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Built as an auxiliary police schooner by the Burrard Dry Dock Company, North Vancouver, B.C. Canada for the Canadian Government (Dept. of Justice), Royal Canadian Mounted Police, (RCMP.)
Launched under the name ST ROCHE.
Tonnage 85 net, displacement 323 ton, dim. 104.3 x 24.9 x 11ft., draught 12.6ft., length bpp 90ft.
Powered by one 300 hp. Union diesel.
Ice strengthened.
1928 delivered to the RCMP.

She was special built for the Arctic regions as a supply and detachment ship.
Her diesel engine provided also heat for the well-insulated accommodation. Horizontal and vertical beams in the main hold supported the sides of the ship from the strength of the ice.
Her hull was made of Douglas fir, sheated with Australian ironwood.

28 June 1928 she sailed out from Vancouver for her maiden voyage, wintering that year at Langton Bay, returning to Vancouver the next year in the autumn.
In the 1930s she was transferring sick to the hospitals, maintaining game laws and arbitrating disputes, the crew took also census and compiled statistics. Conveyed children to and from residential schools. Between 1929 and 1939 she made three voyages to the Western Arctic waters. When frozen in the crew made patrols by dog sleds on shore.

In 1940 when Canada was at war she was refitted, and she sailed out in June under command of Sergeant Henry Larsen that year from Vancouver for a voyage through the mostly uncharted Northwest Passage to Halifax.
The first year she came not far, when in September she had reached Walker Bay on Victoria Island, she became icebound till the next year when she got free of the ice in 1941, slowly she proceeded along the northern coast of Canada, but less than two months later she was again frozen in at Pasley Bay near the magnetic pole. Almost a year later she was free again and was taken through the treacherous 29km gorge of Bellot Strait, which separate Somerset Island from Boothia Peninsula.
11 October 1942 she arrived at Halifax. The passage had taken 28 months, but the ST ROCHE was the first vessel to navigate the Northwest Passage from the west to the east.

After a season patrolling the eastern Arctic, she was ordered back to Vancouver via the more Northern Passage, but first was she refitted and a more powerful engine installed, a new deckhouse installed and her structure considerably altered.
22 July 1944 she sailed from Halifax again under Larsen’s command and headed north, the season was not so good; she met heavy fog, blizzards and gales. 04 September she arrived at Holman Island, the southern tip of Prince of Wales Strait. Passed Point Barrow on 24 September and arrived after a passage of 86 days and sailing 7295 miles, on 16 October Vancouver.
1948 The ST ROCH was retired by the RCMP.

In 1950 she sailed again from Vancouver to Halifax but this time via the Panama Canal, becoming the first vessel that circumnavigate the North American continent. After a season supplying the RCMP outpost on the Hudson Bay, she was laid up till 1954 She returned from Halifax again via the Panama Canal and in 1954 she was sold to the city of Vancouver, and permanently berthed at the Maritime Museum at Vancouver.
1958 Restored to her 1928 appearance, and hauled ashore
1962 ST ROCHE declared a national historic side.
1966 Got a permanent indoor home.
Between 1967 and 1974 was she restored to her 1944 appearance by Park Canada.
2005 Still there.

Canada 1978 14c sg 932.

Marine News 1986/333. Many web-sites.