HMS Walmer Castle

HMS Walmer Castle was a Castle-class corvette constructed for the British Royal Navy during the Second World War. Before completion, the ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and renamed HMCS Leaside. The corvette was used as an ocean convoy escort during the war and was sold for mercantile use following it. The ship was purchased for use as a passenger ship and renamed Coquitlam, then in 1958, Glacier Queen. In 1970 Glacier Queen was acquired for use as a floating hotel in Alaska. The ship sank in 1978 and was raised and scuttled in Alaskan waters in 1979.

Design and description
The Castle class were an improved corvette design over their predecessor Flower-class corvette. The Flower class was not considered acceptable for mid-Atlantic sailing and was only used on Atlantic convoy duty out of need. Though the Admiralty would have preferred Loch-class frigates, the inability of many small shipyards to construct the larger ships required them to come up with a smaller vessel. The increased length of the Castle class over their predecessors and their improved hull form gave the Castles better speed and performance on patrol in the North Atlantic and an acceptable replacement for the Flowers. This, coupled with improved anti-submarine armament in the form of the Squid mortar led to a much more capable anti-submarine warfare (ASW) vessel. However, the design did have criticisms, mainly in the way it handled at low speeds and that the class's maximum speed was already slower than the speeds of the new U-boats they would be facing.

A Castle-class corvette was 252 ft long with a beam of 36 ft and a draught of 13 ft at deep load. The ships displaced 1060 LT standard and 1580 LT deep load. The ships had a complement of 120.

The ships were powered by two Admiralty three-drum boilers which created 2750 ihp. This powered one vertical triple expansion engine that drove one shaft, giving the ships a maximum speed of 16.5 kn. The ships carried 480 tons of oil giving them a range of 6200 nmi at 15 kn.

The corvettes were armed with one QF 4-inch Mk XIX gun mounted forward. Anti-air armament varied from 4 to 10 Oerlikon 20 mm cannons. For ASW purposes, the ships were equipped with one three-barreled Squid anti-submarine mortar with 81 projectiles. The ships also had two depth charge throwers and one depth charge rail on the stern that came with 15 depth charges.

The ships were equipped with Type 145 and Type 147B ASDIC. The Type 147B was tied to the Squid anti-submarine mortar and would automatically set the depth on the fuses of the projectiles until the moment of firing. A single Squid-launched attack had a success rate of 25%. The class was also provided with HF/DF and Type 277 radar.

Construction and career
Walmer Castle, named for the castle in Kent, was ordered on 19 January 1943. The ship was laid down by Smiths Dock Company at South Bank-on-Tees on 23 September 1943. At some point in 1943, the ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and launched on 10 March 1944. The ship was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy as Leaside, named for a small town in Ontario on 21 August 1944, with the pennant number K492.

The corvette worked up at Tobermory in September before joining the Mid-Ocean Escort Force in October as part of escort group C-8. Leaside was deployed as an escort for trans-Atlantic convoys for the rest of the war. In May 1945, she returned to Canada, and departed for the West coast in June. Leaside was paid off on 16 November 1945 at Esquimalt, British Columbia.

The ship was sold for mercantile use to the Union Steamship Company and was converted to cargo/passenger ship with a gross register tonnage of 1,833 tons. The ship entered service as a coastal passenger ship Coquitlam in 1946, sailing along the British Columbia coast. In 1950, the ship was renamed Glacier Queen and registered under a Liberian flag.

In 1973, Glacier Queen was purchased by M.J. Stanley and prepared for use a floating hotel. The ship arrived at Valdez, Alaska, in 1974, for use by the tourist industry after the town's growing population took over all the pre-existing hotels during the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. On 8 November 1978, the ship sank at anchor in Seldovia Bay (59.4274°N, -151.7249°W) in Cook Inlet on the south-central coast of Alaska. The ship was later refloated, towed out to sea by the salvage tug Salvage Chief, and scuttled in the Gulf of Alaska 100 nmi west of Cape Saint Elias on 19 January 1979.

Commemoration
The ship's bell is located at Leaside High School in Toronto.