Saguenay Song, The

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, the Saguenay sailed through the blue Caribbean, The Saguenay sailed o'er the old Spanish main." "We'll zig and we'll zag al over the ocean, We'll zig and we'll zag all over the sea." But eventually a torpedo hits her. The ship manages to make it home
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1979 (Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
KEYWORDS: ship war
FOUND IN: Canada
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, p. 38, "The Saguenay Song" (tune)
Roud #24983
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "We'll Rant and We'll Roar" (tune) and references there
cf. "The Maple Leaf Squadron" (tune and some lyrics)
NOTES [653 words]: Canada, during the years prior to World War II, did not have the ability to build a ship larger than a corvette, so the handful of major units in her fleet were built in Britain. Among these were the Saguenay and the Skeena, which were members of the "A" class of British destroyers, which as built in 1930-1931 were 1350 tons, with four 4.7" guns, eight torpedo tubes, and a speed of 35 knots. Because they used relatively low-pressure boilers, they did not use their tonnage particularly effectively and had low habitability (Worth, p. 109). Their peacetime complement was 138. The two sisters differed slightly from the standard "A" class in that they were strengthened to deal with sailing in ice (Whitley, p. 25); Bercuson, p. 10, reports that they also differed from the standard in not being fitted with ASDIC ("Sonar").
The two sisters were the first new destroyers ever ordered by Canada (Milner, p. 66), although they had taken over a few old ships and would eventually acquire more. Macpherson, p. 11, calls Saguenay "The first made-to-order RCN [Royal CanadianNavy] warship," which helps explain why she and Skeena were chosen to attend King George VI's coronation review in 1936 (Macpherson, p. 13). The two sisters were among the largest vessels in Canada's navy when the war came, and were immediately put to work escorting convoys (Saguenary in fact escorted the very first convoy from Halixax, HX1; Milner, p. 81), then in 1940 became part of Escort Group C3 (for which see also "Beneath the Barber Pole"). It was while escorting convoy HG47 from Gibraltar that the Saguenay was torpedoed in 1940. She lost 21 men in the attack (Bercuson, p. 30). She survived and was repaired, but continued to be a hard luck ship; a storm in January 1942 almost destroyed her (Macpherson, p. 16). "Three months later she was back at sea. She became a regular sight on the 'Derry-Newfie' convoy run, easily identifiable by her scarred hull and brightly marked funnel that distinguished her as one of the early members of the famous 'Barber Pole Brigade.' She was affectionately known as 'Old Sag.'"
Still her luck was bad. She collided with the SS Azara off Newfoundland on November 15, 1942 and was badly damaged when her depth charges exploded. (Whitley, p. 25). Again she survived (according to Macpherson, p. 16, Azara, which he calls Azra, did not), but she was never fully repaired, being converted to the training ship Cornwallis (McKee/Darlington, p. 250). She was sold off for scrapping in 1945 (Whitley, p. 25).
This song obviously refers to the first time she was damaged, by the submarine Argo. Milner, p. 88, describes the incident as follows:
"On 1 December [1940], lookouts on Saguenay spotted the [Italian] submarine Argo lining up for a shot at convoy HG 37, 300 miles west of Ireland. Quick action from Saguenay drove the submarine down, just as a single torpedo struck the forward portion of the ship. As Saguenay's crew fought the fires, tended the wounded, and secured forward bulkheads, the bow of the ship -- shattered by the blast and seawater -- fell off. It took a commendable act of seamanship by Commander Gus Miles and his crew to get Saguenay home.... She was the first RCN [Royal Canadian Navy] ship damaged by enemy action."
Milner's photo insert has three photos of the Saguenay, one of them taken during her construction. Macpherson, p. 11 shows her in 1931, when new, and in the mid-1930s; p. 12 has a 1934 detail photo; p. 13 shows her in 1939 and 1940; p. 14 shows her in 1941 and 1942 as various changes were made in her; p. 15 has two photos after the 1942 loss of her stern; p. 16 has two photos of her after she was used for training. P. 17 has a weekly summary of her war service. PP. 98-99 has a diagram of a different member of her class as originally built. Foster, pp. 39-40, has a large photo of her and a smaller one of Skeena. - RBW
Bibliography

Bercuson: David J. Bercuson, Maple Leaf Against the Axis: Canada's Second World War, 1995 (I use the 2004 Red Deer Press edition)
Foster: J. A. Foster, Heart of Oak: A Pictorial History of the Royal Canadian Navy, with a Foreword by Rear Admiral W. M. Landymore, Methuen, 1985
Macpherson: Ken Macpherson, The River Class Destroyers of the Royal Canadian Navy, VCharles J. Musson, 1985
McKee/Darlington: Fraser McKee and Robert Darlington, The Canadian Naval Chronicle, 1939-1945, Vanwell Publishing Limited, 1996
Milner: Marc Milner, Canada's Navy: The First Century, University of Toronto Press, 1999
Whitley: M. J. Whitley, Destroyer of World War II: An International Encyclopedia, Naval Institute Press, 1988
Worth: Richard Worth, Fleets of World War II, Da Capo, 2001

Last updated in version 5.1
File: Hopk038

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography