HMCS ACADIA Z00

Auxiliary Patrol Ship

Acadia, a Dominion government hydrographic survey ship, was commissioned as a patrol vessel from 16 Jan 1919, to Mar 1919, and carried out A/S Patrol in the Bay of Fundy, off the south shore of Nova Scotia and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. She then resumed survey duty until the outbreak of the Second World War when she was commissioned on 02 Oct 1939, first service as training ship for HMCS STADACONA, later patrolling the Halifax approaches from May 1940, to Mar 1941. She also occasionally acted as close escort from small convoys between Halifax and Halifax Ocean Meeting Point. After refit in 1941, she served as a training ship at Halifax for A/A and DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship) gunners and, in Jun 1944, went to HMCS CORNWALLIS as gunnery training ship. Paid off on 03 Nov 1945, she was returned to the Dominion government. Acadia retired from service on 28 Nov 1969, to become a museum ship at the Bedford Institute in Dartmouth, N.S. On 09 Feb 1980, she was handed over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

Acadia was launched in 1913 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England at the yards of Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. She was the first vessel specifically designed and built to survey Canada's northern waters, and her career took her from the dangerous, ice-infested waters of Hudson's Bay to Nova Scotia's South Shore. In her early years, she was responsible for pioneering hydrographic research in Canada's Arctic waters. At the end of her career, she was used to chart the coast of Newfoundland after it joined Confederation in 1949, creating entirely new charts and updating some that were nearly a century old.

Acadia also holds the distinction of being the only surviving ship to have served the Royal Canadian Navy during both world wars. She served as a patrol and escort vessel from 1916 to 1919. She received minor damage in the Halifax Explosion in 1917 while acting as a guard ship in Bedford Basin, making her the only vessel still afloat today to have survived the Halifax Explosion. Acadia was re-commissioned as a warship in 1939 serving first as a patrol vessel and later as a training ship until the war's end in 1945. (Source: Maritime Museum of NS website)

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Commanding Officers

     In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice    

     Lest We Forget     

Photos and Documents