BOOK REVIEWS

Kenneth J. Banks. Chasing Empire Across the which mariners considered that they had left Sea: Communications and the State in the 'European' for 'American' waters [70], or the French Atlantic, 1713-1763. Montreal and dissection of merchant networks and their links Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, with state-related patronage structures. www.mqup.ca, 2002. xxii + 322 pp., tables, Depending as it does on pamstaking notes, appendices, index. $65, cloth; ISBN reconstruction from scattered evidence, this kind 0-7735-2444-4. of analysis represents a considerable achievement. Banks also offers innovative Kenneth Banks's book is a welcome addition to discussion of distinctive elements of the role of studies in North Atlantic history and the history ceremony and ritual in the French colonies, in of France overseas. Banks rightly notes that a contexts ranging from the celebration of royal variety of 'Atlantics' existed during the births to the punishment of criminals and the eighteenth century [6-7]. The British Atlantic has repression of slaves. At a more general level, the received disproportionate attention from study succeeds in its primary interpretive task. historians, notably in analyses that relate Defining the characteristics of the French overseas activity to communications and state Atlantic that might have formed the basis for a formation. Banks's work is a sophisticated solid French imperial identity to emerge - treatment of the French Atlantic in these principally including the continuous operation of contexts, and the patterns it reveals are important the Ministry of Marine within the context of an and distinctive. authoritarian state, the linguistic ascendancy of The central paradox that Banks Parisian French, merchant and religious identifies is the absence, in the minds of both networks, the firm establishment of legal codes, contemporaries and many later scholars, of any and a willingness to negotiate alliances with integrated sense of a French transatlantic empire aboriginal inhabitants - Banks also effectively during the eighteenth century, despite the brings out the disparate and internally incoherent existence of what became known as the vieilles colonial configurations which emerged in spite colonies. The colonies on which this study of these factors. In the end, he argues, "France's concentrates are Canada (defined accurately in far-flung colonial possessions offered too many its eighteenth-century sense as referring to the challenges to the state and its control over colony centred in the St. Lawrence valley), the communications". [218] French Windward Islands (primarily Weaknesses exist in this study, though Guadeloupe and Martinique), and Louisiana. they tend to be specific rather than general. Mentioned for comparison, but not analysed in Towards the more general end of the scale, detail, are other colonies such as Ile Royale and greater attention might have been given to Saint-Domingue. The overall interpretive thrust aboriginal-French diplomacy, which is is to explain the failure of the French state, conspicuously prefigured at the outset but despite its vigour in France itself, to impose a receives relatively little hard analysis. In Canada social and cultural order on its transatlantic especially, the fundamental vulnerability of the colonies that would have justified then- French vis-à-vis powerful aboriginal neighbours conceptualization as an empire. might usefully have been explored as an The strengths of Banks's work are illustration of the interdependence of aboriginal, evident at more than one level. This is a useful colonial, and imperial worlds. More specifically, study of the detailed operation of French the first of the substantive chapters - "The Rise transatlantic networks, in such forms as minute of the French Atlantic to 1763" - is subject to delineations of ocean routes and the points at certain of the characteristic quibbles that

59 60 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord syntheses attract. In matters of detail, for General Richard Montgomery and Colonel example, the reference to "the loss of the Quebec Benedict Arnold, they stormed into Quebec late post and Acadia to Scottish Protestant pirates in 1775. Their campaign struggled through the between 1629-1632" [18] conflates diverse winter before they withdrew to posts along Lake elements of a complex episode, while the Champlain the following spring. Knowing that deportation of the Acadians many years later and the British were planning to launch an attack the role of Nova Scotia Governor (but never from Quebec, the Americans began building a General) Charles Lawrence in naval force to defend their position. "American-controlled Acadia" is also The Philadelphia was one of the over-simplified. [40] An interpretive issue is the vessels built in 1776 as part of the American short shrift that the sixteenth century receives in flotilla. It was a gunboat or gondola (gundaloe, this chapter. Arguably, the origins of French gun'low, gundeloe were various forms of the transatlantic merchant networks and certain term), one of eight, flat-bottomed craft built in a facets of elite rivalry might effectively have been dockyard at the southern extreme of Lake sought in the period prior to when the chapter Champlain at Skenesborough, (now Whitehall), hits its stride in 1600. Finally, while the study's New York. The Philadelphia measured about 53 conclusion presents a cogent analysis of the feet by 15 feet with a rail-to-bottom dimension of central issues outlined above, it also extends into 4 feet; fully loaded, it probably drew less than a comparison of twenty-first century Louisiana, two feet of water. It was powered by sweeps and Martinique-Guadeloupe and Quebec which some a simple square rig on a single mast, and for readers may find strained. armament carried a 12-pdr. gun in the bow and Yet none of this seriously dilutes the one 9-pdr aft on each side, as well as a number strength of a study that can justifiably stand on of swivel guns. The complement consisted of 45 the quality of the research and analysis that officers and men who somehow managed to underpin its conclusions. That the French state's subsist in this crowded, open boat with nothing "chase for empire left colonial societies stranded to protect them from the weather but a temporary and as divided from the metropolis as they were awning. from one another" [221] is a compelling In a clear and concise manner, well inference from evidence ably marshaled and supported by documentation, John Bratten presented. describes the building of the Philadelphia, the seven other gondolas and four galleys, and the John G. Reid outfitting of the other small vessels that Halifax, Nova Scotia eventually formed the American flotilla. Another strength of the book is that Bratten devotes John R. Bratten. The Gondola Philadelphia and nearly as much attention to the construction of the Battle of Lake Champlain. College Station, the British squadron on the Richelieu River and Texas: Texas A&M University Press, contrasts it with the American program. The two www.tamu.edu, 2002. 235 pp., figures, tables, forces met on 11 October, 1776 in Valcour Bay. photographs, notes, glossary, appendix, biblio• During the indecisive battle the Philadelphia graphy, index. US$34.95, cloth; ISBN sank, having been holed by British shot. Arnold 1-58544-147-3. commanded the American force and escaped past the British in the night, although his vessels The Lake Champlain valley frequently saw were eventually either destroyed or captured. invasion forces march its length and paddle its Significantly, however, the presence of Arnold's waters, one of the periods being the American flotilla delayed British plans and prevented them War of Independence, 1775-1783. Rebel forces from executing their campaign until the were the first to use the route when, under Major following year, by which time rebel forces were Book Reviews 61

strong enough to win the victory at Saratoga. Frank Cass Publishers, www.frankcass.com, The story of the Philadelphia's origins 2000. xxvii+198 pp., photographs, maps, plans, and brief career takes up the first 75 pages of this appendices, index. US $ 54.50, cloth; ISBN 0- book, after which Bratten describes its salvage 7146-5119-2. and presentation to the public, its structure and contents, crew and replica. Lorenzo E. Hagglund The release of the official British history of the recovered the gondola in August 1935 using Norwegian naval operations of the Second methods that are considered crude by modern World War provides fascinating reading as a tale archeological standards, but which reaped a of near-misses, bravery and blunders. It is clear spectacular harvest from the lake. Hagglund's that, with a little more daring, planning and luck, intention was to have the Smithsonian Institution the British with their French and Norwegian take ownership of the Philadelphia immediately, allies could have, at least temporarily, dislodged but 25 years passed before this could be the German invaders. Had the British not arranged; Bratten fills in the details of the dithered over their deployment of troops already gondola's use during that period. embarked on cruisers waiting to proceed to Howard P. Hoffman, a Smithsonian Norway; had the Norwegian government not specialist in naval history, conducted a thorough attempted to avoid war by trying to maintain survey of the craft, producing a report in the form neutrality; had the Germans not been so daring of 16 sheets of plans depicting the Philadelphia in overturning much of the common wisdom as it must have been in 1776. From the regarding the use of naval power in the face of a information on these sheets, Bratten has superior foe, the outcome of the battle could have composed two lengthy chapters about the been very different. vessel's construction and artifacts, plus a full While this book focuses on British catalogue, listing and illustrating the artifacts. naval operations, a companion work that He completes the book with a chapter about its included the German naval plans would have original crew and the building, operation and transformed an already excellent source of sailing qualities of a replica of the gondola material into an even more intriguing study of which was launched at the Lake Champlain the use of sea-power for assault of land targets. Maritime Museum in 1991. The attack on Norway was, perhaps, the only This excellent book follows in the wake instance of German war plans being led by the of work done by Kevin A. Crisman (well known strategic needs of the navy. The commander of for his studies about the War of 1812 warships the German Navy, Grand Admiral Eric Raedar, Ticonderoga, Jefferson and Eagle); indeed, saw the advantage of Norway as a base for both Bratten acknowledges Crisman's advice and his submarine and surface fleet. He also encouragement. It is the type of study that understood the need to protect shipments of iron provides the facts and analysis, the diagrams and ore from northern Sweden while they were documentation sought by armchair naval buffs vulnerable to British naval attacks. At the same and academic researchers alike. For that reason, time, members of the British cabinet, in it deserves to be put on the shelf next to the best particular Winston Churchill, also understood of the current naval studies. the importance of Norway. Thus, the battle for Norway really amounted to which side would Robert Malcomson strike first and how decisively. Ultimately, the St. Catharines, Ontario British were more reluctant to violate Norway's neutrality, and the Germans, by the thinnest of margins, struck first. It needs to be remembered, David Brown (ed.). Naval Operations of the however, that both the Germans and British were Campaign in Norway, April-June 1940. London: relatively unprepared for the attack. The German 62 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord commander selected to lead the ground assaults, individual tactical level, the lack of a clear General von Falkenhorst, had to buy a map from coherent plan doomed these efforts to ultimate a travel agency to assist him with his failure. preparations! He also needed Hitler's personal The book contains a wealth of detail, intervention to pry loose the necessary land including several excellent maps that clearly forces from the other German commanders who show the movement of all vessels. The problems were then planning the attack on western with the book are minor, although its attention to Europe. detail may overwhelm some readers. There are The Germans gambled their entire also a few omissions in its analysis; for example, surface navy on this attack. As the book shows, there is no discussion of the controversy the Kreisgmere paid heavily for their audacity. surrounding the sinking of the aircraft carrier They lost three of their eight cruisers including Glorious. Why were there no aircraft in the air the brand new Blttcher. They also lost most of when the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau appeared? their large destroyers during the battles for Was there a personnel issue that adversely Narvik and many of their surviving units were affected the judgement of the captain of the damaged. Germany's willingness to take risks, Glorious'} Nevertheless, the book remains a however, allowed them to triumph. The actions fascinating study of the attack on Norway and of the German navy also demonstrated that, should be read by all interested in this campaign, given the right conditions, it could be used to in the use of sea power for amphibious attacks, achieve strategic success. and in the employment of joint forces. The lessons learned are perhaps the most interesting element of the book. Britain's Rob Huebert strengths and weaknesses read like a case study Calgary, Alberta of how to apply the teachings of Sun Tzu and what happens when they are not. It is clear that the British could have defeated the Germans in J.R. Bruijn, A.C. Meijer and A.P. van Vliet. Norway. First, and perhaps most fatal to the Marinekapiteins uit de achttiende eeuw: Een British effort, was the lack of decisive action at Zeeuws elftal. The Hague: Instituut voor key moments. For example, loading and Maritieme Historié, www. zeeuvvsarchicf. nl. unloading the troops at Rosyth indicated British 2000. 204 pp., plates, illustrations, tables, uncertainty about their objectives in Norway appendices, notes, bibliography. € 17,50, paper; until it was too late. Then there were the ISBN 90-70534-31-2. differing orders that were given by General Maclntrye, commanding the land forces, and the This collection of essays is the result of close naval commander, Lord Cork. The lack of a clear cooperation between three institutions in the and coherent plan resulted in a series of lost Netherlands: the University of Leiden, the opportunities which finally Instituut voor Maritieme Historié in The Hague allowed the Germans to consolidate their initial and, finally, the archives of the province of victories. Zeeland in Middelburg. It consists of This is a book that will appeal to those biographies of 11 eighteenth-century naval with an interest in both naval history and in the captains, each written by a student. The essays conduct of joint-force warfare. While some of the are preceded by two introductory articles; one issues raised in the book no longer have dealing with the development of the admiralty in applicability, there is an amazing amount that Zeeland from 1572-1795, and the other focusing does. The need for good coordination between on the lives of naval officers in the Netherlands the different services remains as relevant as ever. between 1714 (the end of the War of the Spanish While each service performed well at the Succession) and 1795 (the beginning of the Book Reviews 63

Napoleonic era). families, but due to the extremely high rate of The introductory articles set the pace child death, these families gradually decreased in and the context for the biographies, which size. Many officers had academic interests, and represent one of the great achievements of pursued or conducted academic research for the professor Jaap Bruijn c.s. Over the last eight or admiralty once they left active service. In times nine years, he has encouraged research on of trouble, several of the officers discussed in the various individual naval officers working for one essays developed plans for shipbuilding or of the five admiralties in the Netherlands, or - by recruiting techniques. Others decided to join the the nineteenth century - the Navy. Focusing on Dutch East or West India Company, or signed the people provides faces for large, abstract and up for service in the British or Russian navies! impersonal organizations like admiralties. Also, The articles are heavily annotated with by comparing officers, standards are set for extensive bibliographies to enable additional successful or unsuccessful men in service. research. However, some critical remarks must All authors did an astounding job in be made. The book is filled with illustrations, in reconstructing the lives of these officers in the most cases contemporaneous with the person service of the admiralty of Zeeland. In every described, which is an achievement in itself. study, the authors carefully consider the subject's Unfortunately, the quality of the printing, birth, upbringing, career, family life and wealth combined with the size of the pictures detract (or the lack of it!) in order to enable the reader to from the high quality of the picture research; it compile his or her own picture of naval life in sometimes makes them even redundant. [70, Zeeland during the eighteenth century. 116, 146, 151] Moreover, in their search for The period is very well chosen. Due to illustrations, the authors or editors concentrated the tremendous burden of the War of the Spanish on cartographic material, or paintings and prints Succession and the War of the Austrian of town scenes or portraits: only in two cases (a Succession especially, recruitment caused major book on flag signals and a ship model), are problems for the admiralty. Recruiters had to go three-dimensional objects used. The Nederlands out of their way to attract mariners. Not only did Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam has a gold they go to many places in Zeeland, they sought medal in its collection, consigned to Maarten sailors from the province of Holland as well, Haringman (one of the officers being discussed). including many from Amsterdam and In another instance, several authors could have Rotterdam. At one time, recruiters were used a gorgeous goblet in a private collection searching for crews as far away as Stockholm or dedicated to Captain Comelis Vis and his Copenhagen! The admiralty temporarily raised man-of-war Zuyd Bevelcmd. Adding images of salaries (or issued an embargo) to fight the these personal artefacts would have contributed competition of the more lucrative East and West to the quality of the biographies. India Companies. Writing history from within, using What emerges from reading the articles biographical data to explain, sustain or is the picture of Zeeland as a socially- and undermine the general view of a subject is a politically-isolated area, where people knew each relatively new phenomenon. I cannot wait to see other and only a handful of families ruled the more biographies of Dutch mariners being cities and towns. Protection, cooperation and the published! building of social networks were essential requirements for a career in the admiralty. In Joost C.A. Schokkenbroek most cases, the naval officers belonged to the Amsterdam, the Netherlands upper layers of society, either by birth or by wealth (or, of course, a combination of both!). Between expeditions, most officers created large 64 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Timothy Collins. Transatlantic Triumph and succinct, informed, and nearly contemporary Heroic Failure: The Gabvay Line. Chester account appears in W. S. Lindsay's classic Springs, PA: The Collins Press/Dufour Editions, History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient www.dufoureditions.com, 2003. 226 pp, US Commerce. That neither of these works appears $23.95, paper; ISBN 1-903464-20-X. in the remarkably unselective list of references in Distributed in Canada and the United states by the brief volume here reviewed suggests the Dufour Editions, Chester Springs, PA. limited value this book may provide for maritime historians. That it has no index compounds the The Galway Line of steamships, operating work's deficiencies. Poor editing or inadequate spasmodically between Galway Bay, on the west research also contribute to the book's problems: coast of Ireland, and ports along the North the shipping entrepreneur Edward Knight American coast from the late 1850s to early Collins, whose ancestors on his father's side 1864, offers a cautionary example of misguided came from Ireland to America in 1635 and optimism and poor business management, whose mother was English, comes off as Edward coupled with bad timing and appallingly bad Kevin Collins, an Irish-American businessman. luck. Without doubt, the Galway Line was a Captain John Ancrum Winslow, of USS transatlantic failure; but, notwithstanding the Kearsarge fame in the American Civil War, valiant effort of Timothy Collins to argue loses his last name at one point. Of Galway Line otherwise, there was little in the way of triumph vessels, the iron-hulled paddle steamer Pacific, or heroism in the checkered careers of the Line, rated at ten knots, is identified as the fastest its vessels, or its promoters. transatlantic steamer of her time, although the The Atlantic Royal Steam Navigation much larger wooden-hulled paddle steamer Company, or Galway Line, was subsidized by Adriatic (formerly of the American Collins Line) the British government to carry mails year-round is rated at thirteen knots and is credited with from Galway to the American ports of Portland, setting transatlantic speed records. And needless Boston, or New York, by way of St. John's, digressions or barely tangential information Newfoundland. Its main promoters were the appear throughout the account, as if there isn't opportunistic Manchester businessman and really enough to say about the Galway Line to shipping magnate, John Orrell Lever, and Fr. justify a book-length treatment. Peter Daly, a Galway priest. The latter's What the author does offer is a entrepreneurial and political career rivalled, if thorough and well-informed discussion of the not surpassed, those of his businessman distinctive Irish context — social, political, and contemporaries both in Galway (where he was economic ~ of this early steamship venture. Chairman of the Galway Town Commissioners Drawing heavily on newspapers in the Galway and one of the Galway Harbour Commissioners region, he provides a good bit of incidental local as well as board member of the Midland & Great history. In addition, there is a remarkable Western Railway Company) and in the larger 30-page appendix containing examples of music sphere of transatlantic business enterprise. and song more or less related to the Galway Lobbying relentlessly for private and government Line. Included here is the full piano score for support, the two men had scarcely launched their "The Galway Packet Galop" and the words and ambitious shipping enterprise when a succession music to a number of applicable sea chanties of of vessel mishaps threw their line into a the era. Another appendix provides a useful precarious financial position which it never descriptive listing of each steamship that served could surmount. the Line, however briefly. Some of these vessels The Galway Line story has been told in are illustrated through an assortment of detail and with scholarly authority in David B. black-and-white reproductions of paintings, Tyler's Steam Conquers the Atlantic, and a magazine illustrations, and photographs, all Book Reviews 65 placed together at the book's centre. undertaken in 2000 by the catamaran Naden to On balance, this work is severely bring attention to the 1940-42 historic west-east limited. Despite the use of contemporary British Arctic passage. This is not a history in the style government documents (primarily Parliamentary of a Greg Dening but is does give an insightful Papers) and local Irish sources, there is too much picture of Captain Larsen and his influence, not uncritical reliance on generalized secondary only with his crew but also with the mandarins works and an apparent neglect of source material in Ottawa. commonly used by historians. The whole, in this The perpetual problem of how to deal case, is considerably less than the sum of its with specialized information without interfering many parts. with the flow of the story is dealt with by the clever use of six well chosen sidebar topics that Edward W. Sloan include The Arctic, Maud, Life on Patrol, Henry Madison, Connecticut Larsen, Navigating the Arctic and Characteristics of the St. Roch. The many photographs contribute to the story and are a James Delgado. Arctic Workhorse; The RCMP good mix of ship views and people. Schooner St. Roch. Vancouver: Touch Wood There are some quibbles. The measured Editions Ltd., www.heritaft ehouse.ca, 2003. 70 drawings are not well reproduced and most of pp., photographs, appendices, maps, drawings, the text identifying details of the hull etc are index. $15.95, paper; ISBN-920663-86-9. smudged. The glossary is particularly important for new-entry readers but some of the definitions, Foot for foot and ton for ton, the St Roch has for want of a little more precision, are earned a special place in the maritime history of incomplete. Two examples will suffice. The Canada. This diminutive 104-foot vessel built in definition of windlass would have been better 1928 served her RCMP masters in the hostile with the addition of the word, horizontal. The environment of the Arctic, yet still survives as a mental image of the mainmast would have been museum ship at the Vancouver Maritime better served by using taller rather than Museum. As a floating detachment and supply "largest". The language of the sea is special and ship, this tough-built auxiliary schooner is now every attempt should be made to perpetuate its forever linked with Arctic exploration, Canadian use, otherwise how are we to continue enjoyment sovereignty and the quest for the Northwest of the literature of the sea by such authors as Passage. Her chief claim to fame is that she was Conrad and Masefield. There is a useful index the first vessel to sail the Northwest Passage and a bibliography. The maps are useful but west to east and only the second to sail back more would have been appreciated. It was nice again, east to west. to see a much maligned writer, Farley Mowat, There are three big stories told here in quoted. I hope the future will see Delgado seven chapters. The first is a straight up, succinct expand his comments on the subject of historic overview of Arctic exploration that has all the ship preservation. essential features needed to inspire further Jim Delgado has mastered the art of a reading or just provide the essential story for the flowing narrative. This accomplished work of reader who wants to be well informed. Four only seventy pages deserves to be part of any chapters are devoted to the St. Roch and as maritime library, first as a great story and second Conrad would say, "... the men in them". It is as an essential guide and reference work. these chapters that connect the hostile environment with the men and their ship. The Maurice D. Smith. final chapters are devoted to the preservation of Kingston, Ontario the St. Roch and the 'Voyage of Discovery' 66 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Wade Glendon Dudley. Splintering the Wooden illustrated history of the naval war appeared Wall: The British Blockade of the United States, featuring several useful essays on the naval 1812-1815. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, campaign on the Lakes, the high seas and the www.usni.orp, 2003. xii+299 pp., maps, illustra• American coast. tions, notes, bibliography, index. US $32.95, Splintering the Wooden Wall is an cloth; ISBN 1 -55750- 167-X. estimate of the success of trade interdictions by the British navy on the American coast from the It has been many decades since naval warfare in Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Maine. The navy's the Western Atlantic between 1812 and 1815 task was made the more difficult partly on last captured the imagination of historians. account of the so-called licensed trade. The During this dearth, studies of the military supply of American grain to Wellington's army campaigns, the war on the Lakes, or the in the Peninsular War, begun in 1810, continued diplomatic and political background multiplied. in the midst of the Anglo-American war through The larger naval subject might have been killed licenses issued to American merchant ships by by the effective treatment by A.T. Mahan a colonial authorities. Unarmed vessels were century ago, and by the narrative skill of C.S. issued nine-month licences to carry provisions Forrester almost fifty years ago. For the most (and from 1812, naval stores) from American part, British historians avoided the subject, as ports between New York and the New they have felt, wrongly, that the naval war went Brunswick border. Despite penalties imposed by badly, while American historians were more the US administration, upon its May 1812 likely to address this subject in the belief, also declaration of war on those involved in this wrongly, that the naval war went well. American supply, the trade thrived as the British army accounts tended to study the privateer war or continued to depend in part on American flour single ship encounters. Canadian historians until the French army fled Spain. largely steered clear of the matter, perhaps Another major difficulty in interdicting overawed by Gerald Graham, who studied the American wartime commerce was the confused topic in the 1940s, but who wrote as if he had instructions given successive commanders of the dealt fully with every historical question worth North American squadron until 1814. If those in raising. Halifax knew only in July 1812 that the New research in three recent doctoral Americans had declared war in May, it was theses has helped to revive interest in the topic. November before the British government First came Faye Kelt's University of Leyden acknowledged the fact, and January 1813 before dissertation, published in 1997, a study of prizes word reached Halifax. Throughout 1812 the seized in 1812-15 and brought into Nova Scotia initiative thus remained with the Americans. and New Brunswick ports. Next came Wade Even when Vice-Admiral Sir John Borlase Dudley's East Carolina University dissertation in Warren was named commander-in-chief in 1813, 1999, of which the present volume is a he brought with him peace overtures, a policy refinement. The most recent is Marc Drolet's that made sense only in London, where all eyes McGill thesis, an operational history of the North were still focussed on Napoleon's defeat. When American squadron from 1807 to 1815, Cochrane took command of the North American completed only last December. Two recent squadron, he had 58 warships, used for all sorts British publications should additionally be of tasks from cruising and escorting convoys to noted. In 1997, Roger Morriss published a fine refitting and blockading. Yet he believed that he biography of George Cockburn, who as a rear needed 102 vessels just to blockade the coast. aclrniral, led the 1814 assault on the Chesapeake, Only in 1814 did he command such numbers, under Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane's when the US suffered the bulk of its losses at overall command. In 1998, Robert Gardner's sea. Book Reviews 67

Dudley examines British-mounted wartime naval strategy. His characterization of blockades elsewhere and at different times in his the naval bases at Halifax and Bermuda leaves effort to demon-strate that historians have much to be desired. He wrongly believes that in exaggerated the effectiveness of the naval 1814 the Halifax yard received some 300 blockade of the American coasts in 1812-15. artificers from England [61], when no such body Rather his analysis suggests that to blockade a was ever requested or sent. He also states that 1,500 mile coastline with several important ports the Bermuda base was completed by 1814, and and numerous minor ones proved as difficult on that its principal defect was the shallowness of the French coast as on the American. the harbour. Both statements are inaccurate. Had My own study of the matter shows how he used readily available Navy Board porous and partial the British blockade of the documents, these errors could have been American coast proved. Drolet's findings are the avoided. same. Yet to claim, as Dudley does, that it was This book usefully rekindles some of far less successful that the British blockade of the most interesting arguments generated by the the French coast between 1793 and 1815 Anglo-American war. Perhaps the best part of requires far more evidence and analysis than the book is its close year-by-year description of Splintering the Wooden Wall provides. His the attempts by the British to impose a blockade treatment of this topic renders this part of the on parts of the American coast. Unlike the war book unconvincing. against rebel America in 1775-83, the British To judge the relative failure of the occupied no American port of any consequence. British blockade in the Anglo-American war, Other than in eastern Maine and islands off the Dudley spends a great deal of effort counting Georgia coast, joint naval-military expeditions both warships and merchant vessels lost. This is confined themselves to raiding, the most less effective than studying the impact of the war spectacular that on Washington itself. on the American economy, something with which he really never comes to grips. It is not a Julian Gwyn new topic. Buel's masterly study, published in Ottawa, Ontario 1998 on British naval supremacy during the American Wart of Independence could have been his starting point. James H. Ellis. Mad Jack Percival : Legend of By contrast, Splintering the Wooden the Old Navy. (Library of Naval Biography) Wall has nothing to say about US grain or any Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, other commodity prices. The expansive grain www.Navallhstitute.orp, 2002. xx + 242 pp., trade ought to have produced historically high illustrations, chronology, notes, bibliography, prices and great prosperity for American farmers, index. US $34.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-204-8. as it did for those in the British Isles. Instead, Dudley notes that both the fishing fleet and the John "Mad Jack" Percival entered the US Navy coasting fleet tonnage declined in 1811-14 by as a master's mate and rose to the rank of almost 60 per cent, while the value of trade fell captain, the top of the pre-Civil War naval by 82 per cent, even if some American privateers service in which there were only three remained at sea. Despite these data suggestive commissioned ranks - lieutenant, master that the war was a costly blunder by the command-ant and captain. James Ellis American administration, Dudley concedes only characterizes this remarkable seaman as often that the British "went some way toward the rough, often ill, particularly with gout, but 'annihilation' of American commerce". [143] always with a keen sense of his duty. Born in Another weakness is found in Dudley's 1779 on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, into a analysis of the material support for British seafaring family, Percival attended school for 68 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

only nine months before going to sea in 1793 as and morale of his crews. a cabin boy on a Boston coaster. He was Percival was always mindful of impressed into the British Royal Navy while in economy in the service. He managed to refit the Portugal, and was apparently a seaman in HMS venerable Constitution at one-seventh of the cost Victory briefly, before escaping while a member estimated by the naval constructor. He believed of a prize crew. that the Navy ration was over-generous, and The author tells us that Percival joined demonstrated on the round-the-world cruise that the American Navy during the quasi-war with the crew could be fed on three-quarters of the France, 1798-1801, but was discharged and ration and the savings used for their spending returned to the merchant service. He re-entered money. the Navy in 1809 as a sailing master, but only Ellis claims to have rehabilitated began full-time service at the beginning of the Percival from a charge by his only other War of 1812. Assigned to duty at the New York biographer, David F. Long ("Mad Jack " : the Naval Yard, he soon carried the fight to the Biography of Captain John Percival, USN, blockading British fleet, capturing a British 1779-1862. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, tender. He was sailing master in the US Ship- 1993), that he stole money from a trust fund for sloop Peacock when she captured HM brig the relief of several injured sailors. Ellis has Epervier off Florida in April 1814. examined the same evidence and concludes that Percival's long post-war career Percival's conduct was above reproach. involved epic voyages worldwide. Commis• Percival became the basis for a number sioned lieutenant in December 1814, he acted as of fictional characters. Herman Melville sailed first lieutenant aboard USS Macedonian, 1816- under him and created Lieutenant Mad Jack in 1820, where Ellis credits his seamanship with White-Jacket. Later James Michener based a saving the frigate when she was dismasted in a character on him in Hawaii. hurricane. While in the Pacific from 1823 to The book is not without a few 1827, Percival was detached to command the problems. The author himself concedes difficulty schooner Dolphin, with which he hunted down in separating truth from tall tales regarding the surviving mutineers from the bloody takeover Percival's career. He has not been helped by the of a Nantucket whaler. He took the Dolphin to strange editorial policy of the series, which limits Hawaii, the first American warship to visit there, notes to those for direct quotations. This inhibits but became embroiled in controversy with local further research. As an example, we are told in American missionaries. The high point of his the text that Percival's name never appeared on career, however, was as captain of USS the muster books of HMS Victory [9] during his Constitution, "Old Ironsides," the most revered pressed service, but the format does not permit ship in the American fleet. He took her on an us to leam on what evidence Ellis places him around-the-world cruise, 1844-1846, designed to there. The "Further Reading" essay [229-232], show support for American maritime interests, to while most useful, is too general to answer these chart unknown waters and to generally show the sorts of questions. flag abroad. We leam little of Percival apart from Perhaps conscious of his lack of formal his official life. We know that he married the education, Percival was ever attentive to the much younger Maria Pinkerton, and that they education and training of midshipmen and junior were apparently childless, but we find out only officers under his command. Several of his old in passing that he had an adopted daughter [156] mentors ensured that their sons were introduced and are told nothing of the nature of this to the Navy on his voyages. Percival was also a relationship. fierce, but apparently fair, disciplinarian, who The style is lively and the tales of flogged miscreants but watched after the health shipboard life convincing. At times, however, Book Reviews 69

Ellis's prose reads strangely like the nineteenth- significant for the wider issues of the war. ft is century reports from which he is working. This Gough's aim to rectify this impression, and to is particularly evident in his descriptions of demonstrate that the campaigns on the Upper Pacific islanders and their reactions to Percival's Lakes were very significant, and had much more incursions. influence on the war than has been heretofore Although the volume includes ten acknowledged. pages of well-chosen, carefully-captioned The stakes were indeed high: the illustrations, maps would also have been useful. survival of Upper Canada as a British possession The biography gives us valuable insights into at the very least. The province did seem officer relationships in the small, closed world of untenable, thinly populated as it was, and settled the U. S. Navy in the years after the War of 1812, by many whose loyalties were uncertain. The at a time when that Navy was establishing a Americans had much larger resources, especially worldwide presence. in manpower. These considerations had prompted the British to maintain friendly Owen Cooke relations with the native peoples all around the North Gower, Ontario Great Lakes, thinking that if conflict did erupt with the USA, the Indian alliance would be crucial to any hope of success. In practical terms, Barry Gough. Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and this meant distributing food, weapons and gifts Georgian Bay: The War of 1812 and its in the "north west" via the strategic post at Aftermath. St. Catherine's: Vanwell Publishing Michilimackinac, and on into Prairie du Chien, Limited, www.vanwell.ca, 2002. xxi+215 pp., well into what was technically American illustrations, chronology, maps, photos, territory. With the Indians known to be leaning bibliography, index. $39.95, cloth; ISBN 1- towards the British in this area, it was assumed 55068-114-1. the Americans would temper any aggression further east. This is an important book. Not only does Barry Right away the strategic importance of Gough provide much enlightenment on the War Lake Huron is apparent: it was the sole route by of 1812-14 in this distant corner of conflict, he which lines of supply were maintained with the also provides an intimate grasp of how the Indians. And on this line, Michilimackinac was fringes of the British Empire were nurtured and the key, the emporium and choke point of the protected by energetic and resourceful leadership system. In fact, Gough has much of interest to in the face of overwhelming material odds. say on the few choices open to the British Moreover, Gough writes in a very engaging commander, Captain Robert Barclay, RN, in the style, such that the book proved to be a rare face of obvious American superiority in material reviewing treat: it was hard to put down. terms. Thus, when the naval war on Lake Erie Most histories of the 1812 War resulted in the American victory at Put-in-Bay, concentrate on the frigate actions which earned and the immediate retreat of British forces the Americans some early triumphs, to the huge eastward, it seemed the Lake Huron route was embarrassment of the Royal Navy, and on the cut, and the Indian alliance was doomed. several American invasion attempts and related Resourceful RN officers, however, kept some naval campaigns on the Great Lakes, particularly small vessels operating while an overland route Lakes Erie and Ontario. The conflicts on Lake was cut out from York to Georgian Bay, and the Huron and Georgian Bay have not been treated trickle of supplies continued. Brilliant actions in exhaustive detail before, and the impression resulted in the recapture of Michilimackinac and generally left is that the stakes were small there, the capture of the two American naval vessels the forces minuscule, and the results not really sent to control Lake Huron. As a result, the 70 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Americans never realized the advantages of their experience into the historiography of the greatest victory on Lake Erie on Lake Huron, and when naval war in history. Commissioned by the peace negotiations were opened, the British side Canadian Memorial Trust for publication on the was in a far stronger position than any had dared 60th anniversary of the climax of the Atlantic hope. The Americans had won on Lake Erie, but Campaign, Graves elucidates the development had lost on Lakes Ontario and Huron, and while and role of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) their invasion attempts had all failed, British through an examination of the social, forces occupied Prairie du Chien, backed by an technological, and political factors that both apparently firm Indian alliance. shaped and explain Canada's contribution Gough includes much material on the during the Battle of the Atlantic. post-war years too, as each side strove for Though the main focus is the RCN and security on the lakes. Aside from directing the Battle of the Atlantic, Graves does not simply attention to a "fringe" area of conflict, Gough throw his readers into the unforgiving swells of provides a useful reminder of the maritime the North Atlantic as war commenced. The first heritage of the Huron and Georgian Bay area: two chapters briefly identify several contextual Fort Willow, Nottawasaga, the Nancy, themes, including the historical importance of Penetanguishene, all are illuminated in a way sea power and the nature of both submarine and which will, sadly, be a surprise to many anti-submarine warfare as it evolved during "The Ontarians, let alone Canadians. This is a Great War" and throughout the interwar period. recommended book. It is a very scholarly work More importantly, Graves introduces the with extensive research into documentary political factors that constantly seemed to plague sources on both sides of the Atlantic, and a the RCN throughout its history. For example, he thorough sifting of secondary sources as well. notes that even though the Canadian Naval Specialists will find it authoritative but it will Service was created on 10 May 1910, the rise of also appeal to a non-specialist audience, as it is Robert Borden's Conservatives in September clearly written and well illustrated with useful 1911 "placed the Naval Service in 'suspended maps. Quite simply, it is a good read. animation' while it worked out its own defence policies."[21] Similarly, in 1921, the Navy's Paul Webb budget was reduced by forty percent by the London, Ontario Liberal government because of popular distaste for both war and military matters. The RCN managed to expand during Donald E. Graves. In Peril on the Sea: The the interwar period, however, thanks to the Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the ingenuity and political savvy of various Atlantic. Toronto: Robin Brass Studio, important figures. For example, Walter Hose, www.rbstudiobooks.com, 2003. 252 pp., maps, Chief of the Naval Service from 1922-1934, photograph, tables, appendices, endnotes, realized that there was enthusiasm in Canada for bibliography, index. $34.95, paper; ISBN 1- a naval service. Therefore, he transformed it into 896941-32-X. a reserve-based organization that drew members from across Canada, thus establishing a "small Sixteen months after the beginning of the but visible naval presence across Canada."[35] [Second World] War, the RCN was on a The heart of the book is an explanation disastrous course toward a crisis that was not of of the RCN's evolution and the problems it faced its own making but one it could not avoid." [60] during the Battle of the Atlantic. Canada's With In Peril on the Sea: The Royal Canadian wartime naval experience can be divided into Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic, Donald two convenient periods; from the start of the war Graves attempts to integrate Canada's naval to January 1943, and from February 1943 to the Book Reviews 71 end of the war. During the first period, 1939 - 2 Although the book is not a definitive January 1943, the RCN acquired a reputation as nor completely original work concerning naval an inefficient fighting force. Graves cites history, it does provide a human element to what numerous interrelated reasons for the RCN's is often a soul-less war of technological poor performance, including technological advancements. Found at the end of each chapter deficiency, unbridled expansion, and political are extremely interesting primary quotations mismanagement that combined to seriously revealing numerous facets of naval warfare both hinder the performance of the RCN. on land and sea. They include such topics as He examines selective convoy battles rescuing survivors from torpedoed ships, convoy and finds evidence that the RCN's troubles were battles, seasickness aboard a corvette, medical not entirely its own fault. For example, he care at sea, the Women's Royal Canadian Naval attributes the loss of 6 of the 58 merchant ships Service, and even the experiences of one U-boat during the Newfoundland Escort Force's first officer during the war. convoy battle to the fact that the Canadian escort In Peril on the Sea: The Royal ships lacked radios and had to depend on Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic, unreliable and outdated signal lamps. And since though not the final interpretation regarding Ottawa did not have concrete knowledge of the Canada and the Battle of the Atlantic, is a very problems faced by its escort force, nothing was useful introduction to the numerous problems done. The final nail in the coffin, which forced faced by the RCN throughout its history. As Sir Max Horton, Commander-in-Chief, Western expected, because of the complexity of the battle, Approaches, to remove the Canadian escort certain parts such as the American and British groups from the mid-Atlantic, was the loss of 14 efforts, and especially Ultra, are sometimes out of 45 merchant ships from convoy ONS 154 carelessly generalized. Also, Graves did not during late 1942. By way of explanation, Graves write a concluding chapter that summarizes the notes that the escort's senior officer was various arguments and themes that explain the inexperienced, pre-convoy training exercises RCN's evolution throughout the twentieth century. The work does, however, provide the were cancelled, and the convoy's path brought it general reader with a solid explanation, close to two large U-boat concentrations. adequately elucidated, regarding the problems During the second period, February that Canada's navy faced and how these 1943 to the end of the war, Graves argues that problems were surmounted. the RCN "had come of age as a professional fighting force."[74] Contributing to the RCN's new professionalism, was better training, better Jason Warren ASW vessels such as the frigate, and Fredericton, New Brunswick technological modernization for many of its ships. Reflecting this overall improvement, the RCN sank six of the 31 U-boats destroyed from Jim Gawler. Lloyds ' Medals 1836-1989: A November 1943 through April 1944 in the North History of Medals Awarded by the Corporation Atlantic. Accumulating another five kills before of Lloyd's. Toronto, ON: Hart Publishing, 1995 the end of the war, RCN accounted for 33 Axis (originally published 1989). 80 pp., illustrations, submarines destroyed in total. This is an index of recipients. £8.95, paper; ISBN 0- impressive figure considering that Canada's 9693732-0-1. navy matured and expanded from 3,252 officers and sailors manning 13 vessels in 1939 to Given its relatively unknown publisher, this 92,441 officers and sailors manning over 400 useful volume is likely unavailable except, as various vessels in late 1944. this reviewer obtained his, through used book dealers or in reference libraries. But as a 72 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord valuable reference tool for those writing There are similar stories throughout the merchant marine history, it deserves its place on book featuring seamen, lighthouse keepers, the bookshelf. The author, Jim Gawler, spent his Customs men, ladies, captains, naval personnel, working life with Lloyd's, including managing "foreigners" and Englishmen. Even in its modest the Secretarial Department which administered selection of tales, the book is a singularly even- the awarding of eight classes of that insurer's handed cross-section of those who served at sea medals for outstanding bravery involving and, in many cases, risked or even sacrificed shipping. On retirement in 1985, he undertook their lives to rescue others. Sometimes, only one the production of this reference. participant received a medal; occasionally, such In a very brief introduction, he explains as when the crew of the SS President Roosevelt how Lloyd's Coffee House got into the shipping rescued the entire crew of the broken-down auction business and thence insuring, by about steamer Atinoe on 26-28 January, 1926 in very 1725. The awarding of medals, or "pecuniary heavy and snowy weather, three silver and 17 gratuities" for saving lives from shipwrecks was bronze medals were awarded, two of them at first only with the approval of "A General posthumously. These are brief glimpses of Meeting of Subscribers" - now referred to as fascinating tales of bravery at sea, usually under "The Names". Gawler describes how this terrible circumstances. The 26 medals for cumbersome arrangement progressed until 1837, Services to Lloyd's are mostly given to its when the first awards of specially struck medals chairmen, although 7 of the 11 silver medals of bronze, silver and gold were made. He also have been awarded to Lloyd's Signalmasters in includes a somewhat startling full description of the signal stations they established in 1852. how the medal's image was chosen by William Although the book lacks a general Wyon. Based on three and a half pages of index, there is a very useful index which lists Homer's epic, Wyon decided upon the figure of recipients in sub-sections by class of medal. Leucothoe (daughter of Cadmus) casting her Once the recipient is found, there is a page scarf to Odysseus when he was shipwrecked. reference for the story about the event that Then follows a selection of the awards generated the award. A quite useful volume, one from the various categories, illustrating how they to be dipped into on occasion. came to be earned. The descriptions of the award actions are in order of the 'seniority' of the Fraser M. McKee awards: Lloyd's Medal for Saving Life - gold Etobicoke, Ontario (1), silver (275) and bronze (548); Lloyd's Medal for Meritorious Services - silver (435) and bronze (38); Lloyd's Medal for Services to Rick M. Harbo. Pacific Reef & Shore. A Photo Lloyd's - gold (15) and silver (11); and Lloyd's Guide to Northwest Marine Life. Madeira Park, War Medal for Bravery at Sea - silver only (530). B. C: Harbour Publishing, www.harbour The figures in brackets indicate the total number publishing.com, 2003. 80 pp., map, awarded - up to 1,853 - by 1989. photographs, index. $9.95, paper; ISBN Interestingly, the only gold life saving 1-55017-304-9. medal was awarded to then-captain E.R.G.R. Evans, later "Evans of the Broke" and Lord Anyone spending time outdoors ought to have a Mountevans, who went to the Pole with Scott, field guide handy, especially when near the for saving lives off the China coast. When a local ocean - the first thing to reach for when trying to ship, Hong Moh, went on the rocks, Evans and identify those curious little creatures found in a others swam to the wreck in heavy seas and tidal pool. Here we have one by Rick Harbo, a helped save most of the crew. marine biologist with several popular west-coast references to his credit. Just the right size to slide Book Reviews 73 into the side pocket of a windbreaker, this little Coast navy. In her book, she sets out to write book is an excellent example of the genre. both a history of the ship, and to explain the For each of the 313 entries, there is a abiding and affectionate relationship individuals small colour photograph, and a couple of have had with it since its launch in 1921. That sentences of description: typically size, she succeeds has as much to do with her own appearance, and usual habitat, including depth emotional feeling for the vessel as her warm and range. In addition to the proper scientific name, inclusive writing style. there is only a single common name - invariably, The current Oriole is, in fact, Oriole different localities have different ways of TV, the fourth of a series of large sailing yachts. referring to the same fish, and perhaps some The first boat - as ships are traditionally called alternatives could have been included. Entries on the Great Lakes - was built in 1871 for the are grouped into obvious categories: mammals Gooderham family of Toronto. Hewett provides and fish first; with invertebrates making up the readers with a fascinating look at the sailing bulk of the book. Plants haven't been neglected: diversions of Toronto's wealthy elite and the 24 are listed. No doubt space restrictions meant founders of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club as that many rare organisms had to have been left she chronicles the long relationship of the out - there are only 38 species of fish, and none Gooderham family with a series of magnificent are the sort found in more open water, such as sailing yachts that bore the name Oriole. That mackerel - but the chances are excellent that relationship ended, grandly, with the launch of what will be encountered in the wild will be the current boat in 1921, a powerful, steel-hulled found here. ketch just under 100 feet in length. Built in New This is an ideal guide for the scuba diver. Even England, the ketch served for many years as the though there is no key to the entries by body flagship of the RCYC and as Commodore shape or other characteristic, for the most part George H. Gooderham's personal yacht. But it the photographs are clear enough to make a was with the advent of the Second World War confident identification. Certainly the price is that Oriole began its long and continuing right, and the book is excellent value for money. relationship with Canada's naval establishment. Should this reviewer ever have the opportunity to In failing health at the beginning of the try West Coast diving, this book definitely will war years, George Gooderham parted with the be tucked away in his dry bag. vessel in a sale process that brought Oriole into the ownership of the Navy League of Canada. William Schleihauf Through the war years and on until 1949, the Pointe des Cascades, Quebec ship carried thousands of teenaged Sea Cadets on training cruises on Lake Ontario, until interest in such training began to lag as the Shirley Hewett. The People's Boat, HMCS Korean War approached. Commissioned into the Oriole: Ship Of A Thousand Dreams. Surrey, Royal Canadian Navy in June 1950, the ship B.C. : Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd., then was moved to Nova Scotia, where it was www.heritiagehouse.com, 2002. 174 pp., involved in the training of junior officers. photographs, glossary, notes, index. $26.95, Ranging the cold seas of the Western North paper; ISBN 1-894384-20-2. Atlantic, the ketch remained based in Halifax until the decision was made in 1954 to send her Ships have a capacity to inspire love in those round to Esquimalt, on the West Coast, where who come to know them well, and West Coast she would continue to train junior officers, writer and sailor Shirley Hewett clearly has had particularly with the VENTURE cadet a long love affair with the beautiful sail-training programme. On the completion of that voyage ketch HMCS Oriole, part of Canada's West round through the Panama Canal, Oriole had 74 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord arrived in the community that would welcome to want to know where a particular story or fact and embrace the ship as their own, and where came from. But the weakness is a minor one, and she is based to this day as part of Canada's West Hewett tries her best to include references and Coast navy. sources in her text. Certainly it does not detract Hewett is an experienced writer and the from the enjoyment of a light-hearted and author of two formal corporate histories, but affectionate look at a dignified elder yacht that chose to write The People's Boat in a relaxed clearly captures the sailorly hearts of those who style that sits well with the subject matter and experience her. Hewett's strength is that she her storytelling. The history of the boat is not so allows all of us to share some of that feeling. much simply a recitation of its voyages as what has happened to the remarkable men and women Victor Suthren who have had contact with it, ranging from Ottawa, Ontario Mutiny On The Bounty skipper Ellsworth Coggins to HRH Prince Edward. Details of watch keeping in heavy seas, and the personal Poul Holm, Tim D. Smith and David J. Starkey experiences of crew, trainees, commanding (eds.). The Exploited Seas: New Directions for officers and guests - as Hewett was, for a voyage Marine Environmental History. St. John's, NL: in New Zealand waters - mix with fascinating International Maritime Economic History sidelights of the where-are-they-now variety to Association/Census of Marine Life, imprint the extraordinary affection in which the www.mun.ca, 2001. xix + 216 pp., tables, ship is held, and its impact upon individuals' figures. US $ 15.00, paper; ISBN 0-9730073-1-1. lives. Perhaps only in Victoria, with its atmosphere of white-flannel gentility and links to This volume comprises papers presented by a Victorian past, could such a relationship be distinguished historians, scientists and maintained with a sailing yacht. It is clear from economists specialized in matters of marine Hewett's text that Oriole has earned a place in research, as part of a Marine Environmental the hearts of not only those who have sailed in History workshop held February 2000, at the ship, but in the hearts of Victoria residents Esbjerg, Denmark. Funded by the Alfred P. generally. Sloan Foundation of New York, the meeting was That warm blanket of affection should designed to develop a research agenda for not mask the fact that Oriole is a strong, blue furthering knowledge and understanding of the water vessel with some impressive achievements history of marine animal populations. The to her credit, including victory in the Victoria to publication consists of: Contributors' Notes; an Maui Yacht Race in 2000, and a stunning, first Introduction by the Editors; and ten tall ship "across the line" performance in a Contributors' papers, arranged in four groups, tumultuous Tasman Sea race into Hobart, illustrating particular aspects of the developing Tasmania during a South Pacific deployment. If field of marine environmental history. A short Canada cannot maintain large, square-rigged sail Epilogue describes a research agenda for the training vessels for its naval officers' "History of Marine Animal Populations preparation, as many other nations do, Oriole (HMAP)" generated at that same workshop. nonetheless has carried the Canadian flag with The volume combines the approaches deserved pride on the high seas, and Hewett does of maritime history and ecological science, the a good job in demonstrating why. key to which is the integrated analysis of If there is one criticism, and it is a ecosystems and human societies. The editors in minor one, it has to do with the lack of their "Introduction" discuss the characteristics of footnoting in the text, where the fascinating "Historical and Paleo-ecological Data Sources" depth and detail of Hewett's research leads one followed by " Testing Ecological Hypotheses". Book Reviews 75

[xiv,xv] Such discussion clearly defines the Group three papers deal with southern nature of the data, the contrast between historical hemisphere fisheries that have developed in records produced by humans and paleo- comparatively recent times: (i) "Potential for ecological data emanating from naturally Historical-Ecological Studies of Latin American occurring ecological archives. Fisheries by historian Chris Reid discusses the Although not so defined in the table of prospects facing scholars intent on studying contents, the papers are arranged in groups Central and Latin American fisheries. He illustrating particular aspects of marine concludes that there is considerable scope to environmental history. Group one comprises further understanding of the historical three papers concerned with the Newfoundland development of living marine resource Grand Banks' fisheries which has the most exploitation in the region and, specifically in the comprehensive archives. In the first paper, Humboldt Current ecosystem, through historical Historians David Starkey, and Michael Haines and ecological multi-disciplinary studies [141] ; consider primary data sources. In the second (ii)"The South African Fisheries: A Preliminary paper, biologist Ransom A. Myers uses the time Survey of Historical Sources" by historian Lance series to test Scott Gordon's bioeconomical van Sittert discusses the importance of the model of why natural renewable resource Benguela Current in the development of South exploitation tends to be unprofitable over time. Africa's fisheries and the need for more detailed study of the information available; and (iii) "The The third paper is a joint effort by biologist Jerry Potential for Historical Studies of Fisheries in Hutchings and historian Sean Cadigan in which Australia and New Zealand" by Malcolm Tull, they demonstrate the interfacing of the an economist, and Tom Polacheck, a fishery methodologies of the historical and ecological scientist presents a preliminary appraisal of disciplines. primary sources that might prove valuable in The next group of three papers is investigating the impact of human harvesting on concerned with the building of a history of fish populations off Australia and New Zealand. marine animal populations: (i)" Status and Potential of Historical and The single paper in Group four, Ecological Studies on Russian Fisheries in the "Examining Cetacean Ecology Using Historical White and Barents Seas" by Julia Lajus, a Fishery Data" by Tim D. Smith, a fisheries Russian biologist, and nine specialists that have biologist, describes a number of analyses that identified much data in Russian monasteries and have sought to integrate historical and state departments; (ii) "The Danish Fisheries, c. contemporary data relating to various whale 1450-1800: Medieval and Early Modem Sources populations. The paper illuminates the benefits and Their Potential for Marine Environmental to be had from the collaboration between History" by historians Poul Holm and Maibritt historians and biologists. Bager, demonstrates the wealth of primary Clearly, Marine Environmental History source documents heldinDanish archives for the has been well served by the editors and provision of data from which to construct long contributors who have so concisely stated their term time series relating to the inshore fisheries case for the bringing together of history and of regions bordering the North and Baltic seas; ecology. and (iii) "Historical Approaches to the Northern California Current Ecosystem" by R.C. Francis, Len Forrest J. Field, D. Holmgren, and A. Strom, all Ottawa, Ontario practitioners in the field of fishery sciences. Their paper introduces the prospect of reconstructing past fish abundance by the study offish scales in the sediment cores of the seabed. 76 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

David Hussey. Coastal and River Trade in Pre- situates the region as a whole into a very wide industrial England: Bristol and its Region 1680- context in the coastal sphere. For this reason, 1730. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, England's most important port, London, and one www.ex.ac.uk, 2000. xvi+296 pp., tables, maps, which would soon rival it, Liverpool, are also illustrations, figures, notes, bibliography, index. included as sources and recipients of Bristol's £ 45.00, cloth; ISBN 0-85989-617-X. coastal trade. It is easy for works of this nature to try and exist in a vacuum, but Hussey manages The early modern port of Bristol has long been to avoid this pitfall. This is not simply by associated with deep sea and New World trades. bringing in ports father afield. Most residents of Newfoundland, Canada, are Like his predecessor for this period, familiar with the exploits of John Cabot who Ralph Davis, Hussey makes the linkage - so sailed from Bristol to "discover" the island, or often ignored - between commercial and naval the Bristol region's connection to the early affairs in deteraiining the scope of marine Newfoundland fisheries. David Hussey's work industry. Although not brought out as a major serves as a reminder that, although the theme, the threat of privateers and enemy naval association of Bristol with overseas commerce is craft seem ever present in Hussey's narrative. not incorrect, there was more to the story. Indeed, as he tells the reader, even the idea of Using an impressive range of both what constituted a 'region' could be significantly statistical and narrative sources, Hussey reduced during the vicissitudes of war. Maritime demonstrates that Bristol was just as important, researchers are sometimes content to parcel if not more so, as a centre of regional coasting themselves off from navalists; Hussey is to be trade in the seventeenth and early eighteenth commended for reminding us of the firm centuries. Bristol's true maritime importance in connections between the two branches of the pre-industrial period may have been miscast. seaward activity. The coastal trade specifically, and early modern Hussey also succeeds in using his shipping generally, have received less than sources with considerable skill. With the thorough treatment from maritime historians, Exchequer Port Books being statistical in nature, something that motivated Hussey in writing this this work might have easily lost the human work. Fortunately, this is changing and Hussey's element in favour of numeric data which, if work is an important piece of the puzzle for both precise, is hardly conducive to holding the coasting and the early modern period. attention of general readers. Hussey occasionally Using statistical data from the slips into this trap, but by and large, he carefully Exchequer Port Books, Hussey has attempted a weaves statistics together with primary and reconstruction of coastal and riverine commerce secondary narrative sources. Thus, we not only for not only Bristol, but its entire region. The know the quantities and types of goods traded in prominence given Bristol in the book's title may the Bristol region (especially in the main sample imply a narrower port study. One of the work's year, 1699), but are introduced to many of the strengths, however, is that it goes far beyond players in the game. Hussey likewise makes this. Although Bristol is clearly established as frequent use of tables and charts. These are the most important entrepôt in a regional trade helpful for visualising the data and are clearly network, the book never loses sight of the and concisely analysed in-text. importance of centres such as Barnstaple and There are a few caveats here. Hussey Gloucester. In fact, Hussey is careful to firmly states that the idea for the work came to him embed Bristol within its regional hinterland, while studying for his doctoral thesis [xi] and rather than simply place it in 'splendid indeed much of the work itself reads like a isolation'. The value of the monograph is further thesis. The topical divisions do not seem enhanced in that it does not stop there, but especially imaginative, but are nonetheless quite Book Reviews 11 logical. The main source also presents some industries, including consultancy in harbour problems. A great quantity of data is, ironically, design and port logistics, but above all the associated with gaps in the record which plague traditional invisibles - insurance, brokerage etc., the author throughout. Hussey is quite honest in are barely mentioned. For each of his chosen informing the reader of these limitations - subjects, we find there is a definite hinge point perhaps too much. At times, more space seems occurring some time between the end of the occupied with what the data set cannot tell us Second World War and the oil price collapse of than with what it can. 1986. Nonetheless, these criticisms are The story unfolded in Jamieson ' s pages minor. Hussey is to be commended for taking a is one in which the first three of his four sectors fresh look at the city, its region and the larger vie with each other to produce the most rapid issue of England's pre-industrial maritime trade. rate of decline. As a ports specialist, my It is difficult to walk away from this book sympathies lie with the port authorities who, without taking seriously the author's contention attacked, derided and driven close to bankruptcy that Bristol was at least as important a coasting by their customers, were almost finished off" by as a deep-sea centre. He quotes author Daniel successive governments' doubtless well- Defoe's words, "trade, like Religion, is what meaning interventions and vacillations. What is every Body talks of but few understand." [200] particularly sad is that the shipping industry, With this work Hussey brings us a little closer to having forced the ports into incurring that understanding. unsustainable levels of debt to meet their needs, couldn't even make any money out of it, and David Clarke ended up variously scrounging for government Twillingate, Newfoundland subsidies, selling out to foreign owners, quietly going bankrupt or diversifying into the management of old folks' homes. Somehow, Alan G. Jamieson. Ebb Tide in the British being mugged is even more annoying if the Maritime Industries. Change and Adaptation mugger leaves his swag on the bus on his way 1918-1990. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, home. Just about the only success story Jamieson www.ex.ac.uk, 2003. 239 pp., maps, tables, comes up with is P&O. illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. £37.50, The shipbuilders, as Johnman and cloth; ISBN 0-85989-728-1. Murphy have shown, simply beggar belief. Jamieson does an excellent job of synthesizing It is a good thing we Brits have given up being their work with other recent studies to show patriotic, for otherwise, this book would result in quite how it came about that the industry could a significant rise in acute clinical depression. It emerge in 1945 and enter the long boom with charts the remarkable way in which Britain's almost no competition (most other shipbuilding maritime industries led the world at the end of centres having been heavily war-damaged) and 1918 and by 1990 had reached the position of still collapse. Shipbuilders persistently failed to near-inconsequentiality. identify what the market wanted and to provide 'Maritime industries' are effectively it: as Jamieson points out, when the market defined for the author's purposes, by his choice needed tankers and dry bulkers, the builders of chapter arrangement. Between the wanted to build passenger liners and, later, when introduction and the conclusion, there are the cruise liner boom started, British yards were chapters on shipping, shipbuilding, ports and offering tankers and dry bulkers. Again, he can North Sea oil and gas. Deep sea fishing is really only find one success story by way of passed over rather quickly, and one or two other contrast, the development of the SD14 standard areas, which some might consider maritime cargo liner, which could be built in large 78 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord numbers. The industry was nationalized and done a good job in 'zooming out' here, and it privatized again, it swallowed literally billions in seems ungracious to suggest, as above, that he government subsidies, and still it sank. do so even further, but the versatility he has The fifth chapter of the book deals with shown in previous publications suggests that he the huge new opportunities offered to is just the man for it. shipbuilders and shipowners by the development The notes and bibliography of this book of North Sea oil and gas. Here was a last chance are, despite its fairly broad nature, extensive, saloon for the former in building rigs, support covering a large range of specialist works. While vessels, safety vessels, pipe-laying vessels, and established specialists in the field will no doubt an opportunity for the latter to fill their boots regard it as a useful and interesting work, those with money operating the things. It was the same looking for a broader coverage will find, as I did, old story of missed opportunities, of willingness that this is a splendid 'one-stop-shop', saving to diversify into anything that might make a them several inches of bookshelf space and, profit, even in one example, speculating in despite its high-ish price for its size, quite a lot vintage port! Government, as usual, helped of money too. I commend it to everyone except screw things up by adopting a 'free trade' policy nostalgic Brits with suppressed suicidal for support vessels, allowing foreign incursions tendencies. into British 'blocks' at a time when British companies were prevented from competing in Adrian Jarvis, other countries' 'blocks'. Liverpool, UK The author queries whether the maritime industries might form a paradigm for the post-1945 decline of British industry. My Greg Kennedy (ed.). The Merchant Marine in initial view is that it does not, for the British International Affairs 1850-1950. London: Frank motorcycle industry led the world in 1948 and Cass, vvww.frankcass.com, 2000.216 pp., index. has virtually disappeared. The British car £ 17.50 /US $ 26.50, paper; ISBN 0-7146-447- industry ranked second only to that of the United 1-4. States yet the largest British-owned car manufacturer now is a firm called Carbodies, Nowadays shipping is a truly international who make the familiar 'black cabs' you find in business without borders. Individual ships can British cities. Buy a Rolls-Royce, once the be built in one country, owned in a second, proudest brand name in the world, and you get registered in a third, insured in a fourth, an up-badged BMW. One could go on with jet managed from a fifth and crewed by a mixed bag aircraft and computers. There was a deep and of nationalities. While it exemplifies fundamental sickness in British industry in the globalization, the industry remains of vital post-war years, and it was certainly not confined strategic significance - the movement of oil, the to the maritime industries. Low investment in fact that over three-quarters of US military R&D (and often in plant as well), lack of market supplies for the recent campaign in Iraq were research, poor-to-dreadful labour relations, transported by sealift, and the merchant ships managerial luncheon suites whose occupants which made the Falklands operation possible emerged in mid-afternoon, these were all parts of come to mind. Before globalization, shipping it. was more readily identified with its countries of This book is a rare animal, namely a ownership and operation and was therefore, a broad work of synthesis. Maritime history as a factor in international relations. This book is a sub-discipline is strong on highly-specialist and collection of seven papers whose theme is the tightly-focused research, rather less so on this role of national merchant fleets in that era. It is, kind of work: we need more of it. Jamieson has in the words of the editor, Greg Kennedy, not Book Reviews 79 about "how ships move things, rather it is a transported 45 percent of France's imports. study of how nations use the non-fighting part of Because the United States lacked sufficient their maritime power." [1]. sealift, Britain was heavily involved in moving These are carefully-researched papers American troops and logistic support across the by academic scholars in Canada, the UK and the Atlantic. All of this was achieved in the face of US. The final study, by Michael Hennessy, is a ongoing shortages of ships. Even before the dispassionate examination of how the sizeable German U-boat offensive - which did not start Canadian merchant fleet, built during the Second until February 1917 - there were serious World War, was disbursed early in the Cold shipping shortages as early as 1916. They War. Hennessy shows that the government, resulted from a combination of factors, including while disinclined to encourage a national-flag the failure of the North American wheat harvest merchant marine through tax incentives and that year which created a requirement to divert unwilling to subsidize it, did attempt to preserve ships to longer hauls from Australia and India. a critical mass of Canadian-built freighters as a This study is particularly rewarding because it strategic asset for the NATO shipping pool. This traces how developments in widely separated was achieved by encouraging reflagging to UK theatres of war and trades - sustaining the Italian registry. The very first essay, by John Beeler, and French economies, shipments to Russia, looks at the proposals to employ merchant ships movements of grain, sustaining traffic across the as auxiliary cruisers for the Victorian Royal North Atlantic to name a few - were interrelated. Navy. In a third paper, Orest Babij covers Kevin Smith examines Britain's planning between the world wars for oil supply shipping requirements in 1940-41. When war for the Royal Navy in a conflict in the Far East. came in 1939, Britain's merchant marine had William Wray writes that as the First World roughly the same tonnage as in 1914, but now War began generating orders for goods and represented a smaller percentage - just under services, Japanese businessmen talked about "an 30% compared with 44% - of an increased opportunity that comes along once in a thousand world total. Due to the evolution of the shipping years". Based on Japanese and English-language industry, the 1939 fleet now included a tanker sources, his paper discusses how Japanese component, but its dry cargo carrying capacity shipping, and in particular the largest company, was correspondingly almost a fifth smaller than Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), was able to in 1914. Faced with a grim strategic situation exploit opportunities caused by the war. and how after the fall of France, Britain became its operations were affected by shipping control desperately short of ships due to a confluence of mechanisms by the US and other countries. factors including having to haul imports over Two essays concern the demands on longer distances. By 1941, the UK - which had British shipping in the two world wars and filled a shipping vacuum for the United States in provide instructive comparisons. Keith Neilson the First World War - was dependent on looks at the Great War and demonstrates that the America for additional ships. Smith looks at how "strategic sealift" under British control made an "logistics diplomacy" secured this assistance and essential, if little-understood, contribution to hints that skilful negotiation by Sir Arthur Salter, victory. Britain went into the war with a Head of the British Merchant Shipping Mission dominant position in world shipping and was in Washington ("a savvy politician as well as an able to use her merchant marine to sustain her experienced bureaucrat") [166], played a key economy, the "linchpin of the Allied economic role. Kevin Smith has described the intricacies of effort", both by carrying resources from around how wartime Washington tackled shipping the world and by earning money through export issues in greater detail in his Conflict Over cargoes and in cross trades. Moreover, during Convoys (1996); in some respects this essay is a the last two years of the war, British ships telescoped version of the first part of that book. 80 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Greg Kennedy describes American and Harbors and High Seas, a geographical British shipping competition in the aftermath of companion, [xi] As John Hattendorf points out, the Great Depression and the run-up to war, the best historical fiction should raise "curiosity 1933-1939. He has characterized this as a "cold and deeper interest in the historical period in war" as the United States launched an ambitious which the novels are set", [xxi]. Thus, the program to modernize and subsidize its purpose of their latest offering is to "create a merchant fleet while the British shipping readable and interesting book that brings readers industry was recovering from the debilitating one step closer to original materials", [xxii] They effects of the Depression. Kennedy argues that succeeded admirably in this regard: Every Man merchant marine issues in many ways affected Will Do His Duty eases general readers gently the "competitive/co-operative" Anglo-American into the reading of primary sources. relations. The editors have selected excerpts of TheMerchantMarine in International memoirs, diaries and accounts which they Affairs was published by Frank Cass as part of believe "touch on many of the highlights of the a welcome series of titles on naval history and wars", [xxii] They are presented "in a way that policy. Its seven rewarding papers concern an era leads the reader chronologically through the when shipping, only just revolutionized by course of the period", [xxii] The book is divided power-driven vessels, underwent a series of into four parts: the Wars of the French economic transformations. The authors show Revolution; Peace; The Napoleonic War; The how the British, American and Japanese Napoleonic War Continued and the War of merchant marines indeed played an important 1812. Why the Napoleonic War was included in role in the relations between these nations as two sections is not explained, nor is the reason "the non-fighting part of their maritime power". behind the extremely short second section which This study sheds light on an aspect of maritime consists only of a single excerpt. Presumably this history which has received little attention. is to indicate how brief the Peace of Amiens was Recommended. (1802-3) in a age dominated by conflict. The editors provide helpful notes at the Jan Drent beginning of each chapter to introduce the Victoria, British Columbia writers and something of their history and circumstance. At the end of each chapter are very brief epilogues. These commentaries are segues Dean King and John B. Hattendorf. Every Man between the disparate chapters and give will Do his Duty, An Anthology of First-Hand continuity to the work. There is also pertinent Accounts from the Age of Nelson, 1793-1815. information in the table of contents and in notes London: Conway Maritime Press, at the back of the book. It would have been most www.conwavmaritime.com, 2002. xxxvii+425 useful if this information were placed within the pp., maps, bibliography, index. £6.99, paper; chapters, rather than being scattered throughout ISBN 0-85177-931-X. the volume, especially since many non-academic readers will not be used to consulting endnotes. This book is a collection of evocative accounts Each excerpt bears the unmistakable from the "age of Nelson" for a general audience. imprint of its author which gives Every Man Will It is the latest instalment in a series of books do His Duty its character. For the most part, the designed to contextualize the historical fiction of spelling has been modernized - no doubt to make such writers as Patrick O' Brian, Alexander it more accessible to a general audience. The Kent, and C.S. Forester. The editors previously exceptions are two passages by Jacob Nagle. produced A Sea of Words, a guide to the Apparently his spelling was not corrected or technical language used in this genre, and updated at the request of the original editor, but Book Reviews 81 it is still j arring to the sensibilities of the modern Francis Mansbridge. Launching History: The reader. In addition, some accounts are rife with Saga of Burrard Dry Dock. Madeira, BC: maritime terminology and it is odd that editors, Harbour Publishing, www, bar bo iir who published a nautical glossary, were not publishing.com, 2002. xi +226 pp. photographs, more thorough in providing explanatory notes, appendices, bibliography, index. $39.95, footnotes. Even for readers familiar with cloth; ISBN 1-55017-280-8. maritime history, the authors occasionally seem to be 'speaking in tongues'. In 1991-92, Versatile Pacific Corporation The books contains something for became insolvent and closed the gates on its anyone interested in seamen's lives afloat and North Vancouver shipyard. Thus ended years of ashore during the age of sail: there are tales of demanding subsidies from municipal, provincial, adventure on the high seas, as well as the and federal governments and a parent company frustrations and boredom of the seamen's diverting profits to troubled farm machinery existence. Many of these accounts are especially manufacturing in the US Mid-West. The effective in bringing the dangers of wartime company, better known as Burrard Dry Dock, seafaring to light and painting a gory picture of was the oldest and largest steel shipbuilding maritime battles. What emerges is, as the editors concern in British Columbia and among the last suggest, a portrait of a patriotic and diligent of its size on the whole North American West group of men. The reader should be aware that Coast. Three generations of the Wallace family most of these writers were officers. How typical had built ships and grown the business on the were they? These accounts were chosen because North Shore of Vancouver harbour. They sold they made good fodder for historical fiction out to Cornat Industries in 1972, and the writers, but we have no sense of the larger extant company eventually ended up in the hands of body of writing from the period. More context take-over opportunist, Shieldings in 1988. would have been useful in this regard. There is At the last moment, far-sighted staff also a question of reliability which the editors from the North Vancouver Museum and themselves raise. In the preface, Hattendorf Archives received permission to remove any states that "while we can be certain that most of records of potential historical value, literally these pieces were actually written by the seamen gathering up 950 archival boxes worth of papers, who participated in the events, a few raise blueprints, plans, and photographs from floors doubts in the historian's mind", [xxii] This being and drawers. Given that limits on access to still said, should the reader not be given some operating companies can often prove indication which accounts are suspect? insurmountable and records from defunct These are all fairly minor criticisms of companies are commonly lost, preservation of a book which will be well received by those the Versatile Pacific fonds represents a boon for interested in the period and the subject. It is a researchers in maritime, business, and labour very affordable, illustrated with maps, and history. Redevelopment plans for the former includes a thin bibliography and good index. It shipyard site and sea front currently include a focuses on a tumultuous period of warfare in museum and interpretation centre. Francis which the outcome had global implications. This Mansbridge, the archivist at the North work provides us with a wonderful window into Vancouver Museum and Archives, documents the human cost of power politics fought on the the rise and fall of the local shipbuilding dynasty in a richly illustrated book which draws upon the oceans. extensive archival holdings.

Cheryl Fury Burrard Dry Dock, as Mansbridge ably Saint John, New Brunswick describes, was the story of a family business, a community, and a province coming of age from 82 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord a wilderness resource economy into Canada's Esquimalt, and Arthur Burdick next door, wisely West Coast gateway to the world. Alfred decided to cash out their wartime gains, while Wallace, from a shipbuilding family in England, the Wallaces still felt too much debt to the old emigrated to Canada and opened a small wood man's memory to give up on the idea of big- boat-building firm on Vancouver's False Creek scale shipbuilding. High labour, transportation in 1894. The expanding business relocated to the and management costs placed Burrard Dry Dock foot of Londsdale Avenue in North Vancouver, at a competitive disadvantage compared to where Alfred built small ferries, tugs, schooners, shipyards in eastern Canada and elsewhere as and other ships. During World War I, contracts market conditions developed, especially the from the Imperial Munitions Board and rising phoenix of Japan. Mansbridge's familiar Canada's new Government Merchant Marine mantras about West Coast alienation and Ottawa launched Wallace Shipyards into constructing bureaucrats cannot explain away the huge cost standardized steel freighters and a corresponding over-runs in the 1950s destroyer escort and later growth in plant and skills. As a major employer, Coast Guard contracts. The few bright spots in Alfred wrung concessions from a hard-up city an otherwise dismal saga were specialized council and lobbied for federal subsidies. In barges and equipment for the booming forestry 1923, he got a nod to proceed with construction industry and new passenger/car ferries when the of Vancouver's first floating dry dock and W.A.C. Bennett government formed the changed the company name to Burrard Dry publicly-run BC Ferries Corporation under Dock. Although ship repairs largely carried the flamboyant highways minister Phil Gaglardi. As company through the corning lean years, Alfred Clarence reveled in a socialite's world and secured some notable shipbuilding contracts, Hubert imbibed the bottle, the next generation of including Canadian Pacific's elegant coastal Wallaces, David and John, played second fiddle liner Princess Louise, the RCMP' s Arctic vessel to non-family managers running the company. St. Roch, and Vancouver's first fire boat, J.H. Disagreement about succession between Hubert Carlisle. Control over the company passed to and the "children" forced the sale to Cornat, Alfred's son Clarence, later to become British perhaps the smartest move David ever made in Columbia's Lieutenant Governor in 1950, and the interests of the family fortunes. another less-accomplished son, Hubert. Under Under the new owners, construction Clarence's helm, Burrard Dry Dock powered and refit of more ferries and several reinforced through World War II, first with naval ice-breaking ships for a fleeting oil and gas construction of minesweepers and corvettes and boom in the North sustained the business in hard then building of standardized merchant ships, times. In 1981, the company installed a new alterations to US-built escort carriers, and floating dry dock in Vancouver harbour, funded conversion of Victory hulls to maintenance ships by a combination of taxpayer and private monies for the Royal Navy's Pacific fleet train. To meet and capable of lifting Panama-size ships. the demand, a second yard opened on the Fortunately, when the Polar 8 ice-breaker project Vancouver side of Burrard Inlet, and large in the 1980s came to naught and Shieldings numbers of new employees, especially women, liquidated the company, this public investment joined the company's workforce. was protected and ideas to move the dry dock Peacetime and the ensuing decades elsewhere were countered. The Port of entailed few prospects for steel shipbuilding in Vancouver, while no longer a major centre for British Columbia. Burrard Dry Dock instead shipbuilding, still requires ship repair facilities bought out its main rivals and relied heavily for the commercial ships and cruise liners upon government work occasionally thrown its regularly making calls there. The dry dock way by the federal departments of National remains Burrard's most enduring and practical Defence and Transport. Norman Yarrows, in legacy. Book Reviews 83

The large-format book is extremely battleship for over two decades after the First well-put together. Mansbridge's narrative and World War, while consigning innovative new photographs remain clearly focused on the ships technologies, most notably the submarine and and the people who built them. The shaded aside the aircraft carrier, to secondary, supporting boxes with the backgrounds and memories of roles. former employees provide a nice personal touch. In this survey of technological change A useful appendix table, prepared from statistics from the American Civil War to the end of the gathered by Roland Webb, formerly of North Second World War, William McBride examines Vancouver and now working in Seattle for Todd the tendency of military institutions to favour Pacific Shipyard, lists all the known vessels stability over radical innovation. He observes constructed by the company from 1894 to 1988. that in most instances, weapons or platforms that The lay-out and editing are first-rate and might undermine the dominant technological and certainly build upon the quality of a growing list strategic conventions of the day usually meet of books dealing with West Coast maritime with hostility. The innovations that survive in themes. Hopefully, they will find their target this environment tend to be those that find a audience and prosper through sales. non-threatening niche within the prevailing Mansbridge's book, which won the 2002 BC paradigm. Thus, during the battleship era, naval Lieutenant Governor's medal for historical leaders developed submarines and aircraft writing, appeals to the interested general reader carriers as auxiliary vessels that would render and undoubtedly the tourist trade once the doors the traditional surface fleet more effective. Naval on North Vancouver's newest museum open aircraft, for example, would conduct sometime in the future. It combines good public reconnaissance, spot the fall of shot, and history, care of the archival profession, and a eliminate the enemy's aircraft, but they were not conviction not to forget British Columbia's expected to sink enemy battleships. Ultimately, industrial maritime past. it was the big guns of the battle fleet that would accomplish this critical task. Chris Madsen McBride wisely avoids stereotyping Toronto, Ontario naval leaders as simpletons blindly resisting the inevitable rise of new technologies, particularly the aircraft carrier. Battleships were, in fact, William M. McBride. Technological Change relatively safe from air attack during the early and the United States Navy, 1865-1945. years of naval aviation, and it was not until the Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins late 1930s that technology began to catch up University Press, www.press. jhu.edu, 2001. xiii with the prophecies of air power advocates such + 333 pp, photographs, notes, notes on sources, as Billy Mitchell. Even during the Second World index. $ US 35.00, cloth; ISBN 0-8018-6468-0. War, battleships still had a useful role to play. McBride effectively challenges the common The United States Navy has traditionally been assumption that the battleship paradigm died in slow to appreciate the potential of new 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, technologies to transform naval strategy. During noting that aircraft carriers and fast battleships the nineteenth century, it lagged behind its formed a useful partnership throughout the competitors in the transformation from sail to Pacific War, when the former were still steam, as line officers, resentful of the intrusion vulnerable to enemy gunfire during the night and of "non-gentlemanly" engineers into the in rough weather. wardrooms, relegated these newcomers to It was only after the Second World War secondary status within the naval profession. that the battleship was finally supplanted by the Similarly, the United States Navy embraced the aircraft carrier. But was one rigid technological 84 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord model simply replaced by another? The final This book traces the history of the McLaren chapter of this book, which provides a lengthy family - a prominent British Columbia examination of the post-Second World War era, shipbuilding family - who helped form the contends that the modern navy has been backbone of the once vibrant Canadian dominated by aviators who are every bit as shipbuilding industry. Not surprisingly, this myopic as the "battleship club" who ran the story begins in Scotland and is brought to life by inter-war service. Since 1945, McBride charges, Arthur McLaren and Vickie Jensen, a maritime the United States Navy has consistently writer and editor of note. downplayed the vulnerability of aircraft carriers William Dick McLaren, Arthur's to new technologies while developing strategic father, graduated from Glasgow and West of missions that ensured these platforms would Scotland Technical College in mechanical and remain at centre stage. Submarines are being electrical engineering. In 1919, he established relegated to the periphery once again, he warns, Coaster Construction Company Ltd., based in so as not to threaten an entrenched technological Montrose, Scotland, where he hoped to carve out paradigm. Nonetheless, McBride believes that in a niche with his partner building small last decade new ideas and technologies have self-dumping hopper barges. By the early 1920s started to challenge the dominance of naval the company was converting World War I aviation. As in earlier times, war has served as a minesweepers into excursion vessels as well as catalyst for fundamental changes, with the first building purpose-built excursion ships. A Gulf War and subsequent military strikes against number of these vessels were purchased by the Iraq demonstrating to the author the first serious Union Steamship Company in Vancouver, cracks in the Navy's emphasis on aircraft British Columbia. During the lean years the two carriers. partners established Allied Builders Ltd., which The way forward is no clearer for naval built pre-fabricated concrete homes. Despite officers today than it was sixty or a hundred their best attempts to keep the business afloat the years ago, and McBride sometimes seems to shipyard and manufacturer ceased operations in underestimate the difficulty of identifying the 1927. With few prospects in Britain, he traveled right path for the United States Navy in an era of to Vancouver where he found work as a uncertain strategic missions and rapidly consulting engineer. The following year, his wife changing technologies. The Navy's earlier and three children emigrated to Canada. failures, however, are now clear to see. Shortly after the Second World War McBride's conclusions about the years broke out, McLaren was approached by local 1865-1945 are not always new, but both the businessmen to establish a new shipyard on the general reader and the specialist should south shore of False Creek. The company, appreciate this well researched and clearly known as West Coast Shipbuilders Ltd., written survey. received orders in 1941 to start building 10,000 ton Park and Fort cargo ships at their four-berth Christopher Bell facility. William became the shipyard's general Halifax, Nova Scotia manager and was responsible for laying out the new yard, recruiting the workforce and overseeing the construction of the ships. During T. A. McLaren and Vickie Jensen. Ships of Steel: the war the shipyard built fifty-five of these A British Columbia Shipbuilder's Story. vessels to British and Canadian accounts, a truly Madeira Park, B.C.: Harbour Publishing, remarkable feat. The end of the war, however, wvw.harboiirpubusbJnp.com, 2003. 288 pp., brought about a major downturn in province's illustrations, photographs, appendices, index. shipbuilding industry as the market was flooded $39.95 cloth; ISBN 1-55017-242-8. with surplus shipping. Book Reviews 85

In 1946, W.D. McLaren left the Northern Transportation Company Limited company but continued to work as a consulting (NTCL) and the Department of Transport, such naval architect. His son Arthur, with a as Dumit and Miskanaw which were built to mechanical engineering degree from the ferry supplies to the Distant Early Warning University of British Columbia and several years (DEW) line stations which were then under of working for his father, stayed with West Coast construction. In addition, the company built a Shipbuilders and became the new shipyard number of fresh-water ferries for operations on manager. While BC shipyards continued to fill a various lakes and rivers throughout the interior number of both government and commercial of the province. Allied Shipbuilding also played orders, the workforce was a fraction of what it a key role in designing and building the had been and many yards were not working to province's saltwater ferry fleet. their full capacity. In late 1945, West Coast Perhaps the most important Shipbuilders began work on the Anscomb, a technological modification was the roll-on and 180-foot twin-screw vehicle and passenger ferry, roll-off loading which significantly sped up the which would ply the waters of Kootenay Lake. loading and unloading of vehicles. When BC Thus began the McLaren family's 58-year Ferries increased its fleet's carrying capacity in association with préfabrication and modular the 1970s with the "C" Class ferries, it was shipbuilding. Not surprisingly, this type of Arthur who oversaw their construction and endeavour presented all sorts of challenges, not modification. Two decades later, Allied the least of which were logistical. Working in Shipbuilders was awarded the contract to build the field, far from the main shipyard, two 200-foot bow sections for the massive Spirit complicated the construction process as crews class ferries then being built by a consortium of had to work within the limits of what was BC shipyards. The most challenging aspect of available in the field and what the railways could the project was ensuring that the various carry in terms of load and width restrictions. It components, built in separate yards, all fit was a steep learning curve for all involved. As together. By the late 1990s, McLaren and Sons, Arthur McLaren observed, "West Coast had the design division of Allied Shipbuilders, was trained its unskilled men [during the war] to hard at work on the revolutionary 360-foot build one type of ship over and over in the yard. Century Class vessel for BC Ferries. Finally, While they became proficient at their jobs, the Allied played a minor role in the construction of experience they had was doing the same ship 55 times, not building 55 different ships. It became the controversial high-speed aluminium obvious that our wartime crews were specialists, catamaran ferries which were decommissioned not shipbuilders. What we needed now was men and put up for sale shortly after they entered who could build a vessel in a remote area under service. conditions that taxed experience and ingenuity". The continued growth of Allied [72] Shipbuilders led to the opening of its new shipyard in North Vancouver in 1967. In 1979, In 1948, Arthur McLaren established Allied closed its repair yard in Coal Harbour Allied Builders Limited, borrowing the name which it had acquired from Burrard Shipyard from his father's old construction company, and and Engineering Works in 1961, and leased a section of the False Creek yard from the harmonized the company's operations at its new owners of West Coast Shipbuilding. With north shore facilities. It was at its Coal Harbour limited capital and a small yard, Arthur location that Arthur's three sons had cut their concentrated on constructing small all-steel teeth in the business. In the mid-1970s, the first vessels such as boom boats for the logging tugs, supply vessels and icebreakers, including industry, tugs, and fishing vessels. Later, the the new blunt spoon bow icebreakers, designed company built larger barges and tugs for for operations in the western Arctic Ocean came 86 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord off the ways at the new facility. Unfortunately for of North America who, for most of the the McLaren family, the arctic boom turned to nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were bust in the mid-1980s when oil prices regular seafarers. The remarkable stories of these plummeted and the family-run business returned women and their families are slowly being to its roots building smaller all-steel vessels and, recovered from the wealth of journals, memoirs, more recently aluminum ships, the repair and letters they left behind. Grace Ladd's 'sea business. letters' are part of this legacy, and help chronicle Arthur McLaren died in February 1999 a unique period of maritime history. having been president of the Association of Grace was a 21-year-old bride of nine Professional Engineers of BC and a fellow of days in 1886 when she set sail from New York, both the Society of Naval Architects and Marine bound for Shanghai, aboard the Morning Light Engineers and the Royal Institution of Naval with her husband Fred Ladd, captain of the Architects. He succeeded his father - William 1,320-ton wooden barque. Grace's delightful Dick McLaren - who died in 1953, and now letters to her father Charles Brown, that began Arthur's three sons administer their family's 76- on her honeymoon voyage and continued year heritage. The story of shipbuilding in regularly until his sudden death in 1899, make British Columbia in the twentieth and up the main content of this book. The letters, twenty-first centuries cannot be told without from the pen of an intelligent, inquisitive reference to the McLaren family. woman, give a fascinating account of one This illustrated autobiographical family's life at sea and in ports around the world. history of three generations of the McLaren Grace's daughter Kathryn, who made family is an engaging account of the trials and her first voyage before her second birthday, adds tribulations of shipbuilding on the West Coast her adolescent voice to the story through the told in the words of Arthur McLaren and fleshed words of a travel journal she kept during the out by numerous recollections of his colleagues family's final sea journey - a pleasure trip to and a wealth of marine photographs. Equally England in 1915 - and the transcript of her late- impressive, are the appendices which provide a in-life recollections, recorded on film and audio detailed list of the more than 250 vessels built by tape. Allied Shipbuilders and their specifications, and Grace Brown, bom in 1864, and a chronological list of British Columbia Frederick Ladd, six years her senior, were both shipbuilders and the number of vessels from distinguished Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, constructed in those shipyards. This book will families. Their wedding voyage was the serve as a useful guide for anyone interested in beginning of a long and adventurous life at sea. the history of British Columbia shipbuilding. Aboard the Morning Light, and later the steel- hulled Belmont, Grace sailed almost Shawn Cafferky continuously with Fred, until his retirement in Victoria, B.C. 1915. Their children, Forrest, born in 1890, and Kathryn, born in 1901, completed the seafaring family. Louise Nichols. Quite A Curiosity: The Sea Grace's letters are lively and articulate, Letters of Grace F. Ladd. Halifax: Nimbus and she writes of her experiences with humour Publishing, wwwr.nimbus.ns.ca, 2003. 200 pp., and delight. But along with the adventure, photographs, endnotes, glossary, bibliography. Grace's letters also bear witness to the many $18.95, paper; ISBN 1-55109-416-9. challenges of life at sea. After recounting a number of mishaps that had been plaguing them Grace Ladd was one of hundreds of women from on one particular voyage, she writes: "There is maritime communities along the eastern shores Book Reviews 87

nothing but the actual life to knock the romance Nichols' understanding of women's out of 'going to sea'".[90] personal narratives and her engagement with the Nichols writes a fine introduction that subj ect add a warmth and personality to the book adds background and context to Grace's letters; that make it more than a well-researched family history and a glimpse into the workings of historical document. She brings history into the the merchant marine culture of which the Ladds present by sharing her own experiences and were part. She discusses how the letters and conversations with people who knew Grace and journals of Grace and hundreds of her sister her family. The full circle of her research, from sailors are helping break down the stereotype of Grace's opening honeymoon letter to the end of fragile Victorian women and their stifling family the book, is nicely symbolized by the image of life. These personal documents show how Nichols holding Fred's wedding ring, dropped shipboard living blurred the lines between the into her hand by a relative of the Ladds. domestic sphere and the workplace, and reveal that many seafaring couples, like Grace and Joanne Ritchie Fred, had remarkably egalitarian relationships. Ottawa, Ontario The book is illustrated with family portraits, as well as a number of delightful snapshots of the children at play and the crew Wesley Olson. Bitter Victory. The Death of going about their shipboard tasks. Nichols also HMASSydney. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, includes photographs of the artefacts or www.NavalInstitute.org, 2003. ix + 436 pp., "curiosities" Grace collected in her travels, photographs, illustrations, glossary, appendices, passed down through Kathryn to the Yarmouth bibliography, notes, index. US $ 22.95, paper• County Museum. back; ISBN 1-59114-066-8. A particularly engaging aspect of the book is the way Nichols fills in the gaps between The controversy surrounding the loss of the Grace's letters and rounds out the story after the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney in November letters end. In addition to newspaper clippings 1941, along with her entire complement of 645 and official records, she draws on meticulous officers and men, has been the subject of a notes Charles Brown kept of his daughter's years number of books, reports and intense speculation at sea. He recorded dates, ports of departure and over the ensuing years, including a 1998 arrival, time at home, and other family parliamentary inquiry into the sinking. In this milestones, which Nichols uses to map out meticulously researched and in many ways, Grace's travels and give them a time line. As definitive book, author and self-taught well, from Charles Brown's journals, the Australian naval historian, Wesley Olson reminiscences of Kathryn Ladd, and Fred's attempts to answer the many unresolved captain's log, Nichols adds other voices to the questions surrounding Sydney's tragic and narrative, a privilege not often possible when mysterious wartime loss. working with a collection of letters. She adds her Sydney, under the command of Captain own commentary, and weaves all these voices Joseph Burnett, RAN, sailed from the Western seamlessly into the text. Australian port of Fremantle on a routine Clear and informative endnotes mission on 11 November 1941. Her task was to complement the narrative, and Nichols provides escort a troopship to the Sunda Strait. After a useful bibliography. She also adds a helpful handing over her charge to a British cruiser, glossary of nautical terms and phrases, although Sydney independently commenced the return the way these terms are marked with an asterisk passage to Fremantle where she was expected to in the text, sometimes several in one sentence, is berth on the afternoon of 20 November, but she a bit disruptive. never arrived. Although a search was launched, 88 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord perhaps belatedly, and later expanded, no trace during the action which resulted in the of the ship was found other than a single destruction of the Kormoran. battle-damaged Carley float and a lifebelt. It was Lessons were quickly leamt. Within only after more than 300 German survivors were weeks of Sydney's loss, the Admiralty, obviously rescued from life rafts during the ensuing days, prompted by her sinking, issued a warning on that the story was pieced together through the dangers of closing with disguised enemy exhaustive interrogation. As a result, it was raiders. Prior to this, Admiralty instructions were established that Sydney had been involved in an for enemy merchant ships to be captured rather intense, close-range action with the disguised than sunk, which could lead to a British warship German auxiliary raider HSK Kormoran posing being severely damaged while attempting a as the Dutch merchantman StraatMalakka. This capture. Olson's book also highlights the role of short but devastating action resulted in the loss the press and public pressure, particularly of the enemy ship which had sunk or captured grieving families of the missing ship's company, 68,274 tonnes of Allied shipping, while the in seeking answers to the tragic loss of Sydney, badly damaged and burning Sydney was last even in those halcyon days of World War II. seen as a glow on the horizon by the survivors of Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of Sydney's the Kormoran. loss was the lack of a board of inquiry to To the people of Australia, Sydney's investigate her loss, which even in wartime, was wartime loss was a national disaster, which cut accepted practice. a deep wound into the nation's psyche. Why did This attractive and substantial book is Sydney sink? How did she disappear virtually very well illustrated with plans, diagrams, without trace? Why were there no survivors to photographs and maps, and contains a wealth of describe their ship's final moments? Olson, who detailed background information essential to previously published two reports on the loss of understanding how both Sydney and Kormoran the Sydney for the Western Australian Maritime were fought and operated on that fateful day. In Museum, has produced both a compelling an attempt to understand why Sydney was lost narrative and the most convincing explanation following the engagement, it also very effectively yet for the loss of the ship. looks at design deficiencies and case studies of Initially published by the University of action damage where other Australian and Western Australia Press in 2000, this British cruisers of the same or similar classes ground-breaking work, in my opinion, finally suffered similar damage and were saved or, lays to rest any notion of a conspiracy without good fortune, were lost. surrounding the loss of the Sydney, which has Without a surviving eyewitness to been the theme of a number of previous books on Sydney's sinking, and in the absence of the the subject. By examining every piece of wreck being located and inspected, no one can available evidence and carefully reconstructing categorically state how or why Sydney was lost the event through eyewitness accounts and close with little or no trace and why there were no contact with former members of Sydney's crew, survivors to describe their ship's final moments. Olson has very convincingly concluded that the Similarly, no one knows for certain why Burnett primary cause of Sydney's loss was Burnett's decided to take Sydney so close to the disguised fateful decision to close within 1,500 metres of German raider. Olson, with his meticulous, the disguised German raider. He also makes the analytical and pragmatic approach, together with very pertinent point that, despite six decades of very carefully considered speculation where perceiving Sydney's tragic loss as 'something appropriate, has in my view, admirably and very shameful', Captain Burnett and the men under convincingly succeeded in providing the most his command fought gallantly and upheld the plausible answers to the many unresolved proud traditions of the Royal Australian Navy Book Reviews 89 questions surrounding Sydney's tragic and Throughout these early chapters and up mysterious wartime loss. to the launch of the great liner and its outfitting, the authors maintain an uncomplicated Allan du Toit approach; perhaps missing some of the poetry Canberra, Australia conjured up by John Maxtone-Graham in his book The Only Way to Cross. His chapter on the construction and launch of Mauretania makes Mitch Peeke, Steve Jones and Kevin Walsh- for an interesting companion piece to this new Johnson. TheLusitaniaStory. Annapolis: Naval book, as the two sister ships were always so Institute Press, www .Nava Uns t i tu te. org. 2003. closely linked. While Maxtone-Graham was xiv + 175 pp., photographs, appendices, writing primarily for those who had experienced bibliography, index. US $29.95, cloth; ISBN 1- the age of the great liners, this book will appeal 59114-473-6. to both historians and those looking to expand their knowledge of this particular chapter of On May 8, 1915, the magnificent Cunard maritime history. The authors have a very passenger liner, RMS Lusitania was torpedoed readable, straightforward approach, which off the coast of Ireland and sank in just over 18 constantly keeps the story moving. Only minutes, taking 1,201 lives with her to the occasionally does one want more. Six pages of bottom. Today, her loss remains one of maritime text are devoted to the stunning interiors of the history's most controversial disasters. In their ship, yet only two illustrations by John Gray on new book, the authors, members of the Lusitania the back of the dust jacket give the reader any Historical Society, bring a fresh insight into the indication of the true beauty of the ship. sinking through analysis of existing documents, The actual sinking of the ship and the reports and research. They also have the subsequent inquiry provide the real drama in the advantage of an excellent working relationship story and the authors are at their best here. with the American multi-millionaire Gregg Having already discussed the potential weakness Bemis, Junior, who is the current owner of the of the hull design, they incorporate the research wreck of the once great liner. into the actual cargo aboard Lusitania carried out The book begins with an excellent by Colin Simpson for his 1972 book on the ship. account of the events that led to the construction They also use the log entries of Walther of Lusitania and her sister ship, Mauretania. Schwieger, the captain of U-20, who fired the The Cunard Line's years of dominance on the fatal torpedo, to illustrate the fact that the ship's North Atlantic disappeared as German liners cargo, it's location and a tragic bit of luck all surpassed their ships in both speed and luxury. conspired to create an epic tragedy. The graphic Worse still, J. P. Morgan's International account of the attempts to lower the lifeboats on Mercantile Marine was purchasing rival firms at the port side is particularly well done. a record rate, threatening to create a monopoly, Peeke and Walsh-Johnson have against which even Cunard would fall. Enter the previously written an excellent biography of British Admiralty and their agreement with Commodore William Turner, the veteran Cunard Cunard, drafted in 1903. The authors quite Line captain who commanded the ill-fated ship rightly stress the importance of this pact, as the the day she was torpedoed, and so can be agreement and its provisions as to vessel forgiven a slight bias when it comes to assigning construction are critical to the ship's fate. The blame for the sinking. The chapter on the chapter on the ship and its construction points subsequent inquiry and the attempts by the out that the design of the inner hull contained a British Admiralty to make Turner the scapegoat number of weaknesses that would play a major reads with a great deal of ironic humour. part when the ship was torpedoed. 90 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

The continuing story of the Lusitania Expedition), have been enjoying a resurgence in rests in about 300 feet of water off the Irish popularity in recent years. That in part may have coast. The authors conclude with a brief chapter been why this slender volume has been on the exploration of the wreck site and the republished. R. W. Richards was a member of events that caused the sinking of the great ship. the party of men that laid supplies depots for the Here again, more photographic images of the second half of Shackleton's intended crossing of wreck site would have proved useful and the continent from the Weddell Sea to the South something to consider for a second edition. Pole to McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. The The appendix includes a complete account of their struggles is no less epic than that passenger and crew list, as well as the text of the of Shackelton's boat trip to Elephant Island and 1903 pact between Cunard and the Admiralty. then on to South Georgia for help. Their ship Key statistics of the ship are provided and the Aurora was ripped from her moorings in a Society's website address is listed for those savage storm and disappeared approximately six wishing to further investigate the disaster. One weeks after they had laid her up in winter small complaint; the names of those that quarters, but before the majority of the supplies survived are listed in a bold text so faint that had been landed. Nonetheless, falling back on those with poor eyesight would be hard pressed materials abandoned at Hut Point by earlier to tell the difference. This is something else that expeditions, the stranded men set to their task, could easily be corrected in a second printing. knowing that if they let their mishap stop them, In conclusion, the members of the Shackleton and his party would perish. The Lusitania Historical Society are to be depots were laid at great human cost for the congratulated for their efforts. If the exploration journey that Shackleton never made. When the of the wreck site continues, it is hoped that they remnants of the party returned to Hut Point, "it will revisit their work and produce either a was over 10 months since we had left from this second edition or an updated version, which hut to go sledging. We had not been able to could incorporate any new material that comes to remove our clothing to wash in the whole of this light. A solid piece of work and one that has period, and it was pretty difficult to do anything much to offer to those looking for new insight about it even now. ...From this time on, it was a into an old tale question of waiting to see what the next summer and those who are just beginning to appreciate would bring forth in the way of relief. We were the tragedy of RMS Lusitania. not altogether optimistic as I think most of thought Aurora was lost and it was questionable Richard Macmichael whether any relief could be organized in time." Halifax, Nova Scotia [39] But the Aurora had not been lost and sea, and finally she was able to return to rescue the marooned men. R.W. Richards. The Ross Sea Party, 1914-17. R. W. Richards, the author of this work, Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, was a Australian physicist who had sailed with www.bluntishambooks.co.uk, 2003. Facsimile the expedition and was a member of the sledging edition, originally published 1962 by the Scott party. Forty years later he wrote this account. It Polar Research Institute; 44pp., illustrations, was first published as an occasional paper by the map. £14.95/US$26.00, cloth: ISBN 1 85297 Scott Polar Research Institute in 1962, and is 077 4. now being reissued. The tale will be familiar to many through Lennard Bickel's Shackleton's Accounts of polar exploration, and particularly Forgotten Men (New York, 2001). Bickel had Shackleton's Endurance expedition, (or more the use not only of this record but also the properly the Imperial Trans-Antarctic opportunity to interview Richards when he was Book Reviews 91

84 and still with a sharp memory. Bickel's more The results speak for themselves in their comprehensive work will be of greater interest to portrayal of the conditions on shore and at sea. the general reader. Specialists and collectors of Reproduction in the book is also of very high antarctic accounts will be delighted to have this quality on large pages (10 inches by 12 inches), new edition of a work that is seldom seen in the which gives the images additional impact. second hand market. Douglas has also taken the time to show the underwater shapes, propellers and William Glover other features of tugs rarely seen by casual Kingston, Ontario watchers. He has followed the action by helicopter and boat in all kinds of weather to capture the feel of time and place in which the Peter Robson and Betty Keller, Robb Douglas tugs must work. (photographer). Skookum Tugs: British Nor has he ignored the crews. Many Columbia's Working Tugboats. Madeira Park, photos illustrate the hard and dangerous work B.C.:Harbour Publishing www, harbour aboard the tugs, whether on deck, in the publishing.com, 2003. 144pp., photographs. wheelhouse or out on log tows. There is, $49.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55017-275-1. however, one posed portrait of a female deck hand which seems out of place and somewhat The tugs of the British Columbia coast are sexist to this reader. prolific and unique. They are an integral part of The text and captions give further the region's history, and form an important cog insight into the lives and labour of the people in the industrial machinery of the region. While who run the boats, and also explain in easily their photogenic quality has been caught before, accessible language, many of the features of the this book really captures their essence and tugs, their work and the activities and character importance and provides an insight into those of the crew. who make their lives aboard them. Towing log rafts was once common in As explained in the foreword, many parts of the world, but it has reached a "Skookum" comes from the Chinook trade high art in B.C. Seemingly tiny tugs manage to language and has entered the vocabulary of most move huge floats of logs with only one or two British Columbians. It means strong or sturdy deck hands, in a constantly flowing river, often (and in my experience, can also mean genuine). choked with other traffic. It is truly a fascinating It is certainly an apt word to describe the sight, and well captured in this book. powerful, and often small tugs working the B.C. Another unique aspect of B.C. towing coast. These purposeful craft have evolved for is the huge tipping barges which load logs by very specific types of work, and the book's their own cranes. A big tug tows the barge to the chapters outline their various jobs. booming ground where it purposely floods it The ubiquitous tugs have endeared tanks to tip the barge deck and slide the logs off themselves to many by their stubborn and into the water. The tug, and life aboard are very persistent look and their constant busyness. different from the small booming tugs, but part Robb Douglas' images give very clear definition of the same industry, with people moving back to the work of these boats. Although the and forth between. photographs are documentary in that sense, they Barge tows exist worldwide, but each are composed and lighted in a way seldom seen area is slightly different, and perhaps no where in shipping books. There are many dramatic has such a wide range of towed commodities as angles, night-time and low-light photographs, B.C. Douglas illustrates a good range of these to and several in conditions that most show the importance of tugs in so many aspects photographers would consider marginal at best. of the province's economy. 92 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Ship berthing has become the domain In 1740, Georg Steller, a German-trained scholar of specialized tugs worldwide but again, BC has affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences, developed specific types for its own conditions. arrived in the Russian Far East as part of the Whether dealing with container ships or huge Second Kamchatka Expedition(1733-1743). His bulk carriers, BC tugs are generally smaller but mission was to report his observations to the more powerful than others. That their crews are Tsar. The present volume represents an attempt excellent ship handlers should come as no to translate a linguistically complex text of some surprise. They are able to do things with their of Steller's observations during his time on the tugs that others would not attempt, thanks to Kamchatka Peninsula. As a glimpse of an exotic skill and experience. region shortly after its colonization, Steller's The last chapter, entitled "Boredom History of Kamchatka is a fascinating read. The and Terror", attempts to explain how tug author had a limited understanding of the native workers deal with the "hours and hours of cultures, his Christian paternalism sometimes boredom interrupted by moments of sheer got in the way, but the book nevertheless offers terror", and why they chose such a line of work. a relatively systematic and sympathetic It comes down to camaraderie and independence, description of the region's geology, climate, summed up by one skipper: "The office can send plants, animals, people, and politics. It also, down all the damn memos they want. But albeit with difficulty, can illustrate the state of eventually we gotta leave the dock and do our natural science in the eighteenth century. As a work." text for primary research, however, this This book could easily be mistaken for translation is seriously flawed. a coffee table picture book, and it would Because a critique of Steller's History certainly succeed on that level. The photographs of Kamchatka hinges on the translation's are superb and often spectacular, complemented reliability, explicating its technical problems by a well written, informative and lively text. It necessarily precludes a description of its gives a broad overview of the British Columbia contents. Margritt Engel and Karen Willmore towboating industry, and some insights into the based their translation on German publisher J. B. lives of the workers. Technical information is Scherer's 1774 Beschreibung von dem Lande presented in a clear way, and should be Kamtschatka, first printed 28 years after Steller's accessible to a wide range of readers. untimely death. The Engel-Willmore translation is mostly loyal to Scherer's printing, but this Mac Mackay means that they relied on someone else's Halifax, Nova Scotia rendition of Steller's manuscript rather than, as the translators note in the preface, the original manuscript, which had resurfaced in a Russian Georg Steller. (Margritt Engel and Karen archive at least seven years before the present Willmore, trans.) Steller's History of book was published. Why the translators (and Kamchatka. Collected Information Concerning University of Alaska Press) continued to rely on the History of Kamchatka, Its Peoples, Their Scherer's 1774 publication is a matter for Manners, Names, Lifestyle, and Various speculation, but readers should note that a more Customary Practices. Fairbanks, Alaska: authoritative text is extant, especially when University of Alaska Press, www.uaf.edu, translators sometimes guess at Steller's meaning Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series (see e.g. p.28, fii.24; p. 100, fh.8). 12, 2003. xiv + 298 pp., illustrations, Engel and Willmore also used a bibliography, index. US $27.95, paper; ISBN 1- translation strategy that distorts Steller's 889963-49-6. historical context. Many times they replace Steller's phrases with modern names, Book Reviews 93 particularly in reference to plants and animals. Although translation is an inexact art, accuracy The translators intended to bring clarity to the is the foundation of scholarship and this text is text, but they have actually altered both the wanting. meaning and implications of Steller's Steller's observations could provide observations and, by extension, the text's useful points of reference for research on the historical relevance. For example, the chapter on aboriginal cultures and environments of the fishes of Kamchatka is a very early and Pacific Rim, his comments about relations fascinating description of some Pacific basin between the native peoples and their Russian fishes, but Engel and Willmore repeatedly rulers could provide insights into the contentious replace Steller's phrases with modern names for subj ect of colonialism, but this book contains too species such as Dolly Varden trout and many flaws to be considered reliable. The series steelhead, chinook, red, chum, and silver editor, Marvin Falk, should have held the salmon. Not only are these names exotic - translators to a higher standard, and he should "chinook," for example, was an early-nineteenth- have pushed for a format that retained Steller's century derivation of a Columbia River village - original phrases and relegated modem names but their classification as salmon is also either to footnotes or to brackets, as was done in anachronistic. It was not until Johann some cases such as pink salmon. [115] The Walbaum's publication of Petri Artedi Sued press, moreover, shouldhave patiently waited for a careful translation of the original manuscript. Genera Piscium in 1792, that any of these fish Because none of that transpired, this book raises were classified as Pacific salmon, and, in another too many doubts to warrant recommendation. strange irony, the Kamchatkan names that Walbaum used remain the standards for modern ichthyologists. Joseph E. Taylor III These are not merely technical Ames, Iowa criticisms. A careful reading reveals that Steller struggled to understand Kamchatkan nature, but the translators cloud his experiences by creating John Thomson, (ed.). Elephant Island and more clarity than he actually expressed. For Beyond: The Life and Diaries of Thomas Orde example, when Steller mentions the "well- Lees. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, known steelhead", [105] he not only invokes a www.bluntishambooks.co.uk, 2003. 339 pp., thoroughly alien phrase but the attached footnote photographs, maps, drawings, bibliography, shows that the Scherer printing had in fact read index, £24.95/US $45.00, cloth; ISBN 1-85297- "common salmon, somga in Russian". [122, 076-6. fn. 13] This means that Steller either had located an Atlantic salmon or, more likely, had mis- "The aristocracy of Antarctic exploration", identified steelhead as Salmo salar. His Thomson begins, discouragingly but truthfully, ambivalence is even more obvious when "does not include the name of Thomas Orde describing Pacific salmon as looking "very much Hans Lees..." [1] Thomas Orde Lees (1877- like a salmon" [110] and as "salmon-like 1958), a captain in the Royal Marines, was a species". [120] Steller had entered a strange member of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914-1916 environment, and his remarks (as represented by Endurance expedition. The expedition has Scherer and re-represented by the translators) gained fame for the way Shackleton coped with reveal how a formally trained scientist fell back disaster after the Endurance was crushed in the on only partly-satisfactory analogies to make ice. With a small crew, he set off on an heroic sense of novelty. In this and many other open-boat journey leaving most of the men instances, Engel and Willmore have obscured behind on Elephant Island to await rescue. the past by trying to make it more accessible. Cooped up in a tiny hut made from two 94 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord overturned boats, existing largely on penguins, The bulk of the book, about 250 pages, this hungry, filthy, miserable group of men grew is the diaries. They are not printed in full, being to dislike Orde Lees more and more. It has been hundreds of pages long. Thomson does provide suggested that in the last resort he would have synopses of omitted material, but it seems that headed up the menu. Apart from this unenviable ellipses are not always noted, perhaps as too distinction, Orde Lees is best remembered for the distracting. Compare for example, the entry for diaries he kept. The absence of a published 19 February 1915 as presented in Huntford [416] version of such an essential and heavily used and Thomson. [42] In any event, the diary is still source as the Orde Lees diaries was a significant a great read. Orde Lees was vivid about daily life lack in Polar literature. in such extraordinary conditions, and acute, Orde Lees and I are connections (we unsparing and often very funny about himself share Irish relatives) and this may predispose me and others. He could also genuinely admire men towards him. Yet, if I could have chosen a polar such as Shackleton and Frank Wild, while at the figure to claim kinship with, Thomas Orde Lees same time honestly expressing what he did not - exasperating, eccentric, endearing - might well like about them. have been the man. After the expedition, he There is well-researched biographical campaigned to have RAF planes outfitted with material on the rest of his life - his parachute parachutes. Authorities thought that parachutes jumping, his years in Japan and New Zealand, would encourage cowardice and would not in his two marriages. Renee, his daughter by his any case be effective at low altitudes. To prove first marriage, made him the father-in-law of the them wrong, in 1919 Orde Lees jumped off Oxford philosopher, Sir A.J. Ayer. One chapter Tower Bridge, a height of barely 150 feet. For presents what evidence there is for a plot to kill many years this remained the lowest voluntary and eat him. A truly startling revelation comes at parachute jump on record. The jump showed not the beginning. Orde Lees was the son, not of his only that Orde Lees was fearless and athletic - in father's wife, but of his father's mistress. He effect, he was one of the pioneers of the extreme grew up believing that his birth mother was a sport of BASE jumping, or parachute jumping dear family friend and that he was bom in 1879 from fixed objects - but also suggests a need to rather than 1877. show up authority. The book is a welcome addition to His conflicted attitude towards Bluntisham's 'The Heroic Age of Antarctic authority is also pointed up in an anecdote Exploration' series. It is also a happy fit of related in Roland Huntford's life of Shackleton author and subject. This is John Thomson's (1985). As a young Marine officer Orde Lees second book related to the Endurance was reprimanded for carrying parcels while in expedition. The first was about his fellow New uniform. According to Huntford, "He responded Zealander, Frank Worsley. Orde Lees spent the by having the buttons of his tunic reinforced so last, and perhaps the happiest, years of his life in that he could hang his shopping down his front." New Zealand. The major collection of his [536] By seeming to take authority so seriously, records is in Wellington's Alexander Turnbull he made authority and its rules look ridiculous. Library. As books go these days, it is reasonably Walking along with parcels bumping against his priced. It should afford a great deal of pleasure to middle he would have made himself look Antarctic buffs and to anyone who would enjoy ridiculous too, but he seems to have had the born learning more about a fascinating and quirky entertainer's lack of false shame. This was an character. aspect of his personality that flowered in old age when he delighted to entertain children. There is Anne Morton a wonderful photo of him as Father Christmas. Winnipeg, Manitoba [314] Book Reviews 95

Glyn Williams. Voyages of Delusion: The Quest region - many of whom never lived to tell their for the Northwest Passage. New Haven & tale. Williams explores Old World hopes, London: Yale University Press, dreams, and speculation as they collided with www.vale.edu/yup, 2003. xx+467 pp., maps, New World realities of the Arctic's uncharted illustrations, appendices, index. US $29.95, lands, uncompromising terrain, and unforgiving cloth; ISBN 0-300-09866-9. climate. He elicits compassion for the sailors' plight, outrage at comfortable London officials Voyages of Delusion by Glyn Williams will passing judgment on the men in a land they have undoubtedly stand as the authoritative piece on never seen, and awe for those who challenged an eighteenth century quests for that "will-o'-the unpredictable region where survival rests on the wisp of northern geography" [20] - the thinnest of threads. Northwest Passage. Misguided adventurers, Williams delves into two approaches to inaccurate and incomplete information, ignorant the elusive Passage: from Hudson Bay in the east speculators, and the uncompromising elements and from the Pacific Ocean in the west. Not only come together in rich narrative and confirm the has Williams utilized primary documents of the "delusion" of the voyages. The strength of time, but he has also employed twentieth century Williams' book lies in his detailed and exciting archeological and anthropological discoveries. prose seamlessly interwoven with primary One example suffices to illustrate the strength of sources - many unpublished papers, journals this technique, but numerous examples exist. In and letters from Hudson Bay Company Archives Chapter One, Williams painstakingly details the - integrated with new and archival maps and multiple motives, personalities, preparations, drawings. The result is an indispensable and expectations of James Knight's 1719 contribution to any library building its collection expedition to find the Northwest Passage. on exploration in general and on eighteenth Financed by the Hudson Bay Company, Knight's century Arctic exploration in particular. two ships had an inauspicious start, "vanished The elusive Northwest Passage from European view, and their fate became one captivated the imagination of explorers and of the most baffling mysteries of northern governments alike, and in the eighteenth century exploration". [25] Williams recounts how neither centered on a passage to the Orient from Hudson the Company nor the British government were Bay. Unlike the deluge of publicity and activity inclined to search for the ships. A popular of the nineteenth century voyages further north, scenario was subsequently built upon Inuit this era's quests were little recognized by the stories and wreckage from the ships and an public of the time. Anyone familiar with the abandoned building found later in a remote Arctic is aware of its inherent and timeless harbour. But archeological digs and dangers: deadly cold; ice that can trap and crush anthropological evidence made by investigative a hapless ship; white-outs, fog and snow that teams in 1970-71,1989, and 1992 dispelled the make visual bearings impossible; months of popular myth. And yet, the Arctic did not give unremitting darkness; violent tides and storms up its secrets: "where and how the men died; that toss and destroy ships; and the magnetic how long they survived; the part played by the North to confuse a seaman's compass. In the Inuit" [45] remain a mystery to this day. eighteenth century, add death from scurvy, Over one-third of the book is malnutrition, unsanitary ship and shore dominated by the indomitable Irish MP, Arthur conditions, frostbite and complications from Dobbs. His twenty-year quest helped launch two amputations, plus alcohol consumption that expeditions, as well as post-voyage inquiries of impaired both body and mind. One wonders and the failed voyages. He even had his (hidden) marvels at the vision, tenacity, and sheer force of hand in a book critical of the Hudson Bay will (or folly) that drove men to explore this Company. The Hudson Bay Company was in the 96 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Arctic, aware of its harsh realities, weary of extensive. Excellent explanatory captions speculative maps and glowing scenarios of the accompany the archival maps and drawings. riches to be found after discovery of the Passage, Perhaps the only criticism is the length of the unwavering in its campaign to retain exclusive paragraphs. The very detailed narrative captures rights to its Charter lands, and only reluctantly the reader's attention, and paragraph breaks shedding its climate of secrecy. Williams is bring a welcomed pause and chance to digest the blunt in his assessment of key characters in the material. With paragraphs often a full page, the various dramas. Dobbs' quest for the Passage text and reader could use more such breaks. But served as a cloak for his interest in breaking the this is so minor compared to the contribution of Company's commercial monopoly and receiving this book to the literature, that such a challenge a charter of his own. [ 190] Captain Middleton, is a very small price to pay. who sailed in 1741, was a skilled "navigator and hydrographer", [209] while John Rankin was "a Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel worthless officer whose mendacity helped to Omaha, Nebraska wreck the career of his former captain", [209- 210] and Hudson Bay Company factor James Isham was "in some ways the unsung hero". Andrei A. Znamenski. Through Orthodox Eyes: [210] Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the By relating the concurrent Pacific Dena'ina andAhtna, J850s-J930s. (Translated exploration, first by the Spanish and Russians by the Author). Fairbanks, Alaska: University of and later by the British and French, Williams Alaska Press, www.uat'.edu, Rasmuson Library puts the Passage in the context of European Historical Translation Series 13,2003. xiii + 346 competition for claims to the New World. The pp., illustrations, appendices, bibliography, stories of Vitus Bering and James Cook, index. US $27.95, paper, ISBN 1-889963-50-X. pioneers who lost their lives even as their legacies remain, are exciting and tragic. But it For centuries, Russia's expansion of territory and was Captain George Vancouver's meticulous sphere of influence was accompanied by the charting of the west coast in the 1790s that conversion of indigenous peoples to Russian closed the door on the century and the belief in a Orthodox Christianity. Orthodox missionary Passage. Vancouver "saw his mission, not as an work, however, differed significantly from its attempt to discover the passage but as one to Roman Catholic and Protestant cousins in a prove, once and for all, that it did not exist". greater emphasis on the preservation of native [402] In the end, it was Alexander Mackenzie, language, culture and custom. By the 1850s, taking an overland route from the interior to the Orthodoxy was an integral feature of life in Pacific Ocean, who became the first European Russian America and ecclesiastical authorities "to cross the American continent north of anticipated a future for the Church linked to Mexico". [397] And it was not until 1903 that a continually expanding mission work and ship traversed a water Passage from the Atlantic increasing numbers of native converts. to the Pacific. Only then was "the sailor dream of Through Orthodox Eye: Russian five centuries [realized] : The Near Way to the Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Far East is North" (Vihjalmur Stefansson, Dena'ina and Ahtna, 1850s to 1930s provides a Northwest to Fortune, 1958). look at part of the Russian Orthodox missionary Undoubtedly an indispensable and integral work in Alaska through eight decades of addition to any library on Arctic exploration, missionary reports on these people of south- Williams' book will serve researchers well. central Alaska by six churchmen; several other Although there are no footnotes, the documents are appended. Andrei Znamenski bibliographic sources in Appendix II are compiled and translated these primary Book Reviews 97 documents. His thorough analytical introduction difficult it was to superimpose Orthodox is helpful, especially for the non-specialist. liturgical life on native patterns of living. Over In these reports, prepared in the field time Orthodoxy became so much a feature of for diocesan officials, a number of themes indigenous culture that it helped define native persist. First, and perhaps most interesting to the identity, yet these documents suggest how general reader, is the climatic and geographic tenuous Orthodoxy's early hold on the reality of Alaska itself. Travel - the lifeline of indigenous population could be. For their part, missionary effort - presented challenges in every the missionaries were hampered by limited season, by land and by sea, and is an integral language skills - a troubling fact, especially feature of the reports. Another theme is change - since Bishop Innocent had made fluency the generally interpreted negatively - for both the missionary standard years earlier. They relied on Orthodox clergy and Alaska natives connected indigenous and Creole interpreters to explain the with the sale of Alaska in 1867. Perhaps the faith and depended on the local laity to maintain consequence the missionaries felt most acutely the faith during the months and years between was diminished financial support for Alaskan visits. missions, largely because of diocesan As decades passed, missionaries restructuring and relocation accompanying this tracked problems associated with the altered political reality. Americanization of Alaska - low levels of As the title suggests, the authors of the financial support from the Church and lack of documents had an Orthodox - and, by extension, respect for Orthodoxy by non-natives. Alcohol European Christian - perspective, and they remained an intractable problem. Brotherhoods evaluated indigenous traditions and practices - essentially self-help organizations formed by according to European norms. When the latter natives under the auspices of the Church to solve clashed with the former, European values won. community and personal problems - promoted Orthodox churchmen insisted that polygamy and temperance. shamanism -ancient features of native culture - Other long-term worries included were incompatible with Christianity and worked behaviour by the Americans that "poisons tirelessly to eliminate them. Beyond this, children" and violated social norms; insidious missionaries sought to cope with the reality of notions about race that divided the community; native life. and where to fix loyalty in Alaska's changing The clergymen were troubled by the circumstances. The missionaries had a unique vulnerability of the native population to perspective on both education and government. starvation, epidemic disease, syphilis and Traditional parish schooling was displaced by a alcoholism. Funeral liturgies were matter-of- segregated government-financed system, factly reported, death unremarkable, except in exacerbating divisions among white, Creoles and one instance where an old man died from natives. gangrene over several days, and in another where Through the early twentieth century, travel dogs died from starvation. The health Orthodox clergymen expressed frustration with conditions that the missionaries themselves American attitudes towards native Alaskans. found most limiting included diminishment of Their own criticisms notwithstanding, they hearing and eyesight, toothaches, and weariness. feared the forces - "alien" missionaries, The missionaries emphasized the bureaucrats and businessmen - arrayed against factors they believed made native life difficult - traditional culture. Priest Pavel Shadura communities dependent on a subsistence identified the two tenets of official policy that existence not strictly nomadic, but still mobile; threatened the indigenous population: first, and individuals with essentially good character "These officials shared the same opinion... the still lazy and improvident - and understood how sooner these dirty and ungrateful nationalities The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord are wiped out from the face of the earth, the better for the nation. They also stressed that the natives would be replaced ... ," and second, "In some localities the United States government now preserves Alaskan natives for demonstrative purposes as rare specimens". [271] Well into the new century, attitudes, alcohol and perennial difficulty in obtaining work seemed ready to overwhelm both missionaries and natives alike. Yet the final report (1937-1940) ends on a hopeful note: drinking declines, employment improves, and roads, cars and trains trace this once-isolated territory. Though the text suffers from small grammatical flaws, Znamenski's work is a welcome addition to the literature on Russian Orthodoxy in America. The general reader will find many thought-provoking observations about life in coastal Alaska a century ago.

Judith Ball Bruce Sandston, Virginia