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Interwar Years
The 1930s: Rebuilding the Royal Canadian Navy

Despite the severe financial climate of the Great Depression and political infighting, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) survived mainly as a coastal defence force. This period also saw the delivery of the first major warships designed and built for the RCN.

HMCS Skeena Plans
HMCS Skeena Plans

The Thornycroft shipbuilding yards in England built the Canadian destroyer HMCS Skeena and created these detailed, colour-coded plans of the ship.

The plans show the intricate structure and carefully arranged combination of weapons, equipment, and living spaces within Skeena's hull and on its decks. Guns and torpedoes, the central elements of the destroyer's armament, took up large areas of the deck, while boilers and engines to move the ship through the water occupied much of the central portion of the hull. Most of the crew lived in the forward part of the ship, with officers' accommodations aft.

George Metcalf Archival Collection
CWM 20030289-001

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Launching HMCS Saguenay, July 1930
HMCS Saguenay, 1931
Model, HMCS Skeena
Engineer Captain Thomas C. Phillips
Destroyer Steam Turbine Engine
HMCS Skeena Plans
HMCS Saguenay Entering Willemstad Harbour, Netherlands Antilles, 1934
Torpedo Test Firing
Full-dress Uniform, Commander Frank Llewellyn Houghton
Sun Helmet, Horatio Nelson Lay
Commissioning of HMCS Fraser, February 1937
HMCS Restigouche
Royal Naval College of Canada Third Term Reunion, 1932
Sword of Honour, Robert Montague Powell
Model, HMCS Venture
Calgary Half Company, RCNVR, 1938
"Crossing the Line" Certificate, 1938