USS Williams (DD-108)

For other ships with the same name, see USS Williams.
History
United States
Name: USS Williams
Namesake: John Foster Williams
Builder: Union Iron Works, San Francisco, California
Laid down: 25 March 1918
Launched: 4 July 1918
Commissioned: 1 March 1919
Decommissioned: 7 June 1922
Commissioned: 6 November 1939
Decommissioned: 24 September 1940
Struck: 8 January 1941
Identification: DD-108
Fate: Transferred to Canada, 24 September 1940
Canada
Name: HMCS St. Clair
Namesake: St. Clair River
Commissioned: 24 September 1940
Identification: I65
Honours and
awards:		 Atlantic 1943-44
Fate: Scrapped, 1946
General characteristics
Class and type: Wickes-class destroyer
Displacement: 1,191 tons
Length: 314 ft 5 in (95.83 m)
Beam: 31 ft 9 in (9.68 m)
Draft: 9 ft 2 in (2.79 m)
Speed: 35 kn (65 km/h; 40 mph)
Complement: 122 officers and enlisted
Armament:

The second USS Williams (DD-108) was a Wickes-class destroyer in the United States Navy entering service in 1919. Following a brief stint in active service, the ship was laid up for 17 years before being reactivated during World War II. Williams transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II and was renamed HMCS St. Clair (I65), surviving the war and being scrapped in 1946.

Construction and career

United States Navy

Named in honor of John Foster Williams, she was laid down on 25 March 1918 at San Francisco, California, by the Union Iron Works plant of the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. Williams was launched on 4 July 1918; sponsored by Mrs. H. G. Leopold, the wife of Comdr. H. G. Leopold. The destroyer commissioned on 1 March 1919 at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California, Comdr. Matthias E. Manly in command.

Following shakedown, Williams and the destroyer Belknap departed Newport, Rhode Island, on 5 June 1919, bound for the Azores. Arriving at Ponta Delgada on 11 June, Williams proceeded to Gibraltar, where she picked up information pertaining to minefields still extant in the Adriatic, for delivery to the Commander, Naval Forces, Eastern Mediterranean. The destroyer's brief tour of duty in this area of the world took her to Split, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; Gallipoli, in the Dardanelles; and Trieste, Italy, where she operated as part of the US naval forces keeping watch on the tense local situations there in the aftermath of the World War.

After returning to the United States—via Split and Gibraltar—and arriving at New York City on 1 August 1919, Williams was eventually assigned to the Pacific Fleet. Classified DD-108 on 17 July 1920, the destroyer operated out of San Diego, California until decommissioned there on 7 June 1922 and placed in reserve.

The German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 began hostilities in Europe, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt immediately declared America's neutrality. To augment the fleet units already engaged in the Neutrality Patrol hurriedly placed off the eastern seaboard and gulf coast of the United States, the Navy recommissioned 77 destroyers and light minelayers.

Williams was accordingly placed in commission at San Diego on 6 November 1939, Lt. Comdr. Louis N. Miller in command. Following a refit at Mare Island, the destroyer operated in the San Diego area until sailing for Panama on 5 February. Transiting the Panama Canal on 16 February, she lay at Balboa, Panama, for a brief time. During her stay there, the destroyer "manned the rail" in honor of President Roosevelt, who was then engaged in an informal inspection of the Canal Zone's defenses. Underway soon thereafter, Williams arrived at the Naval Operating Base (NOB), Key West, Florida, on 27 February.

Over the ensuing months, Williams operated with the Atlantic Squadron of the fleet, conducting neutrality patrols as well as training cruises. While conducting her scheduled operations from Key West, the destroyer took part in short-range battle practices and ship-handling drills, while keeping a weather eye on shipping in her vicinity. In March, she conducted an astronomical survey in the Bahamas.

On 9 April, Williams transported a survey party to Palmetto Island in the British West Indies before shifting to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After moving back to Key West for a time, Williams departed Florida's waters on 2 June and arrived at New York on 4 June. She conducted two training cruises for embarked Naval Reserve contingents, which kept her busy into the late summer of 1940. After a final refit at the Boston Navy Yard, she departed Charlestown, Massachusetts, on 18 September, bound for Canadian waters; and reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, two days later.

As one of the 50 flush-deck destroyers transferred to the British under lend-lease in return for leases on important base sites in the Western Hemisphere— Williams was selected as one of the six units slated for the Royal Canadian Navy. Soon after her arrival at Halifax on 20 September 1940, she got underway for a brief familiarization cruise for the Canadian crewmen. Williams was decommissioned and turned over to the Canadian government on 24 September; her name was subsequently struck from the Navy list on 8 January 1941.

Royal Canadian Navy service

Renamed HMCS St. Clair (I65)—following the Canadian practice of naming destroyers after Canadian rivers (but with deference to the U.S. origin), her name commemorates the St. Clair River which forms the boundary between Michigan and Ontario[1]—the destroyer was fitted out for convoy escort duties and sailed for the British Isles on 30 November, in company with HMCS St. Croix (ex-McCook) and HMCS Niagara (ex-Thatcher).

Operating with the Clyde Escort force, St. Clair escorted convoys in and out of the heavily travelled Western Approaches to the British Isles in the spring of 1941. Late in May, when the powerful German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen slipped through the Denmark Straits, the "flush decker" became involved in the intensive and widespread effort to destroy the German dreadnought. Eventually, a British force located and sank Bismarck on 27 May, but not before the tragic loss of the battlecruiser HMS Hood on 24 May. The search for the elusive German force brought some of the British units dangerously close to exhaustion of their fuel supplies. Two Tribal-class destroyers, HMS Mashona and HMS Tartar, were located by German long-range bombers soon after Bismarck had slipped beneath the waves and were sunk. St. Clair, near the battle area, became involved in the action when she, too, came under attack. The old destroyer doggedly put up a good defense—shooting down one, and possibly, a second, enemy plane.

St. Clair subsequently joined the Newfoundland Escort Force after this group's establishment in June 1941 and operated on convoy escort missions between Newfoundland and Reykjavík, Iceland, through the end of 1941. St. Clair was assigned to the Western Local Escort Force following repairs at Saint John, New Brunswick, in early 1942, and operated out of Halifax over the next two years, escorting coastwise convoys until withdrawn from this service in 1943 due to her deteriorating condition.

Operating as a submarine depot ship at Halifax until deemed unfit for further duty "in any capacity" in August 1944, St. Clair was used as a fire-fighting and damage control hulk until 1946. Handed over to the War Assets Corporation for disposal, on 6 October 1946, St. Clair was subsequently broken up for scrap.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Milner 1985 p.23

References


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