One further development of the naval renaissance of the years before 1910 remains to be recorded. It was realized that the projected Naval Service, even if the bill authorizing its existence were to survive the shoals of political hazard, could hardly be created overnight and that it would be difficult to provide, in the time available, a Canadian input of young officers. There was then no naval college and, although Canadians could enlist in the Royal Navy, as many had done, there was no way in which they could do so as representatives of a Canadian service. In this dilemma, anticipating the need for elementary sea training, the CGS Canada was used for the purpose. The Canada was a remarkable little ship, similar to a fast naval sloop of the period, which had been built by Vickers Sons and Maxim, at Barrow-in-Furness, in 1904. Of 200 feet in length, she could steam at 22 knots, was armed with four small quick-firing guns, and carried a complement of 75 officers and men. With a ram bow, she was certainly the most warlike fishery cruiser we ever had, and was the ultimate of a series which included a smaller, but generally similar, vessel the CGS Vigilant built by Polsons of Toronto. These two, which were really small warships in all but name, followed a previous series of fishery cruisers, Constance, Curlew and Petrel, which had been commissioned in 1892.
To the Canada then, the Department looked for a first serious venture into professional sea training. In the winter of 1905, the Canada, with representatives from the crews of other fishery cruisers, commenced a series of instructional cruises and, for some years, exercised with the British fleet on the West Indies station. Among other officers, cadets Beard, Bate, Brodeur, German and Nelles trained in the CGS Canada in the years before the advent of the Naval Service. Two of them, Cadet V. G. Brodeur who is a son of the Hon. L. P. Brodeur, Minister from 1906 to 1911, and Cadet Percy Nelles, rose to flag rank in the Royal Canadian Navy and one of these two, Admiral P. W. Nelles, became also the first Canadian trained officer to command his Service, and the first to rise to the rank of full admiral.
From these small beginnings, hoping for a successful confinement, but by no means sure of the result, a small band of officers in the Marine and Fisheries Service anticipated the birth of the Royal Canadian Navy. They had little to look forward to by way of pay or promotion, or even of continuity of service but, in a day to come, they would see their Navy expand to become the sheet anchor of the allied close escort forces in the convoy battle of the Atlantic.
