CHAMPION: 'Ready Aye Ready,' Premier McBride and Canada’s first submarines

When Canada’s first-ever submarines cruised into Victoria’s Esquimalt Harbour in the early hours of August 5, 1914, onshore gunners of the 5th (B.C.) Regiment Royal Canadian Artillery nearly blasted them out of the water.The submarines were first sighted in the pre-dawn gloaming by HMCS Malaspina, a new Irish-built fisheries inspection vessel patrolling off Esquimalt. “Wailing like a banshee,” her siren lanyard tied to her rail, Malaspina came in at full speed signalling, “Two German torpedo boats approaching the harbour.”One of the gunners at Black Rock Battery, guarding the naval facility and the dockyard, cried, “My God what are we going to do now?”Civilians would soon awaken to The Daily Colonist headline: “British Empire Has Declared War Against Germany.”With brilliant timeliness, the Royal Canadian Navy had obtained its first two submarines by subterfuge in the final hours of peace.Then as now, faraway Ottawa had bluffed, bumbled, and buck-passed Canada’s national security, neglecting our lengthy coastline, east as well as west.It was cheaper and easier to let Britain’s Royal Navy and its Imperial Japanese ally patrol the Pacific, keeping Kaiser Wilhelm’s East Asia Fleet at bay. In the Pacific, the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and three light cruisers, the Emden (later replaced by the Dresden), Nürnberg and Leipzig prowled the sea.British First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher deprecated Canadians as “unpatriotic grasping people who only stick to us for the good they can get out of us.” (Might not President Trump say the same today?)In August 1914 it took the bold initiative of B.C. Premier Sir Richard McBride and a few RCN officers to seize the day and grab the submarines while they could.One professor, preoccupied with race and the sins of white men (though he himself is notably one), called McBride’s brave coup de main an “ill-starred purchase.” But that’s just a throwaway line.Julie Ferguson, an amateur historian and naval reservist who closely studied the incident, praised the Premier’s “sheer daring.” Canadian navy expert Marc Milner recognized McBride’s “initiative.”Thanks to stop-and-go indecision and a lack of bipartisan consensus under both Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Sir Robert Borden, Canada’s young Naval Service had languished. The Dominion government had acquired only one obsolete cruiser, HMCS Rainbow, to guard the entire West coast.Victoria locals were nostalgic for the days when Britain maintained the world-class base and Royal Navy Dockyard there from 1842 to 1905, the harbour graced with several majestic R.N. ships, frequently-visiting San Francisco steamers, and their much-travelled crews. By 1914 that life and energy had dwindled under Ottawa’s neglect.In 1914 German cruiser activity, confirmed off San Diego and San Francisco, was rumoured to have reached as far north as Prince Rupert. But with Canada’s lack of eyes and ears, no one could be sure.Then Premier McBride learned from backroom business conversations at the Union Club about two submarines, perfect for coastal patrolling, with an armament of five and three torpedoes respectively. J.V. Paterson told him the two vessels had just been completed by his company, Seattle Construction and Drydock, for the Chilean Navy, but Chile could no longer acquire them. McBride was inspired and took matters into his own hands.He cut the cheque for $1,150,000, twice the prewar budget of the RCN for 1913-14, from provincial funds.The handshake and the handover took place at sea in the dead of night.Royal Canadian Navy professionals inspected the submarines, which the base commander at Esquimalt planned to christen as HMCS McBride and Paterson.But those names would have reminded the world that B.C.’s premier and a smart businessman had got the procurement done in the nick of time — and so the characterless names CC1 and CC2 were approved instead.McBride, born in New Westminster in 1870, was a proud Canadian and British Columbian, a confident Imperialist, and a Conservative. “We are all part of the great Dominion and must stand together,” he said, extolling B.C.’s greatness in 1913, “The question is to be prepared.”It’s important to recall that B.C. did not begin as a colony of Canada but as a Pacific discovery, mapped by England and Spain around the time that the British Parliament split the old Province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada.British Columbia was largely self-governing during the reign of the splendid Hudson Bay Company Chief Factor and Governor, Guyana-born Sir James Douglas. The province had a uniquely Imperial spirit far from the “Little Canada” mentality that later held sway in Ottawa much of the time.Most B.C. citizens and their ancestors, especially Vancouver Islanders, did not come overland from the east, but made the long journey directly by sea from the British Isles, or retired to B.C. from the Royal Navy or the Indian Army and Civil Service of the British Raj.In August 1914 HMCS Rainbow was already at sea, on the lookout for Leipzig and Nürnberg, stalking Britain’s HMS Shearwater and Algerine. Fortunately the under-armed Rainbow did not contact the big cruisers but she did, in a great boost to morale, capture two smaller German prizes, the Leonor and Oregon.Back at Esquimalt the gunnery officer, in command of two quick-firing 12-pounders, took another look at the subs through his binoculars. They didn’t look German; more like British C-class; and they weren’t behaving like enemy raiders. They might even be flying Canadian navy ensigns.Since Canada was responsible for national security under section 91 of the British North America Act (the written part of Canada’s Constitution), Ottawa recompensed British Columbia and took the submarines formally into the RCN.In 1917 they sailed to Halifax, the very first British Empire ships to pass through the new Panama Canal, and served out the remainder of World War I in the Mediterranean Sea.After the war, Ottawa’s short-term thinking reasserted itself and HMCS CC1 and CC2 were decommissioned and sold for scrap.The episode was a joke only to those who did not take Canada or its security seriously, did not understand B.C.’s unique Imperial history, or envied Richard McBride his daring and decisiveness. As for CC1 and CC2, their fame was short and sweet and their skippers and crews would never forget them.

CHAMPION: 'Ready Aye Ready,' Premier McBride and Canada’s first submarines

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