HMCS Hamilton

There has been only one vessel named Hamilton in the Royal Canadian Navy.

HMCS Hamilton (I24)

As USS Kalk, she served the United States Navy in European waters during 1919, returning to America to perform training duties for a few months before being laid up at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1922. Re-commissioned in the American Navy in June 1940, she served briefly with the Neutrality Patrol in the Atlantic before being transferred to the Royal Navy at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on September 23, 1940.  

Commissioned as HMS Kalk, this Town class destroyer was renamed HMS Hamilton at St. John’s, Newfoundland where, on her arrival on October 1, 1940, she was damaged in a collision with her sister-ship HMS Georgetown. She was taken to Saint John, New Brunswick, for repairs and, while being undocked there on October 26, ran aground and received damage sufficient to lay her up for half a year. She was subsequently offered to the Royal Canadian Navy, re-commissioned at Saint John as a Royal Canadian Navy ship on July 6, 1941, and assigned to Western Local Escort Force. After escorting one convoy, she collided with the Netherlands submarine O-15 at Halifax. Following repairs, she again took up local escort duties, and in June 1943 became a member of Escort Group W-4. She still had not made a transatlantic passage when, in August 1943, she was allocated to HMCS Cornwallis, the naval training establishment in Deep Brook, Nova Scotia, as a training ship.

HMCS Hamilton was paid off on June 8, 1945 at Sydney, Nova Scotia, and broken up at Baltimore, Maryland, the same year.

  • Builder: Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. Ltd., Fore River Yard, Quincy, Massachusetts, United States of America.
  • Laid down: August 17, 1918
  • Launched: December 21, 1918
  • Commissionning date in Royal Canadian Navy: July 6, 1941
  • Paying off date: June 8, 1945
  • Displacement: 1,069 tons
  • Dimensions: 85.6 m x 9.3 m x 2.6 m
  • Maximum speed: 28 knots
  • Crew: 153
  • Armament:  three 4-inch (102-mm) guns (3 single mounts), one 3-inch gun, six 21-inch (533-mm) torpedo tubes (2 triple mounts) , depth charges.

Battle honours

Atlantic 1942-1943

Page details

Date modified: