Her Majesty's Canadian Ship (HMCS) is the suffix applied to surface ships in the Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Joint Operations Command.
The HMCS Rainbow was the Royal Canadian Navy's first ship. It was an Apollo-class cruiser built for Great Britain's Royal Navy. It launched in 1891 as HMS Rainbow and entered service in 1893. She was transferred to the RCN in 1910 and scrapped in 1920. It was purchased to be used as a training ship alongside the HMCS Niobe purchased from the British Admiralty.
After commissioning, it was assigned to the west coast of Canada and was the first Canadian ship to sail around South America by the Strait of Magellan. She arrived in Esquimalt, BC on November 7, 1910. Her service was quiet on the west coast with ceremonial duties, training, and coastal fisheries patrol, most notably apprehending the American fishing schooner Edrie in February 1913 for illegal fishing.
In July 1914, it was sent to Vancouver to settle the intervene in the international incident with the Komagata Maru, a Japanese merchant ship challenging Canada's immigration law preventing immigration from South Asia, even though the Sikh immigrants from India were British subjects.
During the First World War, it was initially the largest armed ship the Allies had in the western Pacific Ocean and was ordered to find and engage ships of the Imperial German Navy in the Pacific Ocean; particularly the SMS Leipzig and SMS Nurnberg. She never encountered these ships but missed Leipzig by only a day at San Francisco. She was the only source of protection for shipping in western North America until the arrival of a Japanese armoured cruiser Izumo.
In 1916 and early 1917, it was used to transport $140,000,000 in Russian gold bullion (1917 Canadian dollar value) between Esquimalt and Vancouver. It was placed in trust with Canada by the Russian government for protection due to the impending Russian revolution.
The Rainbow was decommissioned and de-activated on May 8, 1917 and her crew was sent to the east coast for the fight against the German U-boats. On July 5 she was recommissioned as a depot ship until June 1, 1920 when she was sold for scrap to a Seattle shipbroker.
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