HMCS Bittersweet
There has been only one vessel named Bittersweet in the Royal Canadian Navy.
HMCS Bittersweet (K182) / Flower-class Corvette
Built at Sorel, QC, for the Royal Navy, Bittersweet was towed to Liverpool, NS for completion so as not to be icebound. She was commissioned as HMS Bittersweet at Halifax, NS on 23 January 1941, and on 5 March left with convoy HX.113 for the Tyne. There, from 1 April to 6 June, the finishing touches were carried out, during which she was commissioned into the RCN on 15 May 1941. After working up at Tobermory she left for Iceland on 27 June, having been assigned to Newfoundland Command.
She was continuously employed as an ocean escort until 31 December 1941 when she arrived at Charleston, SC, for refit including fo’c’s’le extension, resuming her duties in March. Bittersweet served with EG C-5 and C-3 until October 1943, one of her most perilous convoys being ONS.192, which lost seven ships.
She underwent a refit at Baltimore, MD, from October to November 1943, then proceeded to Pictou to work up. She then resumed her convoy duties, leaving Londonderry, UK late in October 1944 to join her last convoy, ON.262. Upon arriving in Canada she went to Pictou to commence a refit that was completed at Halifax, NS on 10 February 1945. She was then assigned briefly to Halifax Force before transferring in April to Sydney Force, with which she remained until the end of the war. She was returned to the RN at Aberdeen on 22 June 1945 and broken up at Charlestown, Fife in 1950.
- Builder: Marine Industries Ltd., Sorel, QC
- Date laid down: 17 April 1940
- Date launched: 12 September 1940
- Date commissioned in the RN: 15 March 1941
- Date commissioned in the RCN: 15 May 1941
- Fo’c’s’le extension completed: Charleston, SC, March 1942
- Date paid off: 22 June 1945
- Displacement: 965.2 tonnes
- Dimensions: 62.5 m x 10.1 m x 3.5 m
- Speed: 16 knots
- Crew: 85
- Armament: one 4-inch, one 2-pdr., two 20-mm, Hedgehog
Battle honours:
- Atlantic 1941-45
- Gulf of St. Lawrence 1944