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K-90 HMS GENTIAN
Flower Class Corvette

Gentian: A flower of the genus Gentiana, fam. Gentianaceae. Most Gentians are Alpine flowers..."

Take a Southern Ocean Whale Catcher enlarge it, toss in a bit of a North Sea Trawler, pack it with men, guns and depth charges, and what do you have?

A sub hunter and convoy escort, easy, inexpensive - and fast to build in tiny shipyards that sprang up overnight and used unskilled labor. A great little ship at a time when the Royal Navy needed every ship it could lay its hands on. But man, oh man, how they rolled...

Built by Harland & Wolf, Belfast, and launched Aug., 6, 1940 HMS GENTIAN was one of the first batch of wartime corvettes laid down. Not much idea of her wartime service, however I do know that the ship served most of the time in the Western Approaches escorting convoys across the North Atlantic with Escort Group B2 under Cdr. MacIntyre and was also on the icy and treacherous Arctic runs to Murmansk and Archangel. In 1941 the ship was also involved in escort work out of Gibraltar and was one of the RN corvettes employed on escort duties during D-Day. Being one of the early ships, GENTIAN was scrapped in August of 1947 at Purfleet, Wales. HMS GENTIAN was the second ship of that name, the first being a WWI Flower Class Anti Submarine sloop. Photo: HMCS MOOSE JAW, down the ways...

A very few old corvettes made it into merchant service or third-world navies but most of those were later ships and the rest were simply scrapped. By 1950 only 4 Flower Class ships (used as North Atlantic Weather Ships by the Royal Navy) remained of the almost 300 built. 164 of the ships were built in England; 130 in Canada and 6 in France. Several of the French ships had the distinction of serving in the German Kreigsmarine. Following a long Royal Navy tradition of naming naval sloops after flowers the British corvettes all took their names from common English flowers while the Canadian ships were named after Canadian towns. Today, only one corvette remains: HMCS SACKVILLE which is maintained as a museum ship at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Corvettes, while small, had a crew of 90 - 160 men and they were quite compartmentalized with enlisted men berthed (in swaying hammocks just as in Nelson's time) in the stuffy, always wet forecastle or, in the stern. The officers berthed midships in tiny, crowded cabins. British class structure was usually observed, too. Canadians, (as usual!) were more informal. This photo from Picture Australia shows the forecastle in an Australian corvette. While the men are in "tropical gear" the photo is very typical and shows the cramped conditions quite well.
Photo: K-138 HMCS BARRIE in typical North Atlantic Weather....

Conditions on open ocean North Atlantic escort duty were usually miserable for all hands. In fact the weather was often a worse enemy that the U-boats lurking below:

"A corvette in bad weather is indescribable: It would be hard to imagine such concentrated misery anywhere else. Into two triangular points, about 10 m by 6.7 m at their greatest dimensions are crammed 60-odd men; each has for his living space -- eating, sleeping -- a seat on the cushioned bench which runs around the outside of each mess deck. There is a locker beneath the seat for his metal ditty box - something like an old-fashioned hat box - with his personal things on a rack above. The space where he slings his hammock carefully selected by the older hands and jealously guarded. Above him is the deckhead, or another hammock, which are slung in tiers around stanchions and beneath pipes, wherever there is room. Most of the center deck is taken up with scrubbed deal tables, one to each mess, where the men eat or play interminable games of cards." - James Lamb "The Corvette Navy"

Not mentioned is the water which in heavy weather sloshed continuously back and forth across the deck under benches and hammocks, and around the lockers... Photo: HMCS EYEBRIGHT, in heavy weather.

It might be said that conditions were not much better on the corvettes than they were on the subs they tried to sink. There was little rest. (And even less or none at all when it was stormy.) Standing watch: Four hours on; four hours off. Night and day; day in; day out. In the open. In stinging rain and freezing sleet. With clothes that were always wet and seldom, if ever dry. With mildew and condensation everywhere. Always the overhanging threat of being torpedoed without any warning. Some, as a result, never tied their shoes, or wore seaboots (that they could kick off easily) all the time. Then, if it happened and you were one of the lucky ones and found yourself, a survivor in the water, you had at best 15 minutes (or less) in winter before you succumbed to the cold while in the summertime in the cold North Atlantic your chances weren't much better. Only those who made it to a Carley float had any chance at all.

Winter, too, found ice forming on topsides in a thick, heavy rime that had to be chipped off by all hands wielding hammers, mallets and hoses spouting live steam - often racing before the ship became top heavy and risked turning turtle.
Photo: HMCS SHAWINIGAN, in port after an icy winter crossing...
All this on poor food - food, that for the most part on Canadian ships consisted of "red lead" (tomatoes), "bully beef" (canned corned beef) and hardtack. Hot food was almost non-existent in heavy weather as the stoves couldn't be lit. And of course, always plenty of seasickness.

As one former army captain remarked, after describing a corvette twist and roll her way though the seas near his troopship: "You got seasick just looking at them..." Yes, everyone was seasick in a corvette - at least until they got their "sea legs". Part of the problem was the design: with that cross between a Southern Ocean whale catcher and a North Sea trawler, the ships, while seaworthy, with their rounded bottoms they were certainly infamous for their rolling. And boy could they roll. And in really heavy weather they were so "wet" that

"American navy sailors who watched corvettes at work in the North Atlantic wondered why the crews didn't get submarine pay..." (Macpherson, "Corvettes of the RCN")

With all that pitching and swaying, broken limbs (usually set by a fellow officer or rating - without the benefit of a doctor) were a common hazard. And, as always, that monotonous background "ping..." "ping..." ping..." of the asdic (sonar). No wonder the crews raised Cain when they finally landed up on shore... Because in a few days (often, only a few scant hours) they were going back out to do it all over again. And then again. And yet again... With monotonous, humdrum regularity....

Action Stations! Depth Charges Away... K-Gun in action, left; DC racks right

Model ship photos & text © D.S. Smith 2003

Displacement: 925 tons ( kg) Length: 205' 2" (11.6 m) Beam: 33' ( 4.3 m)
Top Speed: 16.5 knots (68 kmph) Crew: 13 Armament, varied. However one 4" gun mount, two 20mm guns, a bofors or quad Vickers and two to four DC throwers along the sides and aft DC racks were pretty much standard.

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