Operation Fish
World War II evacuation of British wealth from the United Kingdom to Canada
Operation Fish was the relocation of British money and gold ingots from the United Kingdom to Canada for safekeeping during the Second World War. It was the largest known movement of physical wealth in history.
Naming
The operation was named after fish as the cargo (gold) that was supplied to the Canadians for safekeeping was labelled as 'fish', intended to disguise the transfer of wealth.
Background
In September 1939, the British government decreed that all people living in the UK had to declare their securities with the Treasury. Even before Operation Fish, convoys had been sent with gold and money worth millions of pounds to purchase weapons from the United States. One such run involved Commodore Augustus Agar and his ship, the light cruiser HMS Emerald. At 23:18 on 3 October 1939, Emerald dropped anchor in Plymouth, England. A short time later, Agar was briefed by Rear Admiral Lancelot Holland on his mission. The written instructions are below.
Two million pounds in gold bars [GBP97,000,000 in 2025] is to be embarked in each ship to Halifax.
“Operation Fish” enters the record as world War II evacuation of British wealth from the United Kingdom to Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Operation, Fish and World can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Operation Fish” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Operation, Fish and World provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16836984. Authority coordinates are 45.500, -73.570. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Operation Fish” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.