Petty Officer, William Law

William Law served in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve (RCNR) from 1929 until 1939. He enlisted in 1929, given the rating of Able Seaman and was based at HMCS Stadacona in Halifax. Originally called the Wellington Barracks, they were built in the 1860s to house a large garrison to defend the city and naval dockyard from land and sea attack. It suffered damage by the 1917 Halifax Explosion but was repaired. The property was turned over to the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) during World War 2 when it was renamed HMCS Stadacona. 

AS Law trained at Stadacona and served there until 1936 when he was posted to HMCS Saguenay, an A-Class destroyed that was commissioned for service in the RCN in 1931 and deployed to serve the Eastern Division out of Halifax. AS Law went to San Diego for additional training in 1936 and was based in Toronto in 1937-38. 

At the outbreak of WW2 he returned to Stadacona, no longer a reservist, to serve abord HMCS Cartier. Originally built in 1908-10 she served as a Coast Guard Ship (CGS) conducting hydrographic surveys along Canada’s east coast as well as Newfoundland and Iceland. During World War 1, CGS Cartier supported the RCN and was converted to an armed patrol and training vessel for junior officers. After WW1 she continued hydrographic surveys but was also used to curb smuggling operations and conduct Dominion law enforcement. CGS Cartier was formally commissioned into the RCN on 18 September 1939, and was renamed HMCS Cartier. HMCS Cartier became a training ship and then an armed coastal patrol ship before returning to training duties. As a training ship, her hydrographic survey instrumentation saw use in educating officers and crew for advanced navigation and naval mine avoidance navigation. 

AS Law was promoted to Leading Seaman in November 1941, and was posted to the Town Class destroyer HMCS St. Clair (I65). This ship was originally USS Williams of the U.S. Navy, built in 1918 but was transferred to the RCN under the Lend-Lease Program in 1940. LS Law served for a year on St. Clair, part of the Western Local Escort Force (WLEF) that performed anti-submarine escorts for convoys from North American cities. The WLEF was responsible for the convoys’ safety from Halifax to the meeting point east of Newfoundland where they were passed over to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force to continue to the British Isles. 

Promoted to Acting Petty Officer in March 1943, APO Law spent a short time at HMCS Niobe (the RCN’s headquarters in the United Kingdom) in Greenock, Scotland, until he was promoted to Petty Officer and returned to Canada to serve on HMCS Ottawa. Originally HMS Griffin (H31), she was a G-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. In WW2 she took part in the Norwegian Campaign and Battle of Dakar in 1940 before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet, escorting convoys of large ships from attacks from the Italian Fleet. Griffin also saw service in the Indian Ocean as a part of the Eastern Fleet. She was converted to an escort destroyer in late 1942 and transferred to the RCN and renamed HMCS Ottawa, assigned to protect convoys in the North Atlantic. Ottawa became the senior ship of Escort Group C5 which worked between St. John’s, Newfoundland and Derry, Northern Ireland.

At the start of 1944, PO Law returned to HMCS Stadacona, and briefly served at HMCS Hochelaga ii, Montreal, before being transferred to HMCS Toronto. She was commissioned in May 1944 at Lévis, Quebec, and spent a month in Bermuda. In August she was allocated to Escort Group 16 and operated out of Sydney, Nova Scotia, conducting escort duty in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

In January 1945, PO Law was transferred to HMCS Cornwallis, the RCN base for new entry training and seamanship training in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia. The base also served several other important functions including anti-submarine and ASDIC (an early form of SONAR) training, accountancy and engine room training, along with several specialist facilities, including the HMC Gunnery School and the chemical warfare centre. PO Law remained there for six months until July 1945, when he was sent to HMCS York in Toronto for demobilization. 

We Will Remember Them.

NM