A Fine Collection of Awards to the Canadian Forces

Four: Engine Room Artificer J. E. S. Brennan, Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, who was among those lost when H.M.C.S. St. Croix was torpedoed by the U-305 in September 1943

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Canadian Voluntary Service Medal 1939-45, with overseas clasp; War Medal 1939-45, silver, in their card boxes of issue, together with the recipient’s Canadian Memorial Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse officially inscribed, ‘J. E. S. Brennan, E.R.A. 3rd Cl, R.C.N.V.R.’, extremely fine (5) £250-300

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of Awards to the Canadian Forces.

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James Edward Brennan was born in Aylesford, King’s County, Nova Scotia, on 31 March 1913 A Factory Mechanic by trade, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in May 1940.

Having then attended assorted training establishments, and served in H.M.C.S. Cartier, an armed coastal patrol vessel, from September 1940 to March 1941, and again in the period May-July 1941, he enjoyed further seagoing appointments in H.M.C.S. Annapolis, an ex-U.S.N. Town Class destroyer, and in the corvette H.M.C.S. Prescott.

Then in May 1942, he removed to another ex-U.S.N. destroyer, H.M.C.S. St. Croix. Commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Andrew Dobson, D.S.C., St. Croix carried out a successful depth-charge action against the U-90 in the North Atlantic on 24 July.

Brennan was also present in her during the course of convoy ON-127, when she picked up survivors from the torpedoed tanker Empire Oil and safely delivered them to St. John’s on 15 September 1942. While in March 1943, St. Croix contributed to the destruction of the U-87 west of Leixoes on the 4th.

Having then rescued further survivors in another convoy - from the Norwegian merchantman Ingerfire - on 12 April 1943, St. Croix became one of the first victims of the recently developed Gnat acoustic torpedo, delivered by the U-305 south of Iceland on the 20 September - a second hit sent the destroyer to the bottom in three minutes, Brennan and Lieutenant-Commander Dobson being among those lost. Of the five officers and 76 men later picked up by the British destroyer Itchen, only one - Stoker W. A. Fisher - survived the latter’s sinking by the U-666 on the following day.

The son of Herman and Mable Brennan, and the husband of Florence Brennan of Kingston, Nova Scotia, he was 30 years of age and has no known grave, being commemorated on the Halifax Memorial; sold with copied service papers, and a copy of Deadly Seas - The Duel between the St. Croix and the U-305 in the Battle of the Atlantic, by David J. Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig.