A Steam Yacht Becomes a Torpedo Boat
This story is an excerpt from the book Tin-Can Canucks: A Century of Canadian Destroyers by S.D. Campbell and published by Kay Cee Publications.
Only five years old, facing the prospect of German U-boats in Canadian waters — and without destroyers for protection — the RCN set about acquiring private yachts for use as patrol and escort vessels. One of these was a 202-foot steam turbine yacht by the name of Winchester. To avoid running up against the Americans’ neutrality, several Canadian yacht owners privately purchased boats from Americans and then traded them to the RCN. This is the manner in which Grisle came to fly the white ensign in 1915.
SY Winchester was one of a family of fast steam yachts used for commuting by P.W. Rouss. She was designed by Cox & Stevens and built by Yarrow along the sleek torpedo boat destroyer lines — which in conjunction with her Parson’s steam turbines could drive her up to 34 knots in good weather.
In an odd quirk of fate, Mr. Rouss commissioned the construction of another yacht named Winchester (the fourth), only to have it pressed into service with the US Navy in 1917 — and she would later see wartime service with the Canadian Navy in 1940 as HMCS Renard. In all, three of the four Winchesters owned by Rouss would see military service with various navies at least once in their life.
Although not a destroyer in the truest sense, having been designated a Torpedo Boat, she was tasked with many of the same escort and patrol duties in Canadian waters as Royal Navy torpedo boat destroyers (those of an earlier vintage than the frontline fleet’s destroyers represented by the M and R classes). In that respect, she could be seen as the precursor of the navy’s destroyer force.
She arrived in Canada and was commissioned the middle of July 1915. After arriving at the Canadian Vickers shipyard in Montreal, she was converted from a luxury yacht to a torpedo boat by the addition of a pair of 12-pounder (3-inch) quick-firing guns and a 14-inch torpedo tube (located aft in place of the former salon/deckhouse). Additionally, care was taken to remove the ship’s fine china and other luxury items, keeping them safely ashore — although the wood fittings and other decor remained, leaving one to wonder how difficult life aboard the ship was in good weather!
Although she saw no U-boat during the war, Grilse was much in demand as an escort for convoy’s arriving and departing Halifax (a major Royal Navy base at the time). By October of 1915 she was patrolling off Cape Breton where she hunted for a reported U-boat in and around Little Bras d’Or Bridge and took part in an abortive U-boat trap off Cape Dauphine. In the winter of 1915–1916 Grilse was loaned to the British Commander-in-Chief North America and West Indies station based in Bermuda. She would spend her time in the Caribbean undertaking anti-submarine patrols out of Jamaica. Her trip south was complicated by her high fuel consumption (3000 gallons — over 11,000 litres — of fuel oil a day at cruising speed) which left her almost out of oil 150 nautical miles out of Bermuda. She had used more than 13,000 gallons of fuel oil in her passage, leaving Grilse to be towed in to Ireland Island Bermuda by the cruiser HMS Cumberland. After several quiet months in fine weather she returned to Canada — again short of fuel and needing to be towed into port.
Her patrols off Cape Breton during 1916 once more showed her lack of fuel economy and so she was pulled from her posting at Sydney, Nova Scotia, to report back to Halifax where she would be reserved for escorting important vessels into and out of the port — with the stipulation that she couldn’t exceed 13 knots, as a means of limiting her oil consumption.
Once again she was loaned to the Royal Navy for the winter, and setting out for Bermuda with extra barrels (some 2,000 gallons) of oil lashed to her upper deck, Grilse departed Halifax December 11th, 1916. She would never complete her passage to the Caribbean. Running into a gale near Sable Island, the former yacht nearly foundered as she was repeatedly swept by green seas. The oil barrels were jettisoned, but several crew members were lost when they were washed overboard. These included one of the signalmen who was attempting to repair the radio antenna damaged by the gale. Later, when one of the engine room skylights was smashed open, the sea poured in — some four feet of water being shipped into the engine room, giving the vessel a 20° list to starboard. Through dogged determination, a long night of bailing, and not a little luck Grilse made it into Shelburne, Nova Scotia on December 14th, with little left in the way of freeboard. In addition to the men washed overboard she had lost 3 lifeboats and a torpedo reload (including the warhead but excluding the gyro).
Refitted and back to sea by May 10th, 1917 she returned to her anti-submarine patrol work, but thankfully would see no further calamities. She was likely laid up during the winter of 1917–1918 with a caretaker crew (her thin steel hull wouldn’t have fared well against thick maritime ice).
Grilse’s one chance to hunt a U-boat came in August 1918 when U-156 torpedoed the tanker Luz Blanca, 35 miles south of the Sambro lightship. When word reached Halifax it was clear a fast torpedo boat like Grilse was needed — however as she was in dock for repairs her replacement on the harbour entrance patrol, the American torpedo boat USS Tigley was dispatched. Despite a dogged search for the submarine, U-156 escaped. Later the same month — once she was out of dockyard hands — Grilse was ordered to test Halifax’s shore defenses. The night of August 19th she quietly sailed past the picket boats and army forts. In passing undetected she showed just how vulnerable the harbour was to German submarines.
The next month U-155 — the former merchant submarine Deutschland — arrived off Halifax and laid eight mines near the Sambro light vessel and another six southeast of Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia on September 17th. One of these broke free of its mooring and was discovered by Grilse and her crew on the 18th. It was promptly destroyed by gunfire — one of the few times Grilse would have fired a shot in anger. Regardless, the armed yacht’s war was winding down.
By the Armistice Grilse saw little use — her thirsty machinery and overall fragility had made her very expensive for upkeep and for the limited local patrols which she had been undertaking. Subsequently she was paid off and an attempt was made to sell her. An initial offer was received from John Simon of Pictou for $1,025, but the Captain of Halifax Dockyard thought it “too absurd for consideration.” Grilse was still with the navy when the ‘true’ destroyers Patriot and Patrician joined the ranks of Canada’s naval vessels in 1920.
Grilse was sold to Solomon Guggenheim in 1922, for $25,000. Upon receipt of the vessel he had her towed to the United States and fitted out as a fast luxury yacht once more. Renaming the yacht Trillola — the same as his estate on Long Island Sound — Guggenheim took her around to major yachting events in the area until 1938. On September 21st of that year she foundered while secured alongside his jetty in Roslyn, Long Island Sound during a hurricane. Guggenheim was apparently in the process of trying to sell her, and so was delighted that he could now collect insurance money on the former Canadian torpedo boat.
Eventually the US Coast Guard demanded that Guggenheim remove her from where she lay and he turned her over to a local salvage firm for no cost. Grilse was still on the yacht register as late as October 1941. By then the former Winchester, ex-Grilse, ex-Trillola had been raised and scrapped.
