HMCS Margaret


 HMCS Margaret during World War I


Launched in early 1914 by Thornycroft at Woolston, England, HMCS Margaret was initially built for the Canadian Customs Preventive Service—the first vessel designed specifically for customs patrol duties. With a reinforced hull for ice resistance and a cruising range of 4,000 miles, she was a formidable presence on Canada’s maritime frontier. Just days before the outbreak of World War I, Margaret was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy and commissioned on 3 February 1915. Armed with two modern 6-pounder Vickers guns, she joined a small fleet of patrol vessels tasked with escort duties and coastal defence along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Margaret was present in Halifax Harbour during the Halifax Explosion of 1917, sustaining only minor damage amid the devastation.

After the war, Margaret was returned to the Customs Preventive Service in 1919 and resumed her peacetime patrols, now focused on intercepting smugglers during the height of American Prohibition. The ship was converted from using coal to oil in 1925 and rearmed with a single six-pounder and seventeen rifles; she became a key player in anti-rum-running operations. In 1932, the CPS was absorbed into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Margaret was sold to the Brazilian state of São Paulo, renamed Ruth during the Constitutionalist Revolution. Later confiscated and renamed Rio Branco, she served as a hydrographic survey ship and coastal escort for the Brazilian Navy, continuing her long and varied career until being discarded around 1958.


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