St. Roch

Type

Schooner

Period

20th Century

Nation

Canada

Overview: St. Roch was a wooden RCMP Arctic supply and patrol schooner, famous as the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage from west to east and later the first ship to circumnavigate North America. She is preserved as a National Historic Site at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, making her one of Canada's best-known historic small ships for modelers. Specifications: The wooden hull was built by Burrard Dry Dock Co. in North Vancouver and launched 7 May 1928, with a length of 104 ft 3 in, beam of 24 ft 9 in, draft around 11-12.5 ft, and a displacement of 323 long tons. She was rigged as a two-masted auxiliary schooner (later reconfigured toward a ketch-like layout) and originally fitted with a 150 hp diesel engine, later upgraded to 300 hp along with a much larger deckhouse during her 1944 refit at Dartmouth, N.S. She was built mainly of thick Douglas fir planking sheathed in hard Australian eucalyptus "ironbark," with an interior hull reinforced by heavy beams to withstand ice pressure, and was reportedly designed by Tom Halliday based on Roald Amundsen's polar ship Maud. Service History: Launched to carry supplies to RCMP detachments along the Arctic coast, St. Roch served from 1928 to 1954, spending long stretches frozen in Arctic ice — including two consecutive winters during her famous 1940-42 west-to-east Northwest Passage transit under Sergeant (later Superintendent) Henry Larsen. In 1944 she repeated the passage east-to-west in a single season of only 86 days, and in 1950 she completed a full circumnavigation of North America via the Panama Canal. Notable Facts: Lloyd's Register (1931) described her as a wooden, treenail-fastened auxiliary schooner classed A1, and her skipper Henry Larsen reportedly called her "an ugly duckling" for her rounded, egg-shaped hull — a design that helped her survive ice pressure rather than being crushed by it. She has been a museum ship and National Historic Site since being designated in 1962, dry-docked in a purpose-built A-frame structure at Vancouver's Kitsilano Point. In 2000, a modern RCMP vessel was temporarily renamed St. Roch II to retrace her historic 1950 circumnavigation voyage as a fundraiser for the original ship's preservation.