How the Royal Canadian Navy became a top-three fleet

How did the Royal Canadian Navy at its wartime peak compare with other navies, and how many top fleets belonged to the British Empire?

Canada ranked third by end-of-war tonnage, and adding the Australian, Indian, and New Zealand fleets makes Imperial naval strength much larger than Royal Navy figures alone.

The Royal Canadian Navy ranked third in the world by tonnage at the end of the Second World War, behind the enormous American and British fleets. Australia, India, and even New Zealand also ranked highly enough that several of the world's largest navies belonged to the British Empire. Whether those forces are counted separately or aggregated changes claims about which country possessed the largest navy. Prewar treaty discussions often treated Imperial fleets as part of Britain's power, while wartime comparisons frequently separated them. The Canadian fleet's scale and hard service are presented as underrecognized parts of wartime naval history.