Canada Brock
Rear Admiral Patrick Willet Brock
Patrick Willet Brock is one of the few Canadians to achieve the rank of Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy (not the Royal Canadian Navy).
Known as P.W. Brock officially, Canada Brock unofficially, and Bill to family and friends, P.W.B. was born 30 December 1902 in Kingston Ontario to a prominent Canadian family.
After graduating top of his class at the naval academy in 1920, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy. Due to a lack of ships in Canada, he was assigned to a Royal Navy ship in the Mediterranean as a Royal Canadian Navy midshipman. With the downsizing of the Canadian Navy in 1921, he was forced to transfer to the Royal Navy, where he was nicknamed Canada Brock.
Over the next four decades Brock rose through the ranks to Rear Admiral. Highlights of his career include being at the Halifax Explosion of 1917; midshipman on HMS Vindictive at the China Station in the 1920s during the Chinese Civil War; Executive Officer on HMS Mauritius at the Sicily and D-Day landings; Senior Naval Officer at Schleswig-Holstein in post-war Germany; Captain of the HMS Kenya during the Korean War; and Flag Officer for the Middle East in the 1950s.
Rear Admiral Brock retired in 1958 and became a maritime historian. Well-known in the naval community during his life, he has been largely forgotten since his death in 1988.
You can read a more detailed biography of P.W. Brock, by clicking his Biography link below.
P.W. is not the only notable member of the Brock family. His parents and brothers were significant in their own right. You can read about them by clicking the Family link below.
The P.W. Brock Collection at CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum
Brock was an avid letter writer throughout his life. Fortunately, some of his letters were saved by family members who received them. He also kept journals and diaries that documented his daily life at the Royal Naval Academy and during his naval career. And during his spare time and retirement years, he wrote essays about his experiences and also about maritime history.
When P.W. Brock died in 1988, Thomas Leith (T.L.) Brock inherited some of his brother’s papers and artifacts. T.L. combined those materials with letters that had been saved for decades. In the 1990s, T.L. donated this collection, which is held in the archives of CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum.
