All posts by Dinger

About Dinger

A sea cadet at RCSCC LION from 1963 to 1968, I joined the Naval Reserve at HMCS STAR in 1968 as a Bos'n. I was an Officer Cadet in the ROUTP, commissioned in 1971, and awarded my watchkeeping ticket in 1973. I served at sea, at one time or another, in all five Gate Vessels and HMCS FORT STEELE & CHAUDIERE as well as the Coast Guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent and served as OIC of the patrol vessels RALLY and RAPID. At STAR from 1968 to 2007, I served as XO twice and then as CO from 2002 to 2005. I rounded out my career by serving as SSO Training at NAVRESHQ in Quebec City in 2008, retiring in 2009 as CO of HMCS HUNTER in Windsor. I was Executive Director for the Friends of HMCS HAIDA till 2011 and have been an active volunteer onboard HAIDA since she arrived in Hamilton in 2003.

6th HMS STAR Update

What's New?

A fir built 18 gun brig-sloop (two square rigged masts), one of eight Albatross Class, built by Perry of Blackwall, launched 29 August 1795, 96 feet long by 30 feet, 6 inches, 365 tons builders measurement.   She was armed with sixteen 32 pdr carronades and two 6 pdr bowchasers.

  • 1795                 conveyed troops from the Cape to Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth)
  • 1795-1796     Surveyed off the west coast on South Africa
  • 20 December 1796     Took the Privateer Cutter Le Coup d’Essai (2) off the Isle of Wight and recaptured the brig Ann
  • 13 March 1798            took the Danish Mathilda Maria en route from Copenhagen to Tranquebar (Coromandel Coast of India) with wine, beef, pork, etc., off Ile de France (Mauritius)
  • 12 May 1798   took a French ship, 40 to 50 tons burthen, as a prize off the east coast of Mauritius
  • 1801 Portsmouth
  • 1802     sold for breaking up

On the 3 November 1801 Capt. GARDNER appeared before a court martial on board GLADIATOR in Portsmouth Harbour charged by surgeon William LIND with tyrannical behaviour towards his officers, having traded in slaves off Madagascar and having plundered a French prisoner. After examining the officers and crew of STAR, the court decided that the charges were ill founded and malicious and the captain was honourably acquitted. 

1:48 plan signed by John Henslow [Surveyor of the Navy, 1784-1806] and William Rule [Surveyor of the Navy, 1793-1813].

On This Date – 15 November

What's New?

15 November 1942         Ordinary Seaman David Oribine, V-8627, RCNVR of HMCS STAR was posted to HMS QUEBEC, the Combined Training Centre for amphibious operations, at Inveraray, Scotland. Following his participation in Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa, on 8 November 1942, he and various other Canadian landing craft crew were returning to Glasgow in the Troop Transport ETTRICK, when it was torpedoed and sunk off Gibraltar by U-155. The majority of the over three hundred crew and passengers were rescued but OS Oribine and twenty-three others were not.

HMS QUEBEC’s badge, a wolf holding maple leaves, likely a play on General Wolf ‘s capture of Quebec in 1759.

ETTRICK was built as a troop transport with a capacity of 1,344 troops. Managed by P & O, she was intended to rotate battalions of the British Indian Army to and from India.