Although the Battle of Britain had been lost by October, 1940, Germany continued to pressure Great Britain. While the aerial bombardments persisted, the German navy intensified its campaign of submarine warfare against the Allied naval convoys, which endeavoured to supply a besieged Britain.

Under Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of U-boats (submarines), the German navy employed the "wolf pack" strategy of attack. German wolf packs of submarines were to be stationed at right angles to known Allied convoy lanes in the North Atlantic. The first U-boat captain to spot the target was to radio headquarters, and then shadow the convoy until the remaining U-boats could zero in ...

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Bruce Menzies and Andy Kaija were on the asdic. "Blood and fear was running through your body at the same timeout wrote Menzies. Then you got down to working out the route. Orders were coming fast."

Waskesiu's Chief Engineer was Lt. Fred "popeye" Rennie. The 48-year-old had bolted from his bunk at the just sound of Action Stations. Upon ascertaining that the engine room was in good order, Rennie made his way to the wardroom. As the deadly cat-and-mouse game proceeded over the following hours, Rennie settled into his own game of solitaire.

At 1500 yards, contact was regained. The target was reassessed as moderately deep-around 300 feet. LCdr Fraser ordered a ten-charge attack ...

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It was February 24, 1944, a dark night, and HMCS Waskesiu was on the seventeenth day out from Londonderry on her anti-submarine run in the mid Atlantic Ocean. Her captain, Lt.-Cdr. James Fraser, had been in command for only two days. Shortly after 2:00 AM, the ASDIC crew picked up a possible submarine contact. German submarine U-257 had surfaced to send a message and to receive a weather report. Waskesiu locked onto the submarine and began tracking it.

The commanding officer ordered a Hedgehog attack (little torpedoes that were dispatched twenty-five at a time and exploded almost simultaneously once one of them hit something) but they missed their target. A flare was dropped over the stern of the ship. ASDIC contact had been lost.

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The twenty-third of May 1941, the day that the first flotilla of corvettes left Halifax for St John's, marks an important turning point in the RCN's use of its expansion fleet. Certainly, the first escorts to arrive from Canada were inexperienced in the type of work which lay before them. The corvettes themselves - Agazssiz, Alberni, Chambly, Cobalt, Collingwood, Orillia, and Wetaskiwin - were among the first to commission into the RCN and represented the disposable strength of the east-coast command. All of the ships had been worked up from scratch with new crews, and five of their commanding officers were naval reservists (RCNR), that is, professional seamen. One of the escorts, Wetaskiwin, was commanded by a lieutenant commander, Guy Windeyer, RCN, and another (Chambly) was under the charge of the group's commander and the Senior Officer, Canadian Corvettes, Commander J.D. Prentice, RCN.

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