USS Williams (DD-108) - As HMCS St. Clair

As HMCS St. Clair

Renamed HMCS St. Clair (I-65)—following the Canadian practice of naming destroyers after Canadian rivers (but with deference to the U.S. origin), her name commemorates the St. Clair River which forms the boundary between Michigan and Ontario—the destroyer was fitted out for convoy escort duties and sailed for the British Isles on 30 November, in company with HMCS St. Croix (ex-McCook, DD-252) and HMCS Niagara (ex-Thatcher, DD-162).

Operating with the Clyde Escort force, St. Clair escorted convoys in and out of the heavily travelled "western approaches" to the British Isles in the spring of 1941. Late in May, when the powerful German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen slipped through the Denmark Straits, the "flush decker" became involved in the intensive and widespread effort to destroy the German dreadnought. Eventually, a British force located and sank Bismarck on 27 May, but not before the tragic loss of the battle cruiser HMS Hood on 24 May. The search for the elusive German battlewagon brought some of the British units dangerously close to exhaustion of their fuel supplies. Two Tribal-class destroyers, HMS Mashona and HMS Tartar, were located by German long-rang bombers soon after Bismarck had slipped beneath the waves and sunk in devastating attacks. St. Clair, near the battle area, became involved in the action when she, too, came under attack. The old destroyer doggedly put up a good defense—shooting down one, and possibly, a second, enemy plane.

St. Clair subsequently joined the Newfoundland Escort Force after this group's establishment in June 1941 and operated on convoy escort missions between Newfoundland and Reykjavík, Iceland, through the end of 1941. St. Clair was assigned to the Western Local Escort Force following repairs at Saint John, New Brunswick, in early 1942, and operated out of Halifax over the next two years, escorting coastwise convoys until withdrawn from this service in 1943 due to her deteriorating condition.

Operating as a submarine depot ship at Halifax until deemed unfit for further duty "in any capacity" in August 1944, St. Clair was used as a fire-fighting and damage control hulk until 1946. Handed over to the War Assets Corporation for disposal, on 6 October 1946, St. Clair was subsequently broken up for scrap.