In August 1947 a group of Sea Cadets led by LCdr M. Moffat, RCSC, took part in an exchange visit to England and visited HMS RAMILLES. When the ship was scrapped the next year, the bell was acquired and later donated to HMCS STAR by LCdr J.P. Connor, RCSC.
HMS RAMILLES was a Revenge Class battleship, commissioned in 1917, having missed the Battle of Jutland. She and her four sisters survived to serve during the Second World War, although ROYAL OAK was torpedoed and sunk in Scapa Flow on 14 October, 1939, with the loss of 833 men.
During the early days of WWII, Prince Phillip served aboard as a young officer. In the Mediterranean, she took part in the Battle of Cape Spartivento, engaging two Italian battleships while protecting convoys from Malta. In the Atlantic, she escorted troop and merchant convoys and on one occasion the German battleships SCHARNHORST & GNIESENAU withdrew rather than risk damage[1]. She was engaged in the pursuit of the German battleship BISMARCK. In 1942, while anchored at Diego Suarez, Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean, she was torpedoed by a Japanese midget submarine and severely damaged. She provided fire support off SWORD Beach during the D-Day landings in Normandy, firing over one thousand fifteen inch shells at shore targets, and later filled the same role off Toulon during the invasion of the south of France.
RAMILLES was scrapped in 1949 but one of her eight fifteen inch guns is preserved outside the Imperial War Museum in London, England, along with one from her sister RESOLUTION[2].
[1] Their combined eighteen 11 inch guns should have been more than a match for RAMILLE’s eight 15 inch, but they had strict orders from Hitler not to engage enemy capital ships.
[2] RESOLUTION’s 15 inch gun was fitted in the monitor HMS ROBERTS before going to the Imperial War Museum.
