HMCS Stone Town

There has been only one vessel named HMCS Stone Town in the Royal Canadian Navy.

HMCS Stone Town (K531) / River-class frigate

Alternatively named for St. Mary’s, Ontario, because there was another vessel using that name in a Commonwealth navy, HMCS Stone Town was commissioned at Montréal, Québec, on 21 July 1944, she arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 13 August, and on 3 September commenced a month’s workups in Bermuda.

On her return to Canada, HMCS Stone Town was assigned to newly formed Escort Group C-8 as Senior Officer’s ship, and spent the balance of the war as a mid-ocean escort.

She sailed from Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 12 May 1945 as escort to convoy ONS.50 on her way home, and on 22 July commenced refit at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Work was stopped on 24 August following the surrender of Japan and the ship was paid off on 13 November 1945 at Lunenburg, to be laid up in reserve at Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

Sold to the Department of Transport for a weather ship, she was modified for the purpose at Halifax in 1950, and sailed that October for Esquimalt, British Columbia. In October 1957, after fifteen years on station in the North Pacific, she was replaced by the Canadian Government ship Quadra and sold in 1968 to a Vancouver buyer, purportedly for conversion to a fish factory ship.

• Builder: Canadian Vickers Ltd., Montréal, Québec
• Date laid down: November 17, 1943
• Date launched: March 28, 1944
• Date commissioned: July 21, 1944
• Date paid off: November 13, 1945
• Dimensions: 91.9 m x 11.1 m x 2.7 m
• Speed: 19 knots
• Crew: 141
• Armament: two 4-inch (102-mm) (1 x II), one 12-pound (5.45 kg) gun, eight 20-mm guns (4 x II), one Hedgehog mortar and depth charges

Battle honours

• Atlantic 1944-1945