The St. Roch was the first ship to successfully transit the Northwest Passage from west to east and the first to ship to circumnavigate the North American continent. Today she rests stately and quietly in permanent dry dock at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. It is a fitting-resting place, for this is her home, the place where she was built in 1928. Designed as an arctic supply and patrol vessel for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, she was constructed of thick Douglas fir, sheathed on the outside with one of the hardest woods known, Australian "iron bark.” Her interior hull is reinforced with heavy beams to withstand ice pressure. She was originally rigged as a 31.7-meter schooner with a 7.6-meter beam, with an auxiliary 112 kW diesel engine.

Seeing her today, resting so calmly at the museum, one would never guess that the little vessel achieved some of the greatest feats in maritime history! For 26 years, her summers were spent picking her way through treacherous uncharted coastal waters strewn with hidden reefs and fast moving ice floes. Countless winters were spent in the icy clutches of the harsh Arctic winter.

In 1944, an extensive refit in Halifax gave her a much larger and improved deckhouse and a stronger 224 kW engine. Her masts and rigging were altered to that of a ketch. If you are lucky enough to visit the museum, this is the current arrangement you will see.

By seaman’s standards, the St. Roch was "an ugly duckling," but the rounded hull that made it rock and roll so violently in heavy seas also saved the ship on many occasions from being caught in the grip of colliding ice floes. On different occasions the ship literally “popped” out of the ice when the pressure was too great. St. Roch was ideal for the job she had to do.