HMS Shearwater (1900)

HMS Shearwater was a Condor-class sloop launched in 1900. She served on the Pacific Station and in 1915 was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy as HMCS Shearwater, serving as a submarine depot ship until 1919. She was sold to the Western Shipping Company in May 1922 and renamed Vedas.

Design
The Condor class was constructed of steel to a design by William White, the Royal Navy Director of Naval Construction. Shearwater was powered by a Thames Iron Works three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engine developing 1400 ihp and driving twin screws.

Sail plan
The class was originally designed and built with barque-rigged sails, although some pictures show ships of the class with a barquentine rig. Condor was lost in a gale during her first commission, and the contemporary gunnery pioneer Admiral Percy Scott ascribes her sinking to the encumbrance of sails, and furthermore believed that her loss finally convinced that Admiralty to abandon sails entirely. All other ships of the class had their sails removed during the first few years of the twentieth century.

Armament
The class was armed with six 4-inch/25pdr (1ton) quick-firing breech loaders and four 3-pounder quick-firing breech loaders. By the time she became a Canadian warship in 1915, two of the 4-inch guns had been removed.

Royal Navy service
Shearwater was commissioned at Chatham 24 October 1901 by Commander C. H. Umfreville, with a complement of 104 officers and men. She left the Nore in early November to relieve the Icarus on the Royal Navy's Pacific Station. The station itself was suspended in 1905, and the facilities at Esquimalt, British Columbia passed to the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries. Shearwater and Algerine remained at Esquimalt, and in 1910 the Naval Service Bill was passed, creating the Royal Canadian Navy. Shearwater recommissioned, still as a Royal Navy vessel, at Esquimalt on 27 November 1912.

Royal Canadian Navy service
Shearwater recommissioned on 8 September 1914 and was transferred in 1915 to the Royal Canadian Navy, becoming HMCS Shearwater. Two of Shearwater's 4-inch guns were taken ashore and used with a shore battery position to defend the Seymour Narrows, while the crew of Shearwater was sent to Halifax to man HMCS Niobe, which was short of trained sailors.

Shearwater was subsequently re-manned to become a submarine tender to the two submarines CC-1 and CC-2. In 1917 Shearwater escorted the two submarines to Halifax, transiting through the Panama Canal. For the remainder of the war, she saw very limited duty as an Royal Canadian Navy support vessel on the Atlantic coast.

Fate
Shearwater was paid off from the Royal Canadian Navy on 13 June 1919. She was sold to the Western Shipping Company in May 1922 and renamed Vedas. Her register was closed in 1937.