HMCS St. Thomas

There has been only one vessel named HMCS St. Thomas in the Royal Canadian Navy.

HMCS St. Thomas (K488)

Laid down as HMS Sandgate Castle, the Castle Class corvette HMCS St. Thomas was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and commissioned at Middlesbrough, Great Britain on 4 May 1944.

In June, HMCS St. Thomas carried out workups at Tobermory, Scotland leaving later that month for Londonderry, Northern Ireland where, in July, she became part of Escort Group C-3. She sailed on 3 August to join ONF.247, her first convoy, and was employed as an ocean escort for the rest of the war.

On 27 December 1944, while escorting HX.327, she sank the German submarine U-877 in the North Atlantic. She left Londonderry for the last time on 11 April 1945, commencing refit on arrival at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 30 April. Following completion of this refit in July, she sailed for the west coast and was paid off at Esquimalt, British Columbia, on 22 November 1945.

In 1946, HMCS St. Thomas was sold to the Union Steamship Company, Vancouver, British Columbia, converted to a coastal passenger vessel, and renamed Camosun. In 1958 she was renamed Chilcotin and, later that year, Yukon Star. After several years of idleness, she was broken up at Tacoma, Washington, USA in 1974.

• Builder: Smith's Dock Co., South Bank-on-Tees, United Kingdom
• Date laid down: June 23, 1943
• Date launched: December 28, 1943
• Date commissioned: May 4, 1944
• Date paid off: November 22, 1945
• Displacement: 1077 tonnes
• Dimensions: 76.7 m x 9.8 m x 3.1 m
• Speed: 16 knots
• Crew: 112
• Armament: one 4-inch (102-mm) gun, six 20-mm (2 x II, 2 x I) guns, one Squid mortar and depth charges

Battle honours

• Atlantic 1944-1945