Hundreds gathered at Dieppe Park on Windsor's riverfront Sunday to honour Canadian Forces for their sacrifices made during the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Battle of the Atlantic began on Sept. 3, 1939, when the Montreal-bound passenger ship SS Athenia was sunk by a German submarine west of Ireland, killing 188 people, including four Canadians.

"All the time I was at sea, it was convoy, convoy, convoy!" says Raymond John Crough.

Crough, now 90 years old, was a torpedo-man during the Battle of the Atlantic.

"I didn't want to go to the Army because they are in mud holes and the Air Force, they're are way up there. No thanks, I said, I'll stay in the Navy," says Crough.

"You sympathize with the way they lived because the ships we live on now are much different then what they were then," says Gary Fairhorn of the Royal Canadian Navy Association.

By the time the war was over, more than 3,000 sailors and merchant seamen had lost their lives delivering supplies across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain.

When the battle began, Canada's navy had only 13 ships, including a half dozen destroyers.

But the Canadian navy fleet grew to 373 fighting vessels in the six years that followed, making it the world's third largest.