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

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