2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the so-called Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars. By anyone’s measure, that’s a long time ago, all of five generations as measured in human life terms. So, one might think, by now we’d have laid it to rest in our history books.
This is precisely why we have Remembrance Day. So that we don’t just turn the page and move on. The fact is, the First World War is still with us, in a vicarious sense, coming up frequently in the news media each year — so much for the dust bin of history.
One of these revisits to the First World War was a report that appeared in the Citizen just two months ago: "WWI hero has building named in his honour" was prompted by the Department of National Defence having recognized Duncan’s Lt. William McKinstry Maitland-Dougall with a plaque and by naming Building D85, HMC Dockyard, for the Duncan naval officer who, aged 22, was the youngest member of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve to take command of a submarine.
The dedication ceremony “recognizes the impact he’s had on the Canadian Submarine Service history,” said Capt. Alex Kooiman, CSF Commander, and “is a reminder of the importance of carrying our history with us as we look forward to an exciting future for Canada’s Submarine Force.”
William (as is his brother Hamish) is honoured locally on the Duncan Cenotaph and at St. Peter’s, Quamichan, as well as on the Victoria Memorial in Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery. At St. Peter’s, overlooking Tzouhalem Road, a large granite boulder commemorates the Anglican church’s war dead, thanks to church stalwart Carlton Stone of Hillcrest Lumber fame, and C.G. Palmer, both of whom wanted a ‘natural’ marker. The appropriately named Stone and J. Gravelle found this boulder, estimated to weigh 11 tons, a mile distant in a field beside Maple Bay Road. It took volunteers four days to roll it onto a sleigh. Then, with four horses helped by men and women using block and tackle, it was inched along, cross-country, over six days of herculean effort. Four hundred and fifty people attended its August 1919 dedication to St. Peter’s 48 casualties of the First World War. Ten more from the Second World War have since been added.
William McKinstry Maitland-Dougall and Hamish Kinnear Maitland-Dougall, the sons of government agent and magistrate James Maitland-Dougall, were so eager to serve King and Country that their mother, Winnifred, falsified their papers because they were under age. “Billy,” the elder, with an admiral for a grandfather and a cousin serving in the Royal Navy, chose the RCN Volunteer Reserve. Hamish joined the army and was soon sent to England with the 102nd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. After a brief reunion with brother Bill at a great-aunt’s, Lance Corporal Hamish embarked for France. On April 9, 1917, Easter Monday, and within five days of his 20th birthday, he went missing in action at Vimy Ridge. Because he has no known grave his name is one of the thousands on the Vimy War Memorial.
William had already distinguished himself by volunteering for the new submarine service, graduating at the head of the first Royal Canadian Navy class to attend the Royal Naval College at Halifax. He was assigned to HMCS Niobe, one of two former and obsolete British cruisers that constituted the RCN at that time. When British Columbia purchased two submarines from an American shipyard and donated them to the Dominion Government, Midshipman Maitland-Dougall helped to make the C1 and C2 seaworthy. After crossing the Atlantic by submarine, he was assigned to shore patrol. By September 1917, an acting lieutenant at 22, he was commanding his own submarine, the D3, the first RCNVR officer to command a British warship.
The English Channel was a dangerous place for submarines. Twice, the D3 had been mistakenly attacked by Allied surface ships that took all submarines to be German U-boats. On March 12, 1918, while cruising off the French coast, Maitland-Dougall’s craft was sighted by a French airship. As it swept down on the suspected U-boat, the D3 fired a volley of rockets streaming red smoke. This was the newly prescribed Royal Navy identification procedure. But no one had informed the French airmen who also were blinded by the sun’s reflection off the waves that obscured the D3’s insignia. All they knew was that they had been ‘fired upon,’ and they proceeded to attack.
Too late, Maitland-Dougall realized their intention and ordered a crash-dive. He was just beneath the waves when the first bombs detonated, smashing the D3’s hull. From overhead, the airmen watched her broach the surface then plunge from view, leaving only four survivors among the debris. They dropped lifebelts to them then returned to base to report. A torpedo boat sent to rescue the survivors found no trace of them and, three days later, the D3’s 29-man company, including Lieutenant William Maitland-Dougall, were officially posted as missing and presumed lost. He was just two days short of his 23rd birthday.
At the subsequent inquiry, it was confirmed that the D3 was the victim of mistaken identification and miscommunication, the French not having been informed of the submarine being assigned to their waters, nor that, henceforth, British submarines would identify themselves by rockets rather than a flashing light. No fault was found against Maitland-Dougall for having remained on the surface while the airship approached because, upon seeing that it was French, he’d had no reason to submerge. Nor had he reason to think that the airship’s crew wouldn’t recognize his signal. Ironically, the D3 has gone down in history as the first submarine to be sunk by aerial bombs.
His father, it’s said, never got over the loss of his sons. Virulently patriotic Mother Winnifred supposedly mourned the fact she had only two sons to offer up to the Empire. She had a brass memorial plaque installed in St. Peter’s and would sit beneath it during services. She also, to give her her just due, was a founding member of Duncan’s King’s Daughters’ Hospital.
