In May 1940 Revenge accidentally rammed and sank HMCS Ypres, a Canadian Battle-class trawler serving as a boom-defense vessel at Halifax. No lives were lost, allowing the incident to pass into service humor rather than tragedy. On later visits, crews of the harbor gate ships staged exaggerated abandon-ship movements as the battleship approached. The anecdote offers a compact view of how sailors turned an embarrassing collision into a shared ritual between British and Canadian crews.
Notable Point · 1:09:59-1:10:38
The HMCS Ypres ramming became a Halifax joke
An accidental collision with the boom-defense trawler HMCS Ypres produced no deaths and became a recurring piece of harbor humor.