Auxiliary Minesweeper HMCS Venosta

J A Foster, Heart of Oak, Methuen, 1985

The Venosta was built as a steam trawler in Scotland in 1917 and served as a minesweeper in the Royal Navy during World War 1. During the 1920s she fished out of Halifax where she played a bit part on the story of insulin, providing monkfish pancreatic islet organs for insulin research in Toronto. 

 At the beginning of the war, the navy was desperate for ships, she was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy as a boom gate vessel and auxiliary minesweeper at Halifax. Her service was short, she was decommissioned on 22 January 1942. Sold postwar, she went back to work as a trawler and went through several owners. She was scrapped in 1972.