at sea, where the aircraft was badly damaged by waves before coming ashore at Nikolskoye, on Bering Island. Thiepval, steaming through the night, rescued the flyers and salvaged the wreckage of their aircraft before sailing for Vancouver.

Following her return from the trans Pacific voyage, Thiepval returned to patrol work and training duties. In 1925, she came to the assistance of another Battle class trawler, Armentières, which had struck a rock in Pipestem Inlet in Barkley Sound. The following year, she towed the Mexican schooner Chapultepec off the rocks at Carmnanah Point, on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. Mostly, however, her routine consisted of fisheries and search and rescue patrols, as well as chasing rum runners. In 2011, the Department of National Defence organized a survey of the wreck site following reports of unexploded munitions being seen by divers. In March 2017, The Royal Canadian Navy sent clearance divers to conduct a survey of the wreck and develop a plan to remove the unexploded munitions. Removal and disposal of the unexploded ordnance occurred in 2017.