- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 410
Sent to me by a fellow Merchant Seaman
In the late winter of 1949, the RCN was shaken by three almost simultaneous cases of mass insubordination variously described as "Incidents" or "Mutinies":
On February 26, when the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan was on a fuelling stop at Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, ninety Leading Seamen and below — constituting more than half the ship's company — locked themselves in their messdecks, and refused to come out until getting the captain to hear their grievances.
On March 15, in another destroyer — HMCS Crescent, at Nanjing, China — eighty-three junior ratings held a similar protest.
On March 20, thirty-two aircraft handlers on the carrier HMCS Magnificent, which was on fleet manoeuvres in the Caribbean, briefly refused an order to turn to morning cleaning stations.
As noted by Dr Richard Gimblett, researcher and himself a retired naval officer[29] the respective captains in all three cases acted with great sensitivity, entering the messes for an informal discussion of the sailors' grievances and carefully avoided using the term "mutiny," which could have had severe legal consequences for the sailors involved. Specifically, the captain of the Athabaskan, while talking with the disgruntled crew members, is known to have placed his cap over a written list of demands, which could have been used as legal evidence of a mutiny, and pretended not to notice it.
Still, the Canadian government of the time — the early years of the Cold War — felt apprehensive of "The Red Menace," especially since the naval sailors' discontent coincided with a Communist-inspired strike in the Canadian merchant marine (also, one of the incidents occurred in a country — China — where the local Communists were in the fast process of winning a civil war and gaining power).
Defence Minister Brooke Claxton appointed Rear-Admiral Rollo Mainguy, , to head a commission of inquiry. The Mainguy Report — described by Dr Gimblett as "a watershed in the Navy's history, whose findings, recommendations and conclusions remain a potent legacy" — concluded that no evidence was found of Communist influence or of collusion between the three crews.
The "General Causes Contributing to [the] Breakdown of Discipline" noted by the commission included:
Collapse of the Divisional System of personnel management;
Failure to provide Welfare Committees for the airing of petty grievances, which led to sailors informally adopting a kind of equivalent to a sit down strike;
Frequent changes in ships' manning and routines with inadequate explanation;
A deterioration in the traditional relationship between officers and petty officers;
The absence of a distinguishing Canadian identity in the Navy.
The last issue — an assertion of "an uncaring officer corps harbouring aristocratic British attitudes inappropriate to Canadian democratic sensitivities" — went beyond the question of sailors' morale and touched on the basic identity of the Canadian Navy and indeed, on the national identity of Canada as a whole.
It was to have ramifications in the process undertaken in later decades, painful to many of the officers concerned, of deliberately cutting off many of the British traditions in such areas as ensigns and uniforms.[30]
In the late winter of 1949, the RCN was shaken by three almost simultaneous cases of mass insubordination variously described as "Incidents" or "Mutinies":
On February 26, when the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan was on a fuelling stop at Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, ninety Leading Seamen and below — constituting more than half the ship's company — locked themselves in their messdecks, and refused to come out until getting the captain to hear their grievances.
On March 15, in another destroyer — HMCS Crescent, at Nanjing, China — eighty-three junior ratings held a similar protest.
On March 20, thirty-two aircraft handlers on the carrier HMCS Magnificent, which was on fleet manoeuvres in the Caribbean, briefly refused an order to turn to morning cleaning stations.
As noted by Dr Richard Gimblett, researcher and himself a retired naval officer[29] the respective captains in all three cases acted with great sensitivity, entering the messes for an informal discussion of the sailors' grievances and carefully avoided using the term "mutiny," which could have had severe legal consequences for the sailors involved. Specifically, the captain of the Athabaskan, while talking with the disgruntled crew members, is known to have placed his cap over a written list of demands, which could have been used as legal evidence of a mutiny, and pretended not to notice it.
Still, the Canadian government of the time — the early years of the Cold War — felt apprehensive of "The Red Menace," especially since the naval sailors' discontent coincided with a Communist-inspired strike in the Canadian merchant marine (also, one of the incidents occurred in a country — China — where the local Communists were in the fast process of winning a civil war and gaining power).
Defence Minister Brooke Claxton appointed Rear-Admiral Rollo Mainguy, , to head a commission of inquiry. The Mainguy Report — described by Dr Gimblett as "a watershed in the Navy's history, whose findings, recommendations and conclusions remain a potent legacy" — concluded that no evidence was found of Communist influence or of collusion between the three crews.
The "General Causes Contributing to [the] Breakdown of Discipline" noted by the commission included:
Collapse of the Divisional System of personnel management;
Failure to provide Welfare Committees for the airing of petty grievances, which led to sailors informally adopting a kind of equivalent to a sit down strike;
Frequent changes in ships' manning and routines with inadequate explanation;
A deterioration in the traditional relationship between officers and petty officers;
The absence of a distinguishing Canadian identity in the Navy.
The last issue — an assertion of "an uncaring officer corps harbouring aristocratic British attitudes inappropriate to Canadian democratic sensitivities" — went beyond the question of sailors' morale and touched on the basic identity of the Canadian Navy and indeed, on the national identity of Canada as a whole.
It was to have ramifications in the process undertaken in later decades, painful to many of the officers concerned, of deliberately cutting off many of the British traditions in such areas as ensigns and uniforms.[30]
