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On that fateful morning of August 16, four Canadian guns stood between Vancouver Harbor and the unfettered onslaught of a German light cruiser. Stationed at Point Grey was a pair of 60 pounder field artillery pieces, manned by members of the local militia. Militia Headquarters had been rather well aware of the deficiency in regard to the defenses of Vancouver Harbor and had ordered the four large field guns of the Coburg Heavy Battery by rail from Quebec City. As of August 12, a pair of these guns were dug into Point Grey while the other pair remained in Victoria to act as the mobile protective force for Vancouver Island. These weapons could expectedly hurl a 60-pound high explosive or shrapnel projectile just over 10,000 yards and if able to hit a warship, these shells could cause serious damage. The main issue with these weapons was the fact that hitting a moving warship would be nearly impossible as such artillery was dreadfully suited to such a task. Militia gunners were not trained to fire at moving warships while the oscillating gunsights and wheeled carriages of these weapons did not lend themselves to proper fire control. The much more effective other half of the quartet was the pair of 4”/40 naval guns taken from HMS Shearwater and mounted around Siwash Rock. These guns were manned by fresh faced members of the local Naval Reserve and was under the command of Lieutenant Herbert Octavius Mock, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Lieutenant Mock had been a career gunnery officer aboard countless Royal Navy warships over his long career including the late cruiser Rainbow and had previously retired to Victoria to live out the remainder of his life in peace. As with many other retired former Royal Navy officials, he was quickly located and brought back up to assist with the defenses of the coast. It is a testament to his skill and tenacity that the battery and its green crew had been declared operational very shortly after it had been established. Even with this declaration though, the battery had not yet conducted any live fire exercises, only having drilled in sighting, reloading and simulated firing.


The most comprehensive Canadian account of the engagement today can be found inside the memoirs of Johnathan Dunn Hardy, who later became one of British Columbia’s foremost ornithologists in the interwar era. During the events of August 16, Able Seamen Hardy was present with the Siwash Rock Battery was their treetop observer.

“My time in the Navy was unlike most I believe, mainly because I never once set foot on a ship for the short duration it turned out to be. I enlisted with the local Naval Militia shortly after the declaration of war largely because of the patriotic fervor of the time but even then, I did not want to leave British Columbia. All of the lads who enlisted with the Militia would likely be sent overseas eventually and I thought if I got to stay around my home, I could attempt to better continue my studies. Even if I was confined to a ship, the familiar coasts of British Columbia would be a firm comfort to me in such uncertain times. It turned out that myself and some of the other lads from Vancouver had just been given our uniforms from the rapidly emptying storerooms of Esquimalt when we were approached by an officer who subsequently rounded us all up and carted us off to Stanley Park. As we would soon discover, we were chosen to construct and man what would become known as the Siwash Rock Coastal Defense Battery. I had spent a fair amount of time in Stanley Park as a child, so much to the point that I think its beauty was a major cause of my passion of birding and the outdoors. It was only irony that I was assigned to such a place as a young man of 23. Our battery of two 4” naval guns would be the main defense afforded to Vancouver Harbor and due to its vital nature, we received assistance from the Militia in moving the guns to their perch and fortifying the position around them. The loss of the cruiser Rainbow only made this process move faster, I swear if I never see another sandbag for as long as I live, I will be a very happy man. The days of backbreaking labor preparing the battery itself only served to do so much, the area chosen for the battery had a very commanding presence over Burrard Inlet but in exchange, it was dreadfully exposed. Unlike the great concrete structures of Victoria and Esquimalt, our humble battery consisted of a large timber platform sunk into the soil with steel plates on top to give a foundation to bolt the large guns. The best we could hope for was the abundance of sandbags and our hastily dug trenches to protect us from any incoming fire, the poor gun crews would be left to their own devices.

As it would turn out, I was often never using those defenses I helped construct. On one of the rare occasions I was afforded a break from the construction labor, I sat on a nearby stump looking out over Burrard Inlet. Between the sips of my coffee, I was rather fixated on the sight of an Osprey circling far out over the water in search of a meal. I was so fixated that I failed to notice that Lieutenant Mock had approached me from behind and he quickly asked me what I was staring at. I informed him about the bird and after a minute or so of looking, the officer gave me a nod and a chuckle. In his opinion, the very good eyes of a lad like myself should not be wasted passing shell and shot, ever since that day, my station at the battery was now suspended high above in ground squarely at the treetop. A lookout nest had been constructed not even halfway up a mid sized Douglas Fir about 70 feet back from the battery itself, providing the nest with a broad view out over the canopy and the surrounding waters. I had never been afraid of heights, but the hastily constructed lookout position stuck around 60 feet above the ground put the fear of god into me rather quickly. I eventually became accustomed to the position itself, the grand view of the Inlet and the constant company of the local chickadees seeking my hoarded breadcrumbs worked to soften my nerves quite a bit. The morning of August 16 had started like many others. Lieutenant Mock had been woken from his sleep in the early hours by a call on his field telephone, a message regarding a suspicious vessel in the inner waters had brought all defenses up to a heightened state of alert. Soon after I had been roused from my tent, the sound of artillery far off into the distance rocked me out of my sleepy stupor. Cups of hot coffee were passed around as the field telephone rang for the second time and I made my way slowly but surely up the rickety ladder to my post.


I had just settled myself in my post and without a second to think about our predicament, Lieutenant Mock yelled up to me to get ready, we had an enemy warship attempting to push through First Narrows into Vancouver Harbor. Through my spy glass, I could see the waterspouts from our compatriots at Point Grey taking the vessel under fire, although they seemed to be doing more damage to the local fish population than the warship. The vessel itself had already made it far past Point Atkinson Light and was becoming clear to see, it featured three funnels, a front end like a field plow and the ensign of the German Navy flying at her mast. I reckoned she was roughly 8,600 yards out from our position and as I yelled that information downwards, the men below were already preparing the guns to fire. I remember looking down with my hands clamped tight over my ears as the first shots were fired by our battery, the concussion even from my location was awe inspiring. Great flashes of light were accented by a flurry of leaves and the prompt evacuation of any nearby birds from their perches. I had heard from my fellow gunners over supper how the guns worked on principal, they would fire shots on various bearings until they zeroed in on the target, after which they would switch to a rapid flurry of shots to hopefully destroy their opponent. For the short time I knew him, I quickly found Lieutenant Mock was not a man to dwindle on an opportunity. While I will never know for sure what he thought that day, my guess would be that he wished to hopefully drive the warship off of her route and cause her to retreat, otherwise we could have waited for her to close and set an ambush at close range. I am not an officer though, those thoughts were out of my paygrade. The first salvo from our guns landed about 250 yards short of the cruiser, the second salvo came even closer and third salvo straddled her. The fourth salvo sprayed her opposite side with water and by the fifth, it seems we had her. I would guess that the German warship was occupied with the Point Grey battery as it was not until our fourth salvo that they returned fire on us. The salvo from the Germans thankfully landed somewhere off into the trees behind me and the battery, although I distinctly remember hoping that no kids had picked the previous night to camp out in the confines of the park as they frequently did.

As our guns eventually found the range, the intensity of the exchange between both parties quickly increased. With every impact of a German shell nearby, my makeshift position high up in the trees would shift and creek ever more, my only comfort being that perhaps the thick trunk of the fir that I stood suspended from would weather any damage it received. My hearing had become a reverberating mess and I had long stopped covering my ears, much more fixated on the engagement before us. A pair of explosions shredded the tents situated back from the gun battery as my comrades below ran back and forth between the ammunition shed and the guns. The smell of burnt leaves and gunpowder was ever present as more trees and rocks within the area were turned into fine shrapnel by incoming shells. The warship out in the inlet was not coming off from the engagement unscathed though, I watched as one shell burst against the superstructure of the ship and sent a large explosion scattering out over her bow. Another impact sent up a geyser of flame around the funnels, slowly petering off into wisps of smoke. Even with the amount of shells that seemed to impact her all around, she did not seem to slow. It seemed around this point that we have both zeroed in on each other and as the cruiser barreled forward, wildly maneuvering in an attempt to throw off our aim, they finally managed to hit the battery. A great plume of dirt, rock and debris was thrown into the faces of the gun crews as a shell landed a few feet in front of the battery itself, promptly burying itself into the hard rock below but somehow, also failing to detonate in the process. Such luck was short lived as the cruisers withering deluge of fire greatly outweighed our own, they were spitting out four or five shells faster than we could manage to pump out only a pair. The subsequent hits around the battery completely destroyed one of the guns, crumpling its mounting like paper and causing the heavy barrel to slump down onto the ground. I averted my eyes to the carnage below, I would later find out that that hit was responsible for the deaths of a large amount of the gun crew including Lieutenant Mock. The remaining gun fired only a few times more before its view of the rapidly oncoming vessel was obstructed by a substantial amount of fallen trees, rendering it out of action. By 0636 that morning, the warship we would soon know as SMS Leipzig had pierced its way through the First Narrows and started its attack towards the harbor itself.


It seems the Germans were not aware of the situation and continued to pour fire into our general vicinity. Without the blast of our own guns to shield me, I could now hear the cries and pleas of the wounded men below in between the concussive blasts that fell around us. One of these shells must have struck near my lookout point as I felt a sharp pain through the soles of my feet and before I knew it, the platform on which I stood gave way, sending me falling over 60 feet down to the forest floor below. The canopy likely saved my life as a large branch caught me directly in the stomach to dampen my fall, taking the air from my lungs and leaving me gasping on the ground below. The shell fire from the Germans had stopped at this point from what I can remember. In my fall, I managed to break my left arm, dislocate that shoulder and sprain both ankles, alongside a whole host of cuts and bruises. Before me, the remaining men had been rallied and split into two parties. One group frantically sawed away at the nearby foliage obstructing the lone gun while the other helped first shepherd away the wounded to safety and later removed the bodies from what remained of the gun platform. Even with these though, I managed to keep myself together long enough to help the more gravely wounded to safety and begin to treat their wounds while we waited for help to arrive. In the end, we managed to save many lives that day although it does still fill me with a pang of guilt that we did not push off their goal of reaching Vancouver. As we eventually departed towards the nearest hospital, the thought of moving myself and the men potentially into bombardment range again was a dreadful. As you can likely tell, I did manage to survive the coming days although admittedly, the collective ego of the Navy was in taters by this point.

To this day my feet and ankles still do not feel the same as they did before my fall, although that has not stopped me from coming back to Stanley Park over all those years to visit. I was part of the initiative after the war to help rebuild the damage the park took during that battle; it did not feel right to allow such a beautiful place to remain ravaged by war. Those same trees had saved my life once before, it only felt fair that I could show them some kind of respect in turn. I sometimes find myself back at the battery, usually staring back up at the tree I once cradled for dear life in my youth or staring out into the inlet in search of a phantom long passed. So many people have said there was more that could have been done, I even think those same unending thoughts sometimes myself but in the end, we did all that could have been done and we had to accept that. For as bad as the events of that morning were, at least the families of my comrades who passed that day had some closure, I cannot say the same for the countless other sailors we lost that August to both shells and swells up and down the coast. The lads would always complain about the sun beating down on their heads as they filled those sandbags, I can only hope now that the saplings I planted around where the gun platform once stood will help their souls find peace one day."