The Creation of the Canadian Navy

At the onset of Confederation in 1867, political planners in Canada and Great Britain realized that Canada had substantial maritime interests to protect. Boasting the fourth largest Merchant Marine in the world, and deriving the majority of its foreign capital through maritime trading should have been enough to persuade the Canadian government of the strategic importance of the seas. Adding the fact that Canada was one of the great shipbuilding and ship-owning countries of the world, and it soon made the need for maritime protection obvious.

For Britain's Royal Navy, the Canadian merchant fleet represented a ready supply of vessels that could have been converted to auxiliary warships, with some help to procure the necessary armament should a crisis arise. Soon enough, though, sail gave way to steam, and Canada's mercantile fleet became inadequate to complement the British Navy. In 1865, the British Parliament had passed the Colonial Naval Defence Act, which enabled colonies to establish and maintain naval forces for home defenses. Canada's maritime interests needed to be safeguarded, and Britain wanted Canada to assume its fair share.

In 1878, the Governor General Lord Dufferin stated in a dispatch to the Colonial Secretary that the government of Sir John A. Macdonald ‘would not be adverse to instituting a ship for training purposes if the Imperial Government would provide the ship’. Thus began the first attempt to start a Canadian Navy with the allocation of the old wooden steam-auxiliary corvette HMS Charybdis in July 1881. This ship, acquired with the intent to train a Marine Militia provided for in the Militia Act of 1868, achieved infamous notoriety when she broke her moorings in Saint John harbour and caused severe damage to the merchantmen anchored in proximity. Her sorry condition was also responsible for the death of two civilians who drowned in the harbour after falling through her rotten gangway.

Charybdis was the product of a shift in domestic policy stemming from a host of grievances the young Dominion of Canada had towards the Empire's handling of its foreign affairs. The United States of America still represented Canada's surest enemy in the late 19th century, but Britain's attitude became more frequently one of laissez-faire towards that fast emerging economic and military giant. Canada often felt cheated when, militarily still dependent on the Empire, it failed to see conflicts resolved to satisfaction. One example was the imperial government’s unwillingness to apprehend and prosecute American poachers contravening the fisheries articles of the Anglo-American Treaty of Washington of 1871, and risk a quarrel with the US on behalf of the Dominion.

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Wikipedia