Birth of the Canadian Navy - HMCS Rainbow - 5 Minute History

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:12]Canada. It's the second largest country in the world and has the unique status now of being one of only two nations who have sent a man to the moon. Not to land on it, but to visit it. But the Canadian military itself, it might shock you to know, is very young. The Royal Canadian Navy in particular is only 116 years old. It's younger than even the Royal Australian Navy and at the start far less well equipped. While Australia was running around with a battle cruiser and some very modern light cruisers, Canada was just getting off the ground. When the Royal Canadian Navy was formally established in 1910, it started with a pair of aging British cruisers from the Royal Navy. And one of them was HMCS Rainbow, our focal point today. and she would go on to earn a significant place in Canadian naval history serving on the Pacific coast during the First World War. Welcome back to Five Night History, the weekly series where patrons choose the topic. This week we're talking about the HMCS Rainbow and the birth of the Canadian Navy, courtesy of IMG Reef R7.

[00:01:10]I probably said that wrong, but thank you nonetheless.

[00:01:21]Before we get to Canada though, we have to talk about the beginning of the ship's career. The future HMCS Rainbow was laid down on the 30th of December 1889 at the Palmer shipyard in Hebon Tine in England under the authority of Britain's Naval Defense Act of 1889. She belonged to the Apollo class of protected cruisers, a type designed to protect British naval power across the world's trade routes and colonial possessions.

[00:01:44]The Apollo class vessels were in large versions of earlier marathon classes, and the Rainbow was among those fitted with the layer of wood and copper sheathing intended for tropical service, which added approximately 200 long tons to her displacement and bought her to a total of 3600 long tons. Rainbow was by no means ever designed to fly in a fleet engagement or to stand toe-to-toe with large enemy modern ships. Her job was to protect and show the flag away from Europe in regions where she would be the most powerful vessel on station. Rainbow was launched on the 25th of March 1891 and finally entered service in 1892, completing her fitting out in January 1893. At 95.7 m long and 13.3 m at her widest point, Rainbow was a midsize cruiser by the standards of the day, and by World War I standards, she was quite small. Her propulsion came from a two shaft, two-cylinder, triple expansion steam engine, drawing power from five boilers. Under force draft, she could achieve nearly 20 knots, which was not fast, but at the same time, for her intended role, it was not slow.

[00:02:44]Rainbow's armament also reflected her role with the main battery consisting of two quickfiring 152 mm or 6-in guns mounted for and along the center line supplemented by 620 mm or 4.7in guns arranged in three on each side of the upper deck. There were also eight 57 mm or 6 pounder guns added as well for close engagements. If an engagement ever got too close, though, she was also fitted with four smaller torpedo tubes.

[00:03:11]These were early torpedoes, though, so their use was questionable at best. Her armor deck ranged in size, but it was up to 51 mm thick along her deck and 76 mm at the armored conning tower. The new ship would last only a few minutes fighting a modern warship. But for the colonial station, she was perfect.

[00:03:31]From 1895 to 1898, the then HMS Rainbow served on the China station, based out of Hong Kong before moving to Malta from 1898 to 1899. The Rainbow, though, would prove to be less than ideal for her job here, and this came down to excessive running costs. Simply put, ships were getting bigger, faster, and more efficient, and the Rainbow was getting left behind. Between 1900 and 1909, she saw limited deployments before finally in December 1901, she was recommissioned at Devport under Captain Thomas Greet for service in the cruiser squadron in home waters. Rainbow participated in a Mediterranean tour and was present at the fleet review held at Spithead on the 16th of August 1902, which celebrated the coronation of King Edward IIIth. She undertook further operations in the Med, including a deployment to protect British interests in Morocco and visited Cree for a combined squadron maneuver.

[00:04:22]But by 1904, her duty had diminished to the point where she was restricted to harbor duties. And in early 1909, Admiral Ty decommissioned her and placed her on the inactive list, where she would have likely laid up until the First World War. But it was here that fate intervened, and she was transferred to the newly established Royal Canadian Navy.

[00:04:43]Now after the establishment of the Canadian Navy, the Admiral Ty at first offered up two Apollo class cruisers, HMS Rainbow and HMS Nio for training purposes. Canada's government would pay almost a quarter of a million for Rainbow drawing funds from the Marine and Fisheries Department budget and before departure, both ships underwent modifications to suit their new home.

[00:05:03]Firstly, they received updated heating systems to deal with the Canadian weather conditions and a modernized galley. Now given their age too, extra work was undertaken to update the ship with the latest Maronei wireless equipment and the ship was also fitted with an large cadet gun room. This was all done at the cost of removal of the smallest and oldest weapons aboard.

[00:05:23]Rainbow was recommissioned as HMCS Rainbow on the 4th of August 1910 as the first ship in the Royal Canadian Navy and assigned to Canada's Pacific coast.

[00:05:34]She became the first Canadian naval vessel to sail around South America and through the straight of Mellin, arriving on the west coast the 7th of November 1910.

[00:05:43]Rainbow's early career in Canadian waters was confined simply to fisheries patrol along the coast and training cruisers. She would receive a brief refit in 1911 where the six pounder guns were finally replaced with 12pounder weapons and her duties became a familiar routine of ceremonial appearances, naval training exercises, and coast guard style enforcement. Most notably in February 1913, she apprehended the American fishing schooner Adri for illegal fishing. In 1914 and July, Rainbow would actually be called to Vancouver to assist with a little bit of a political issue when the Japanese merchant vessel Kamagata Maru had arrived in Vancouver carrying 376 passengers who were mostly seek immigrants from India. Despite the fact that these people were legally British subjects, British India being a thing at the time, they were denied entry under Canadian immigration law designed to obstruct South Asian settlements.

[00:06:33]Kamagata Maru was sat in Vancouver Harbor for 2 months while local authorities failed to compel to make it depart. After negotiations with the passengers who had effectively committed a mutiny and taken over the vessel, the standoff was resolved when Canadian authorities agreed to supply the ship with provisions and the Kamagata Maru departed Vancouver on July 23rd, 1914 with Rainbow escorting her out.

[00:06:55]Within days of Kamaga Maru's departure, the First World War began, though, and Rainbow's position became significant because in an instant, it was realized that she was the only major British Empire or French Empire warship on the western coast of North America. Her first job was to sail south to Mexico to cover the withdrawal of the British sloops HMS Shear Water and HMS Algarene, which had been protecting British citizens caught up in civil unrest within Mexico. After this event, HMCS Rainbow was tasked with hunting down two German-like cruisers operating in the Pacific, SMS Leipig and SMS Nerburgg. I should stress here that Leipig and Nerburgg totally outclassed Rainbow, and it's likely she would have been torn apart in a one-on-one engagement, but certain nonetheless. Rainbow was an aging protected cruiser and she was facing modern German warships here.

[00:07:42]Thankfully for Rainbow and her crew though the ships never met. But Rainbow did actually come within a single day of intercepting Leipig at San Francisco.

[00:07:50]But they passed each other completely harmlessly. Rainbow continued to be the primary Allied naval presence in the Eastern Pacific until the arrival of the Japanese armored cruiser Hizumo under the Anglo-Japanese naval treaty. But following the destruction of Germany's Pacific Fleet at the Battle of the Faulland Islands in December 1914, the immediate threat went away and Rainbow continued her patrols until 1915 when they reduced due to a lack of coal in the immediate area. In early 1916, Rainbow resumed more active work and on the 23rd of April, she seized the German owned but American flag schooner Oregon, followed by the capture of the Mexican flag schooner Leonor on the 2nd of May.

[00:08:25]Later that year and into 1917, she performed the highly unusual and highly sensitive mission of transporting $140 million in Russian gold bullion. Now that's valued in 1917 Canadian dollars between Eskiml and Vancouver. The Russian government had placed the funds into Canadian custody for safekeeping given they knew the revolution was coming.

[00:08:48]By 1917, the Royal Canadian Navy had concluded that the cost of maintaining the now really old Rainbow on the Pacific coast could simply no longer be justified. Her experienced crew was needed on the Atlantic seabboard to counter the Yubot. Rainbow was decommissioned on the 8th of May 1917 and the crew was sent east. She would be briefly recommissioned on the 5th of July as a depo ship in Eskimal until June 1920 when she was sold for scrap to a Seattle ship broker and broken up.

[00:09:15]Rainbow had served the Royal Navy and then the Royal Canadian Navy for nearly three decades. And her career is not a glorious one. It's not a crazy one at all. There's no big naval battle.

[00:09:24]There's no giant fleet action. It's just back and forth, back and forth, patrol, patrol, patrol, training, training, patrol. And this cannot be understated at how important it is. The men who learned how to operate Rainbow and her sister Naob would go on to form the core of the Royal Canadian Navy, which in a few decades in the 1940s would become one of the most competent, effective, and downright dangerous naval forces on the planet during the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War.

[00:09:53]Rainbow built that navy, and it cannot be understated just how important that is for a competent navy to have that building block.

[00:10:02]There isn't much left to the Rambo today, though. Only her ship's wheel survives on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. And one day, I do intend to go and see it, including the HMCS Haidider. Now, Haida, keep in mind, like I said, would have never had her career if Rainbow didn't come first. I hope you'll enjoy this video today. I personally love this topic. I love the Dominion Navies, and thank you so much for the person who put this topic in. I'm not even going to pronounce your name again cuz I'll get it wrong. Genuinely, the birth of Dominion Navies are my favorite topic.

[00:10:35]So, like, comment, subscribe, and I'll catch you all next time.

[00:10:54]Heat.

[00:11:07]Heat.