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BOOK REVIEWS

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Patrick Beesly. Very Special Intelligence: TheStory of the Admiralty's Intelligence Centre1939-1945. London: Chatham Publishing,www.chathampublishing.com, 2006. xxiv + 296pp., illustrations, bibliography, index.UK£12.99, paper; ISBN 1-86176-277-1.

Philip Chaplin and Daniel G. Harris. ObservedSecretly: Northern Window. Ottawa, ON:Helmsman Publications, 2006. xiii + 195 pp.,photographs, maps, appendices, bibliography,index. CDN$22.95, paper; ISBN 0-9737444-0-5.

Gathering intelligence information about enemyoperations at sea was probably the most crucialactivity of Britain's Royal Navy throughout theSecond World War. Yet there are relatively fewhistorical studies of naval counter-espionage andcode-breaking available to this day. Tworecently released books written by officers whowere personally involved at the time, however,have filled this gap in public knowledge.

Very Special Intelligence remains thedefinitive study of Operational IntelligenceCentre (OIC), the nerve centre of the BritishAdmiralty in the Second World War. This unitof the Naval Intelligence Division collected,analyzed and disseminated information gleanedfrom every source that could detect theintentions and movements of German naval, airand maritime forces.

Despite his relatively junior rank oflieutenant, author Patrick Beesly served in asenior role at OIC from 1940 to 1945. He waspersonally responsible for tracking Germansurface raiders and locating U-boat wolf packs,which enabled him to authoritatively tell the fullstory. Originally published in 1977, and just re-issued, his book may puzzle some of today’sreaders by its lack of detail about the code-breaking methods at the now-famous BletchleyPark Government Code & Cipher School. Thatis because in the 1970s very little informationabout top-secret “Ultra” had been declassifiedfrom official archives.

This edition helpfully sets thesignificance of OIC’s work in context with theaddition of new commentary by two other

experts. An introduction by W.J.R. “Jock”Gardner of the Naval Historical Branch inLondon provides an instructive overview of thenaval war and the role of Ultra. In his afterword,code-breaking expert Ralph Erskine summarizesthe results of twenty-five years of research intothe role of signal intelligence in the Battle of theAtlantic.

Beesly writes in a typical navalofficer’s straightforward unflappable style thatmakes the dramatic events seem all the moreremarkable. He summarizes British navalintelligence throughout the war, and explainshow the problems of the early years wereeventually overcome by gradually breakingenemy codes. We learn much about “Enigma,”Germany’s ingenious cipher-machine, and theRN’s repeatedly successful efforts to captureupdated versions from enemy vessels.

He explains that German wirelesstraffic was by no means the only source ofintelligence utilized by the Royal Navy. It alsorelied on reports by secret agents in Europe,photo-reconnaissance, radar and othertechniques to track, contact and sink Axisshipping. Beesly ably documents the pursuit ofthe Bismarck, the audacious “Channel dash”escape of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, theConvoy PQ17 disaster, the Battle of the Atlanticand – most crucial of all – the war against the U-boats.

There were times when Germansubmarine successes in the wholesale sinking ofAllied shipping threatened the outcome of thewar. Brave U-boat crews were ruthlesslyefficient, pressing on despite losing 28,000killed out of a total of 39,000 underwater sailors. Despite this high casualty rate, Gross AdmiralDonitz’s submarine fleet remained a formidablemenace right up to V-E Day in May 1945.

It is heartening to learn that the navalintelligence departments of Britain, Canada andthe United States rapidly formed a cordial, co-operative and entirely open relationship whichlasted throughout the war. Beesly keeps himselfmodestly in the background during his account,while crediting his able colleagues of the OIC. Among the many mentioned are Vice Admiral

70 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord

Sir Norman Denning, Captain Rodger Winn, apolio-disabled civilian lawyer who proved tohave an uncanny instinctive genius as head ofthe tracking room, and Cdr Kenneth Knowles,USN. The author also gives generous praise tothe hundreds of anonymous young women whoworked long and weary hours at the Admiraltyand Bletchley Park without an official word ofthanks or recognition for their devoted and vitalservices.

The only weakness in Very SpecialIntelligence is the lack of any maps, whichwould have helped readers follow shipmovements a bit better. Despite publication ofall the later books on the subject, this reviewerconsiders Beesly’s still best of the lot. Highlyrecommended.

Intelligence gathering is viewedthrough the other end of the telescope inObserved Secretly: Northern Window. It tellsthe little-known story of how British navalintelligence agents in Sweden worked covertlyto help gather military and economic secrets. The “Northern Window” refers to Sweden, theneutral country that Patrick Beesly described asBritain’s most vital overseas source of wartimeinformation. One of its co-authors, the latePhilip Chaplin, was a Second World Warveteran of the RCN who then worked with theDirectorate of History in Ottawa for many years.

The book focuses on the recollectionsof Daniel Harris, an RNVR lieutenant whoserved as a British Naval Attaché in Stockholmfrom 1940-1946, and was happily married there. Postwar, he emigrated to Canada and had adistinguished career in our Naval Reserve. Hemaintained life-long business connections withSweden, which awarded him prestigious navaland civilian awards. Proceeds from the sale ofthis book are being donated to the HMCSSackville restoration fund.

The authors convey a strong sense ofhow frustrated a keen young officer like Harrismust have been by the bumbling incompetenceof some of the RN officers and consular officialshe encountered early on. Fortunately, thisdeadwood was quickly replaced by moreprofessional colleagues under command of theredoubtable Lt-Cdr H. Denham, who formed ahighly effective British intelligence-gathering

team. Harris learned how to swim through thetricky minefield of intelligence work in a neutralcountry, where he had to be as wary of theSwedish counter-espionage service as of Naziagents.

Under cover of diplomatic and socialconnections, Harris used his linguistic skill inSwedish to develop useful links withsympathetic Swedish military officers. Notableamong the covert information they provided tothe British Legation was knowledge aboutsudden movement of the German battleship,Bismarck. Harris pedaled his bicycle though thenight to a local telegraph office to send a MostImmediate coded signal to the Admiralty. Thisunassuming, low-tech method launched theRN’s epic hunt that sent the pride of theKriegsmarine to a watery grave. Other valuablework of the naval attachés in Sweden includedorganizing blockade running of strategic metals,funnelling intelligence tips from the Danish andNorwegian Resistance movements, spreadingpro-British propaganda and reporting secretpeace proposals by Germany.

During a brief leave in Britain, Harrisencountered a certain Lt-Cdr Ian Fleming, whowas touting his plans for wildly impracticalsecret operations. Amusingly, Harris replied,“You've been reading too many spy-stories!”This is a tantalizing book at times, when theauthor briefly mentions some dramatic-soundingincidents, then passes on without giving anydetails. For instance, he mentions that Swedenallowed the British Royal Air Force to set up astation on Southern Oland to interrupt GermanV2 rockets, but we are told nothing further.

Daniel Harris recounts numerousevents entirely from memory, so he is to becomplimented for his near-total recall of half acentury ago. The book could have benefitedfrom an editor, though, to catch typographicalerrors and clarify a couple of anecdotes. Nonetheless, Observed Secretly: NorthernWindow provides rare insights into an obscurenaval aspect of the Second World War.

Sidney AllinsonVictoria, British Columbia.

Book Reviews 71

Chris Bishop. Kriegsmarine U-Boats, 1939-45.The Essential Submarine Identification Guide.London: Amber Books Ltd.,www.amberbooks.co.uk, 2006. 192 pp., maps,illustrations, tables, index. US$39.95, paper;ISBN 978-1-904687-96-2 and ISBN 1-904687-96-2.

It is said that an average of six books per yearhave been published on Nelson and the Trafalgarcampaign in the 200 years since that battle. Itwas certainly true for last year’s bicentennial. Itwould likewise seem that the six-per-year figurecould probably be doubled for books about theBattle of the Atlantic and the Kriegsmarine’s U-boats in the sixty-one years since that struggle. They continue to pour forth annually in everfiner detail, from both well-known authors likeJohn Keegan, and from unknowns – at least tothis reviewer. Many are “I was there” memoirsby commanders and ordinary seamen; othersdeal with grand strategy and the sweep ofevents; many more concern the minutiae on bothsides of the battle, Allied and Kriegsmarine andLa Marina Italiana – technicalities, code-breaking, leadership, individual convoy battles,ship and U-boat histories, etc.

This volume is one of many on theorganization, employment and results of U.4, theGerman U-Boat arm. It is essentially a referencebook, with only a page or two of actual textinterspersed between major tables. For achange, it is organized by U-boat flotillas, fromNo.1 to the 32nd (Training) Flotilla. After athree-page general introduction, there is a briefreview of each flotilla’s scope, locations andactivities, a map showing its location, the flotillacommanders, an illustration of the flotillainsignia (if one existed, or the odd one used byindividual boats), types of U-boats active in theflotilla, and the numbers of each type that servedin that flotilla. The author also includes briefbiographies of “Star Commanders” – those COswho became outstanding by their successes. Foreach flotilla, Bishop selects four to six actualboats and describes in detail their patrols,successes and eventual fates as well as providingdrawings of each of those boats.

The main purpose of the book lies inthe huge tables listing every boat that served ineach flotilla, with its commission date, flotillasin which it served (thus boats reappear in variousdifferent flotillas), number of patrols andeventual fate. Of particular note are thehundreds of carefully-drawn illustrations ofsurely every existing U-boat class, modificationand improvement from the earliest U IIB type tothe end-of-the-war Type XXIIIs, as well ofdetails of changes in conning tower design,weaponry and radar and electronic fittings. Thefew photos tend to be those found elsewhere,and of course the drawings. The illustrations,although of high quality and similar to those byJohn Batchelor in other publications, tend to berepetitive – as were the U-boats themselves. Each drawing is accompanied by a briefdescription of anything significant concerningthat boat. Oddly, it is not clear who providedthese drawings – it may have been Julian Bakerand Patrick Mulrey, listed only on the publishingpage, but they may have been the bookdesigners. Other previous texts – all much largerin sheer volume, such as Kenneth Wynn’s two-volume U-Boat Operations of the Second WorldWar (Naval Institute Press, 1997) – list thecommanders of each boat and the actual detailsof every war, training or transfer patrols, but thisvolume is quite adequate as a reference. It isalso an indication of the sheer size of the U-bootewaffe effort from just before the warthrough to its end.

This is a volume for the referenceshelf, albeit with interesting extra detail onbadges, the development of the Dutchschnorchel, a few convoy struggles and some,although not all, “wolfpacks”. Its primary usewill be for easy reference, as there is an index ofevery U-boat and its various flotillas, and ageneral index, although that refers largely toattacking warships, convoy numbers and the StarCommanders. Bishop has been able toincorporate the latest research regarding attackson these boats, which makes it a valuableresource for cross-checking similar volumesproduced many years ago. This volume includesthe basics and is a handier, faster reference toolthan most. Despite its cover cost of $35.95 and


2006 publishing date, I found my copy in Colesfor $9.99 less a couple of discounts! I didn’t askwhy.

Fraser McKeeToronto, Ontario

Laurence Brockliss, John Cardwell, and MichaelMoss. Nelson’s Surgeon: William Beatty, NavalMedicine, and the Battle of Trafalgar. Oxford:Oxford University Press, www.oup.com, 2005.xx + 216 pp., illustrations, maps, table, figure,notes, bibliography, index. US$90.00,UK£45.00, cloth; ISBN 0-19-928-742-2.

By analysing the career of naval surgeonWilliam Beatty (1773-1842), the authors presentan interesting picture of British naval medicineat the turn of the eighteenth century. For thegeneral context of naval medicine practised inthe “wooden world”, the authors rely heavily onthe third part of the four-volume standard workof Christopher Lloyd (still the authoritativework). They have enlivened their text withexamples of naval surgeons drawn from aprosopographical database (a listing of surgeonsaccording to their appearance, personality, socialstatus, career, etc., the construction of which ismentioned in the preface of this book).

Although this book is an interestingread, a few critical remarks might be made. Onething the reader misses is a comparison with themedical practice aboard the ships of otherseafaring countries, such as Spain, France andthe Netherlands. This may be because theoutlook of the book is rather biased and one-sidedly British. James Lind, for example, ispresented as the man who first promoted the useof citrus fruits as an antiscorbutic. This is notcorrect. Lind was the first to demonstratescientifically the usefulness of this practice, butthe practice itself had been known for centuriesby many sailors who sailed the high seas, manyof them not British. The practice of hygiene asapplied on the British fleets was also common tothe fleets of other countries and on those of theEast- and West India Companies. What is notmentioned is that British sailors suffered morefrom scurvy during the age of sail than the crews

of other nations. The authors’ statement that theBattle of Trafalgar was partly won because themen of the British fleet were healthier than theirfoes must therefore be explained from particularand incidental causes. Indeed, the statementmight be true, but only because Nelson forcedhygienic discipline on his crews. As a result,this healthier condition existed only during hiscommand, and not before or afterwards. Furthermore, the authors admit that Nelson wasvery fortunate that the French fleet had justreturned from the West Indies, with the medicalconsequences thereof.

Beatty’s life is followed from themoment of his birth in Londonderry until hisdeath in London. Apart from his professionallife, his entry into the naval service, and his riseinto the medical profession, not much is knownabout Beatty’s personal life. The resultingpicture of the man is somewhat spiritless. Hiseducation remains obscure; the authors makemany educated guesses about his schooling bycomparing it with that of other surgeons aboutwhom more is known. Why Beatty chose anaval life remains an enigma: he may have beeninfluenced by an uncle who was in the navalservice. Most of Beatty’s professional choicesare explained with may haves, probablys andpresumablys. His seafaring career before Nelsonstrongly breathes the air of Patrick O’Brian’snovels.

It is not always clear what the authorsmean by the term “doctor”: in some cases, theyrefer to a surgeon, who turns out never to havebeen a physician. They do not entirely seem tograsp the function of a sea surgeon: the fact thathis medical chest contained pestles, mortars,measuring glasses and syringes used for thepreparation and delivery of prescriptions,definitely does not testify to Beatty’s status asphysician and apothecary as well as surgeon. Every senior sea surgeon of a sea-faring countrywould find these instruments in his chest, sincea sea surgeon had to act as a physician, but hewould never have that status unless he qualifiedas such at a university.

Beatty’s character acquires a sharperfocus when he becomes Nelson’s personalsurgeon during the Battle of Trafalgar at themoment he extracts the bullet from Nelson’s

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body. As the canonization of Nelson began,Beatty rode on its wake. Particularly striking isthe description of Beatty fondling his watch inwhich the bullet was encased, reminding theonlookers that he was the man who nursedEngland’s national hero at his death. The onething the authors do make clear about theirhero’s character is that Beatty knew how tocapitalize on that fact. Before Nelson’s death,he was just an able surgeon, as were so manyother surgeons in the naval service. His realcareer started with the death of Nelson. Soonafterwards, he was made physician of theChannel Fleet (for which he did have to obtain auniversity degree, which his connectionsarranged for him) and had his portrait painted. Although he was an able administrator, he cutno outstanding medical figure in the post. Becoming a licentiate of the London RoyalCollege of Physicians, and Physician to theGreenwich Hospital (at the time, the zenith of anaval surgical career in Britain), Beattydemonstrated no interest in his own discipline. He must have been exceptionally clever incultivating friends who would and couldinfluence his career.

Beatty was not an exceptional man,surgeon or no surgeon, which is perhaps typicalof many sea surgeons of his time. The one thingwhich differentiates him from his peers was thefact that he was there when Nelson died andknew how to turn Nelson’s bad luck into hisown good fortune.

I.D.R. BrujnAmsterdam, The Netherlands

Brian Cudahy. Box Boats: How Container ShipsChanged the World. New York: FordhamUniversity Press, www.fordhampress.com, 2006,xii + 338 pp., tables, photographs, notes, index,US$29.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8232-2568-2.

Marc Levinson. The Box: How the ShippingContainer Made the World Smaller and theWorld Economy Bigger. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press,www.puu.princeton.edu, 2006. xi + 376 pp.,tables, notes, bibliography, index, US$24.95,cloth; ISBN 0-691-12324-1.

It was fifty years ago that 58 truck bodies werecarried by sea from a terminal in New Jersey toTexas. This innovative venture by a hard-driving entrepreneur named Malcolm McLeanwas the start of a transformation in how freightis moved around the world. Today, goods aremanufactured in the most economical locationsin a supply chain made possible by thecirculation around the globe of some 15 millionubiquitous containers. Several books appearedin 2006 to mark the golden anniversary ofcontainerization. While the two reviewed herecover some ground in common, their subtitlesaccurately suggest their differing scope. Bothtrace the evolution of container ships andterminals and describe in particular how USshipping companies adapted – or did not – tocontainerization, and how they have now beenabsorbed into offshore conglomerates.

Marc Levinson’s focus, however, ismuch wider than the story of container shippingalone. A former writer for The Economist, heexamines the impact of containers onmanufacturing worldwide and traces theirsignificance as a key driving force behindglobalization. The Box is a truly rewarding andinformative read because of Levinson’sexhaustive research and grasp of economicdevelopments and their interplay. His reporter’seye for telling details and crisp style bring thisstory alive.

Brian Cudahy is a ship historyenthusiast who has published several booksabout marine and transportation history. Whilethe wider ramifications of containerizationreceive mention, his focus in Box Boats is thesuccessive generations of US container ships,and in particular, the vessels operated by Sea-Land Service, the company founded by MalcolmMcLean. This book is illustrated with excellentphotographs and there are numerous tables in thetext tracing in detail every ship acquired by Sea-Land and the various names given to eachvessel.

The difference in approach of thesetwo books is perhaps illustrated by how bothauthors cover the evolution of containerterminals in the Port of New York. Levinsonprovides a handy sketch map (p. 79) which helpsreaders unfamiliar with New York geography to


grasp why new terminals in New Jersey enjoyedadvantages of location. Cudahy describes insome detail how ships manoeuvred in thewaterways leading to the new terminals butassumes that his readers are familiar with thearea.

Because containerization reducedtimes in port, the first generation of purpose-built container ships operating between Europeand the Far East were able to handle six or seventimes as much cargo per year as theirconventional predecessors. Levinson shows thatthe relentless drive to lower the per-box cost ofshipping led to ever-bigger ships with theireconomies of scale which called at bigger but farfewer ports. Ports have become distributioncentres and are no longer necessarily locatednear large manufacturing facilities. Whilecontainerization took off in the 1960s, it was notuntil the late-1970s that the real cost of shippinggoods internationally began falling rapidly. Levinson notes that reliable data to demonstratejust when the widespread use of containers forshipments at sea and on land began reducingcosts is not available and cannot be derived fromavailable statistics. As late as the mid-1970s,shipping wheel rims from Michigan to Francecost 23 per cent of the value of the cargo (p.254). A combination of factors then caused ratesthe drop. Today, the cost of shipping goodsaccounts for one per cent or less of retail prices. It costs roughly 34 cents to ship a pair of shoesthat retails for $45 in North American from afactory in Asia and $12.50 to import a televisionset that sells for $2,500. Low freight rates madelocating factories in areas with lower labourcosts more profitable. Low transportation costsand improvements over the laborious freight-handling methods of earlier containers paved theway for “just-in-time” manufacturing with itscost savings through minimizing inventories. Toyota originated this concept in the early 1980sand the results are universally experienced today(p. 265).

Container shipping required enormousamounts of capital. In the drive for economiesof scale, successive generations of containerships have grown steadily larger. The biggestare now larger than fleet aircraft carriers.Sophisticated data processing systems are

required to track individual containers. Competition and the ongoing need for capitalhave steadily reduced the number of containershipping companies. Two of today’s largestoperators, Evergreen of Taiwan and Maersk ofDenmark, did not start operating container shipsuntil the early seventies. Neptune Orient Line ofSingapore, another surviving giant, was formedin 1968 just as containerization was beginning torevolutionize transportation at sea. Twoshipping companies with illustrious histories, P& O Lines and Canadian Pacific Ships, hadtransformed themselves into major containershipoperators but were absorbed by larger entities. In 2005, Maersk took over P&0-Nedlloyd andCP Ships became part of the TUI Group ofGermany, whose holdings include Hapag-Lloyd,itself the result of a fusion of two shippingcompanies with long histories.

Both books trace the history of US flagshipping companies over the last five decadesand are therefore valuable as succinct surveyswhich explain how, even though Americancompanies were the first to use containers on alarge scale, they have disappeared into foreignownership. The demise of United States Linesin late 1986 – at the time the largest USbankruptcy – because of poor business decisionsby Malcolm McLean is an extraordinary tale. Levinson, in particular, sketches in Europeanand Asian container shipping companies as well,but both books tell their stories largely byfollowing the fortunes of Sea-Land, the companybuilt up by Malcolm McLean. The VietnamWar provided a substantial boost for containershipping for several reasons. The US militarycame to realize that using containers enabledthem to reduce inefficiencies and bottlenecks inVietnam. The proportion of the vast quantity ofequipment and supplies being sent out from theUS carried in containers increased steadilybetween 1966 and 1973. McLean seized theopportunity to start using vessels returningempty across the Pacific to haul containers fromJapan. Levinson’s coverage extends to manyother factors contributing to the evolution ofcontainerization. He describes how today’smajor container shipping ports have gained theirpre-eminent positions and the fascinating storyof how longshoremens’ unions in the US, Britain

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and the Netherlands variously reacted to thethreat of containerization representingsubstantial savings by reducing the number ofdock workers.

Containerization has transformed thetransportation of freight over the past fifty years. Box Boats is a well-illustrated and workmanlikehistory largely focused on Sea-Land Service, thepioneering container shipping company, and itsships. The Box, on the other hand, is aninformative and crisp economic history ofcontainerization and how it has enabledglobalization to work. Its coverage is wide –everything from economic impacts to how majorports around the world were changed, from thetransformation of dockside labour patterns to thedevelopment of seamless methods for handlingcontainers from manufacturing centres inland toocean passages and then onward to their ultimatedestinations on another continent. All this islinked to the fortunes of individual containershipping companies. Marc Levinson’s The Boxis an outstanding book – readable, thoroughlyresearched, vastly informative. Highlyrecommended.

Jan DrentVictoria, British Columbia

Arthur Donovan and Richard Bonney. The BoxThat Changed the World: Fifty years ofcontainer shipping –an illustrated history. EastWindsor, NJ: Commonwealth Business Media,www.cbixmedia.com, 2006. xxiii + 262 pp.,photographs, illustrations, notes, index.US$59.95, cloth; ISBN 1-891131-95-8.

This excellent book is worth the time andattention of anyone interested in understandingthe nature, origins and future status of themodern shipping revolution. It tells aremarkable story of how containerization – usingtruck-trailer-sized boxes to move goods by seaand across land by road and rail from place oforigin to end user – helped unleash the forces ofglobalization by creating dependable globalsupply chains that are “just-in-time”. It showshow containers possessed the potential in themid-1950s to so reduce costs and increase

efficiency as to transform maritime shippingfrom centuries-old practices in a single quantumleap forward. The story centres on the career ofMalcolm P. McLean who, while he did notinvent the “box” container, did start the firstsuccessful ocean service and demonstrate that itcould work. In 1956, McLean loaded 58“boxes” on board the deck of a converted oiltanker. Fifty years later 78 shipping lines deliverannually 2.8 million containers carrying $115billion worth of cargo to the port of NewYork/New Jersey alone.

Arthur Donovan is emeritus professorof maritime history at the US Merchant MarineAcademy at King’s Point, New York, where hewas head of the Humanities Department beforehis retirement in 2003. He is the author ofseveral books on diverse topics, most recentlyThe Abandoned Ocean (University of SouthCarolina Press, 2000). Joseph Bonney has beena reporter and editor covering shipping andtransportation for more than a quarter of acentury. He was managing editor of AmericanShipping during the 1990s, and is currentlyeditor of The Journal of Commerce.

The authors divide their account intotwo roughly equal parts of three and fourchapters, respectively, and conclude with a thirdmuch briefer, two-chapter section. Part Onetreats the pre-McLean origins of the container,Malcolm McLean’s long journey to the Port ofNewark, and the early maritime ventures ofMcLean and his first competitors. The authorsargue that McLean was an entrepreneur who sawtrucks as boxes and ships as ferries or bridges,rather than a trucker or a shipper. In addition totechnical problems, of which there were many,intermodal transportation – the coordinatedmovement of freight without handling the goodsinvolved using two or more modes oftransportation – encountered regulatoryproblems that were equally as challenging. Railways objected strenuously to containerizedfreight while railway executives found it nearlyimpossible to view two modes of transportationas complimentary rather than competitive. Labour unions were more far-sighted. Recognizing the inevitable victory ofmechanization on the waterfront, the president ofthe International Longshoremen’s’ Association


negotiated a series of contracts that secured cashbonuses, fringe benefits and “guaranteed” annualincome for dockworkers who lost their jobs tocontainerization. Union dockworkers are amongthe highest paid blue-collar workers in the US.

Part Two traces the difficult extensionof containerization shipping from American tointernational markets. This initially generated agreat deal of scepticism as American shippersmoved into highly competitive internationalmarkets from heavily protected domestic ones.The Vietnam War played an importantcushioning role during the 1960s and early1970s, but competition quickly appeared fromnew shippers in Taiwan and established carriersin Europe and Japan; today the originalAmerican container lines have been taken overby foreign corporations.

Containerization was both cause andsymptom of profound changes in world shippingpatterns. Containerized shipping reached Pacificmarkets at the same time as Japan’s postwarreconstruction was complete and higher valuemanufacture goods were being produced forexport and the four Asian tigers began rapidly toindustrialize. By the mid-1980s Hong Kong andSingapore had replaced New York andRotterdam as the world’s top container ports. Finally, containerization overthrew theestablished order of shipping. Illustrious namesdisappeared or were submerged in the face ofoversupply of container capacity, and newindependent and established companies arose onthe ruins of the old.

Fifty years on, the world of maritimecommerce has been transformed. But the “box”may well prove to be the author of its ownmisfortune. New problems have appeared thatmay well transform the next fifty years asradically as the last half-century has been. Withone-fifth of the containers at sea being empty,repositioning is only one of a number of seriousproblems. The size of ships is the least of them.The time and expense of shifting containers fromone mode of transportation to another isprobably more serious. The capital costs ofinfrastructure investment in new container-handling facilities, port expansion, railway cars,lines and classification yards, not to mentionroads, are staggering. Nation states are fiercely

competing with one another for the new andgrowing business. Fifty years from now theconcept of road, rail, and maritime transportationsystems may have been consigned to the dustbinof history as intermodal freight transportationbecomes so seamless and integrated into a singlelogistics system that people will have difficultyconceiving that separate systems once existed. Will new, immensely strong, lightweight,collapsible containers made of carbon fibresreplace the current steel reinforced aluminumboxes? “Out-of-the-box” thinking will certainlybe needed to prevent the greatest revolution inmaritime shipping since the marine steam enginefrom becoming a victim of its own success.

The Box That Changed the World isone of at least three studies published in 2006 tomark the 50th anniversary of Malcolm McLean’sgreat experiment. The authors remain levelheaded throughout their history; little appearsthat is nostalgic or nationalistic. This book isrecommended because, although subsidized bymembers of the shipping industry, the topicalanalysis is clear and uncluttered, the narrative isvery well written, and it is lavishly illustratedwith countless photographs, many of them incolour, each carefully chosen to illustratesomething mentioned on the same or facing pageof text. The book is very good value for money;its reasonable price is made possible only by thesupport of several shipping lines and containerports.

James Pritchard,Kingston, Ontario

Col. David Fitz-Enz. Old Ironsides: Eagle of theSea. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing(Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group),www.rlpgtrade.com, 2005. xxi + 281 pp., maps,illustrations, appendices, notes, glossary,bibliography, index. US$28.95, cloth; ISBN: 1-58979-160-6. Distributed by the National BookNetwork.

Of all the world’s famous warships, the U. S.Frigate Constitution is certainly among the bestknown. Launched in 1797 as one of the firstships ordered specifically for the US Navy, the

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Constitution steered to glory under a series ofskilful commanders, especially during the Warof 1812. The brilliance of its design and its greatsize and strength prompted Horatio Nelson topredict trouble for the Royal Navy long beforeHMS Guerriere’s shot were seen to bounce offthe frigate’s timbers, earning it the name of “OldIronsides”. The ship was, and is, the epitome ofa proud naval tradition as well as a symbol ofAmerican devotion to the icons of the nation’sheritage, for the Constitution has been faithfully,and ambitiously, preserved for the public inBoston. It is the oldest commissioned warshipstill afloat anywhere.

The acknowledged leading expert onthe Constitution is Tyrone G. Martin. During his26-year career in the U. S. Navy he servedbetween 1974 and 1978 as the ship’s 57th captainand went on to write authoritative books andarticles about the frigate and many other navaltopics. His key work is A Most Fortunate Ship:A Narrative History of “Old Ironsides” (NavalInstitute Press, 1997).

The current title pales in comparison toMartin’s book. David Fitz-Enz states that he isan ex-military man and “not an academichistorian”, as if these qualities should exempthim from writing an authoritative account. Hisgoal is to present the story of “a nationaltreasure” through “two hundred years of threatand conflict that can be found nowhere else” (p.xvi). Such poorly conceived sentences as thisone typify the author’s weak mastery of histopic, since the ship’s actual “years of threat andconflict” ended in 1815. The author also lostsight of his objective, since only 35 of thebook’s 230 pages of text are devoted to theConstitution’s career after 1815.

The book begins with a ramblingdiscourse on naval construction wherein welearn that there was no “road rage” in the 1790s,that rope has been found in the tombs of thePharaohs and that a 74-gun ship could not catchthe Constitution “because of the added weight ofthe guns” (p. 16). There are few other referencesto the Constitution in this chapter (and next to nodetails about its actual construction) and evenfewer to be found in a subsequent 20-pagechapter about sea power. Here we read aboutCzar “Nikki” and Kaiser Wilhelm dividing up

the oceans, and Dewey at Manila Bay, China’splace in the twentieth century and the Cubanmissile crisis, but nothing about the “nationaltreasure”. Similarly, in the 24-page chaptercomprising one of the most convolutedexplanations about the causes of the War of1812 ever to reach print, the Constitution ismentioned once.

The author’s acknowledgmentsindicate that he met many naval and militaryauthorities and visited numerous institutions, butthere is no mention of the weeks of hardslogging required to research in depth and learnhis topic. His visits left him with a superficialunderstanding, at best, of the Constitution and itstimes. The book is laden with errors andmisconceptions, the result of inadequate factchecking. For instance, while condemningimpressment, Fitz-Enz claims “a considerablenumber of the crew of HMS Victory at Trafalgarwere not British, and many of those men wereAmerican” (p. 114). Someone must have toldthe author this and he repeated it without lookinginto available sources such as the AyshfordTrafalgar Roll, which shows 822 seamen andmarines mustered aboard the Victory at thebattle, 750 of whom were born in the BritishIsles and 19 in the United States. The bookfeatures simplistic and almost absurddescriptions of life at sea: “in the winter . . .above 45 degrees latitude . . . sea spray collectsin the form of ice on exposed surfaces likemasts, yards, sails, rails, hulls and decks attemperatures below freezing . . . [F]ew venturednorth or attempted to swing around the tip ofSouth America” (p. 153). Only the mostdevoted of naval students will agonize to seeHMS Newcastle referred to as a “ship of theline” (p. 191), but any thoughtful reader willpuzzle over the mindset that implies, not oncebut twice, a link in significance between the dateof the battle of Plattsburgh (11 September 1814)and events of that date in 2001 (pp. 184, 281).

This book wanted some serious editingand a total revision to undo the zigzagmeandering across time lines and concepts, tocull sentences such as the ones quoted above, toforce Fitz-Enz to deal with the ship and leave outdiscussions of international politics and his ownfrequent references to his army career and


travels. At the very least, the publisher shouldhave had someone instruct the author in how topresent a single theme and carry it coherentlyfrom beginning to end of a paragraph.

In short, apart from some niceillustrations and a pretty book jacket, there isnothing in this book to recommend it to readers.

Robert MalcomsonSt. Catharines, Ontario

Norman Friedman. The Naval Institute Guide toWorld Naval Weapon Systems, Fifth Edition.Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press,www.usni.org, 2006. li + 868 pp., photographs,addendum, index. US$250.00, cloth; ISBN 1-55750-262-5.

The Naval Institute Guide to World NavalWeapons Systems is a complete guide to theweapons currently in service in ships,submarines, and naval aircraft around the world.It is divided into nine major chapters, some ofwhich deal with systems, such as those devotedto Combat Direction Systems, Shipboard Gunsand Gun Systems, and Strategic Strike Systems;while other chapters deal with the overallwaging of war, such as Strike Warfare, Anti-AirWarfare and Anti-Submarine warfare. In eachof these numerous systems, both sensors andweapons are included.

Each chapter presents an overview ofthe current state of naval weapon development. Some topics include: current testing activitieswithin the system under discussion; which newsystems have been introduced since the lastedition; and which systems are no longer inproduction and are considered obsolete. Anexample of this is the section “Shipboard Gunsand Gun Systems” listing under Italy: OTO-Melara (manufacturer): a new compact lightweight 5"/54 gun is being developed, whichweighs 30 per cent less than its predecessor andhas a low faceted RCS (Radar Cross-Section)shield, stealth configured (p. 456).

In the introduction, Friedman identifiesthe four naval developments which stand out inthis edition: (i) the rise of what now is called

network-centric warfare – the means of seeingand engaging targets, which creates a sharedtactical picture that allows many units to dealwith an array of point objects; (ii) the impact onthe US Navy of the global war on terror; (iii) therise of new developers of sophisticated navalsystems, in particular, command and controlsystems; and (iv) the continued, even greatlyaccelerated, impact of Moore’s Law (estimatingthe rate of improvement to computers), whichdrives naval systems into the use ofcommercially-available technology.

The prefatory notes provide a genericbackground foundation of the current technologystatus of radar, electronic warfare, sonar,infrared and optronic devices, laser and missileguidance. The author, who has writtenextensively on the design of naval systems andtheir platforms in earlier publications, offers inthese notes some of his own analysis assessmentand insight on current development efforts. Thissection also provides an explanation ofdesignation systems. For example, AN/SPS 501indicates the US triservice (AN) designationsystem, SPS is a naval radar and 501, identifiesthe country of origin, Canada. Therefore, 501 isthe first Canadian naval radar.

The Guide employs a rather uniqueway of ensuring that it incorporated the latestdevelopments in naval weapons as thepublication deadline drew near. The inclusion ofan Addendum allowed the publication of anumber of additions from the St. PetersburgNaval Show in July 2005, such as the 3S90E.1modular launcher for the Shtil (9M317ME: SA-N-7) missiles, which was shown there for thefirst time.

The reader should keep in mind, aboveall that this is an unclassified book, acompilation of information from the openliterature, from declassified documents and frombrochures provided from the manufacturers ofthe equipment. Official documents generally arenot declassified for some considerable time aftertheir origination, typically at least twelve yearsin the United States, but often as long as thirtyyears in Great Britain.

In conclusion, the periodical Defenseand Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy (August2006) described the Naval Institute Guide to the

Book Reviews 79

World Naval Weapon Systems as “The 21stCentury’s equivalent of what Jane’s FightingShips was in the pre-World War II era”. It,therefore, becomes prudent to mention the otherwell known naval weapons referencepublication, Jane’s Naval Weapon Systems,which can be obtained for US$1,190 for a softbound book, or for US $2,255 for an onlinesubscription, which will give the customer a fullresearch capability, a minimum five-year archiveand monthly updates. The price differentialnotwithstanding, Friedman’s Naval InstituteGuide to the World Naval Weapon Systems,should be the preferred choice for most users ofthis publication. This assessment is based on theanalytical insight offered on the design andoperation of naval weapon systems, aided by anextensive collection of excellent photographswhich accompany Friedman’s very thoughtfultext.

Fred HerrndorfOttawa, Ontario

Peter Goodwin. The Ships of Trafalgar: TheBritish, French and Spanish Fleets, October1805. Annapolis, MD; US Naval Institute Press,www.usni.org, 2005. 256 pp., maps,illustrations, tables, appendices, bibliography,index. US$55.00, cloth; ISBN 1-59114-824-3.

In his introduction, Goodwin notes that fullcomprehension of the events off Cape Trafalgaron 21 October 1805 requires an understanding ofthe ships to set alongside the studies ofstrategies, tactics and the biographies of thehuman participants. To that end, he hascompiled the stories of all 73 vessels that werepresent, from the mighty Santísima Trinidad tothe cutter Entreprenante. For each one, he hasprovided information on basic dimensions,armament, designer, construction, service history(especially focussed on events on the great dayitself), maintenance history and ultimate fate. There are lines plans for most, with a scatteringof other illustrations. Much of the material onNelson’s fleet is drawn from original records(Captain’s logs, Progress Books, etc.), withextensive direct quotations. Information on the

ships of the Franco-Spanish Combined Fleet,however, is predominantly secondary and reliesheavily on the now-dated work of Laird Clowes.

Inevitably in such a catalogue, there isa great deal of repetition, much of which couldhave been avoided if Goodwin had not waiteduntil he was mid-way through the French fleetbefore referring his readers to the entry on oneship for details of the voyaging of others thatwere in company. Readers certainly did notneed to be told twice (under the entries forBerwick and Pluton) that Commander Mauricewas honourably acquitted for the loss of HMSDiamond Rock.

Trafalgar aficionados will require acopy of this book on their shelves and it willsatisfy their every desire for specific details ofthe individual ships involved in their battle. Itdoes not, however, provide the technicalinformation on manning, fitting, arming andoperating warships in 1805 that is generallyapplicable to all such vessels. Hence, itsupplements rather than replaces previous worksby Goodwin, Lavery and others.

For the rest of us, the obsessive focuson one single day can be a distraction. The bookwould have been more useful if it had featured asystematic sample of each of the three navies,rather than those vessels present for a particularevent. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to explorethis sampling of the breadth of the contemporaryRoyal Navy’s technology and experience,thereby escaping from the prism of Victorywhich can dominate so much of the modernliterature. The comings and goings of assortedships, their frequent refits, the distinctly morevaried careers of frigates when compared toships-of-the-line, and much else leap from thepages. So, too, do the differences between thethree navies – the English keeping the seas astheir enemies lay in harbour, the French fleetwith a median age of only seven years (havinglost so many ships earlier in the war), comparedto the median age of 21 for the Spanish fleet, andso forth.

Much of this book is, however, the rawmaterial of history rather than a finished study,and what readers take from it will depend onwhat they bring. There is, for example, a clearpattern of captains of English First Rates being


transferred into smaller ships – a practice thatappears to be repeated demotion of flag captainsunless one understands that, at the time, juniorcaptains were often placed under the immediatetutelage of an Admiral before being entrustedwith their own Third Rates. Unfortunately, thematerial is not always as raw as it should be. The lines and other plans are consistently“drawings by the author”, leaving readers toguess at how precisely they duplicate theoriginal source material. Meanwhile, Goodwininserts figures on the amount of timber needed tobuild each ship and the acres of woodland felledto provide it – numbers which appear to bederived from Charnock’s generalizations,although they are presented as specificinformation.

To this catalogue of the ships ofTrafalgar, Goodwin has appended a four-pageintroduction on the importance of thedocumentary sources, plus the crucial roles ofnaval stores and dockyard production, withoutwhich there would have been no fleets able tofight. The former theme is left to speak for itselfthroughout the catalogue, but the latter is takenup again in an eight-page “conclusion”, toomuch of which is simply a crude attempt toestimate the total amount of timber, blocks,copper, rope, canvas and armament afloat offCape Trafalgar on 21 October. Withoutcomparative information on total nationalproduction of such commodities, or their costrelative to the size of the national economies,those estimates have limited value. (Besides, themillion square feet of sheathing copper on the 73vessels amounted to 0.04 square miles in area,not the 190 that Goodwin claims!)

Its weaknesses notwithstanding, thisbook is a unique and valuable supplement to thecorpus of work on sailing warships. It is alsorequired reading for anyone fascinated by thosefew hours of concentrated violence off theSpanish coast.

Trevor KenchingtonMusquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia

Iain Gordon. Admiral of the Blue: The Life andTimes of Admiral John Child Purvis, 1747-1825.Barnsley, S. Yorkshire: Pen and Sword BooksLtd., www.pen-and-sword.co.uk, 2005. vi + 272pp., illustrations, maps, tables, appendices,references, index. UK£19.99 (CDN$29.15),cloth; ISBN 1-84415-294-4.

Although the jacket “blurb” of this book tells usthat John Child Purvis had “a long anddistinguished career at sea”, it seems to havebeen such a very dull career that it is not longbefore one begins to develop the suspicion thatthe writer felt obliged to use up all the laboriousfact-gathering that emerged in the research forhis previous book on the son of this biography’ssubject: Richard Fortescue Purvis (Soldier of theRaj).

Certainly, that fact-gathering wasmeticulous, and perhaps some readers will seesome merit in religiously reporting all possiblefacts, such as, for example, the repetitive lists ofall the ships that sailed in company with Purvisround Corsica in 1794. Others, particularlythose who have some knowledge of Britishnaval history, will feel that the story would havebeen enlivened by a discussion of the runningfeud between the senior naval and armycommanders during that campaign.

Apart from an interesting alternativeview of Nelson’s arbitrary decision to change theNile prize agent from our hero’s brother Georgeto the opportunist Alexander Davison (who waslater to be imprisoned for corruption andconspiracy), it is not until well into the secondhalf of the book that some really interestingevents start to unfold. In 1806, Purvis gained hisflag and a few months later took over commandof the squadron blockading Cadiz.

One of the main concerns at the timewas the ships in Cadiz harbour. The remains ofthe Allied fleet which took refuge there afterTrafalgar, these warships were quietly rottingaway for lack of maintenance. Some of themwere not, however, in such bad shape that theycould not have been repaired swiftly by crewsbrought by the rapidly approaching Frencharmy; it is Purvis’ efforts to get the Spanish toalleviate this, and other threats such as cuttingthe city’s water supply, that hold real interest.

Book Reviews 81

Another major problem was that, since theSpanish had turned against the French, they hadaccumulated numerous French prisoners whomthey kept in appalling conditions on those sameships; when the advancing French army madetheir inevitable arrival in the city, these prisoners(some 13,000 by Purvis’ reckoning) wouldimmediately provide them with reinforcements.

Anyone who has read of the Peninsulacampaign will be aware of the intransigence ofthe Spanish; Purvis had the same experience. The book underlines this by providing a fullrecord of his exchange of letters with variousSpanish officers and politicians, as he tried to getthem to take any form of action to defendthemselves. That Purvis managed to keep holdof his exasperation and continue to write politeletters to them demonstrates an amazingrestraint. This portion of the book issufficiently interesting and valuable that one canalmost forgive the overall faults: idiosyncraticspelling of place names (for instance the Spanishoutpost in Morocco is referred to several timesin Chapter Eight, its accompanying map and inthe index, as Cueta and in Chapter Nine by itscorrect name of Ceuta); and even the numerouserrors of fact. It would be unfair to blame all ofthese errors on the author, who is not a navalhistorian, but one can certainly lay blame on apublisher who regularly produces books onnaval history and should thus know where tofind someone to check the basic facts about theGeorgian navy – for instance, the system bywhich post-captains were upgraded to admiralby their seniority, not, as the author informs us,in relation to Nelson as a reward for exceptionalservices (pp. 64-5).

There are some sparse notes and anequally sparse bibliography of other books,which demonstrate the author’s newcomer statusin this field; one would have expected to findseveral Navy Records Society volumes and a lotmore references to documents in the NationalArchives. It does, however, give a detailedlisting of the Purvis papers at the NationalMaritime Museum (Greenwich, England),together with a genealogical table, some maps,listings of ships in various fleets, and a mixtureof photographs of portraits and locations in boththeir contemporary and modern form.

For those readers who have only acasual interest in the accuracy and fine detail ofthis period of British naval history, all of thiswill go unnoticed, but these readers will be thevery ones who find Purvis’ career on the dullside. He may have been a worthy man, and aconscientious officer, but he was not one ofthose whose name will be remembered as beingassociated with heroic deeds.

Janet MacdonaldLondon, England

Barry Gough. Through Water, Ice and Fire:Schooner Nancy of the War of 1812. Toronto:The Dundurn Group, www.dundurn.com, 2006.213 pp., illustrations, maps, appendices, notes,selected bibliography, index. CDN$24.99 /UK£12.99, paper; ISBN 10: 1-55002-569-4.

The story has often been told of the schoonerNancy and its minor role in War of 1812 events. It was among the dozen or so Canadian andAmerican merchant vessels operating on theupper Great Lakes before the war and whichwere pressed into public service during theconflict. The Canadian carriers performed thecritical role of maintaining British supply linesand supporting military activities through 1812and part of 1813. After the Americans won thebattle of Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie in September1813, and invaded southwestern Upper Canadathe next month, the Nancy was one of only threeschooners on the waters above the Detroitregion. Its master narrowly avoided capture bythe Americans on the St. Clair River beforesailing to the British post on MichilimackinacIsland. A Royal Navy detachment handled theNancy in 1814 and used it to supplyMichilimackinac from a depot at theNottawasaga River at the southern end ofGeorgian Bay. To prevent its capture during anattack by an American squadron in August ofthat year, the crew burned the schooner in themouth of the Nottawasaga. Lieutenant MillerWorsley, RN, subsequently led the capture oftwo American gunboats left to blockade thenorthern waters.


Barry Gough is a Canadian historian ofsome stature, being the past president of theOrganization for the History of Canada and theofficial historian of HMS Haida, as well as aClio Award winner and a professor emeritus ofWilfrid Laurier University. He is also a sailorwho has traveled on the lakes. This book isactually Gough’s second go around on the topicof the upper lakes naval war, the first beingFighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay:The War of 1812 and its Aftermath (2002). Inthe introduction to the current title he claims thathis Fighting Sail placed the Nancy in itshistorical context for the first time ever (p. 18)and then goes on to write that he now wanted totell the story as it ought to be told, as anadventure of the Nancy and her gallant littleband of seamen amid the broader dangers of theWar of 1812 (p. 18).

As indicated above, the truth is thatthere is not much to tell about the Nancy as itwas a bit player until the day of its fiery end in1814. And Gough does not introduce any newsources of information in Through Water thatmight have added to or reassessed what has beenpreviously written about the schooner. Goughdevotes two chapters to explaining the largerevents of 1812 and 1813 that affected the Nancydirectly and indirectly. He is correct indescribing the importance of naval supremacyon the lakes and the critical link between controlof the fur trade and influence on aboriginalnations. But the treatment is superficial(supported by few archival sources), resulting inmisconceptions. For instance, Gough’s mentionof only the North West Company leaves readersuninformed about its rivals in commerce andtheir overall impact on governmental decisionmaking. Similarly, in discussing the Americanstrategy for 1813 campaigning, he incorrectlycredits Commodore Isaac Chauncey forsweeping revisions to American battle planswithout identifying the roles played by themembers of the Madison cabinet, plus otherindividuals and environmental factors (p. 71).

Gough presents the chronology ofevents here in a clearer manner and with fewerrepetitions than in Fighting Sail, but there are anawful lot of errors in fact and terminology. For

instance, the Caledonia is described as aschooner on p. 51 and, correctly, as a brig twopages later. The Secretary of the Navy orderedChauncey to the lakes in 1812, not the Secretaryof War (p. 62); The General Hunter was aBritish warship captured at Put-in-Bay ratherthan one of two vessels destroyed at York inApril 1813 (p. 78).

It is veritably impossible to produce abook of any length without allowing miscues toreach print. Enlisting the help of otherauthorities to vet the work is essential during therevision and editing phase, but Gough does notacknowledge the assistance of any specific eaders. Copy Editor Lloyd Davis is credited ashaving contributed to the preparation of thisbook so some of the responsibility for the factualand conceptual errors must rest on his desk. Heshould have pointed out to the author that hedepicted supplies traveling down the St.Lawrence River to Lake Ontario not once buttwice (pp. 27 and 64) and from Lake Erie downthe Maumee River to Fort Meigs (p. 84).Elsewhere he has the Nottawasaga Riveremptying into the southern extremity of LakeHuron (p. 27). We read that Commander RobertBarclay lifted his blockade at Erie, in part,because he lacked fresh water (p. 90); so doesthat mean that Lake Erie contained only saltwater in 1813? And Davis should have urgedthe writer to avoid such dubious terms as thenatural defensive sandbar (p. 79), enemyresourcers (p. 111) and cabin-feverish winter (p.117). At least we can let Gough off the hook forthe washed out quality of some of theillustrations and the presentation ofcontemporary maps/charts on a scale that makesthem all but indecipherable; someone in theDundurn production deserves that rap.

I imagine that a portion of the readingpopulation will not notice the errors and enjoythis book anyway. But more experiencedreaders will find that it is just not up to standard. As a result, the best coverage of the Nancy storycontinues to be Ernest A. Cruikshank’s articleentitled “An Episode of the War of 1812: TheStory of the Schooner Nancy”. It was publishedin 1910 in the Ontario Historical Society Papersand Records, (not the Ontario History Review as

Book Reviews 83

Gough reports on p. 17) and republished inMorris Zaslow’s The Defended Border in 1964.

Robert MalcomsonSt. Catharines, Ontario

C.I. Hamilton (ed.). Portsmouth DockyardPapers 1852-1869: From Wood to [email protected], 2006. lvi +450 pp. Illustrations, maps, footnotes,appendices, glossary, index UK£30.00, cloth;ISBN 1-85975-759-6.

This volume is the tenth to be published as partof the Portsmouth Record Series, and the secondto focus on the dockyard. Whereas the first suchvolume dealt with the impact on Portsmouthyard in the midst of war with rebel Americafrom 1774 through 1783, this second study is farless well focused. It is neither clear why 1852was selected as the starting date nor why 1869ends this edited calendar of documents. If 1869witnessed the introduction of a series ofadministrative reforms for the home yards,including Portsmouth, such reforms had littlelong-term impact. In the absence of a pool oftalented managers, the largest industrial complexin Britain successfully resisted reform, somaking its history “a long sustained butremorselessly repetitive story” (p. lv). JohnMartin, for instance, appointed Storekeeper (asenior yard manager) at Portsmouth when oversixty, was hardly a symbol of the parliamentaryurge to reform. Martin had spent most of hiscareer at the Bermuda yard when the overseasyards “were infamous for slack habits ofbusiness” (p. liv).

Although the Crimean War (1854-56)occasioned no dockyard reform, matters ofdockyard defence afterwards came under somescrutiny. With British attacks on such Russianmaritime fortresses as Sevastopol and thedevelopment of long-range guns in the late1850s, new defence plans for Portsmouth andother dockyards were initiated at great cost. Itseemed to have occurred neither to the navy northe army that the defence of Portsmouthdepended solely on a modern steam navy andnot on outdated fortresses, however newly

gunned. Sadly, the editor passes over thiswithout comment. This critique applied equallywell, perhaps, to all the other exposed homeyards, and to those overseas, such as Halifax,which, incidentally, receives no mention in theeditor’s compilation.

Curiously, the editor provides nodiscussion of the changing size and compositionof the Portsmouth dockyard workforce, nor itsrelative size compared to other home yards.Though data survive in annual House ofCommons sessional papers, the editor largelyconfines them to an appendix (pp. 396-97). Heincludes but two documents relating to thematter: workforce pay in 1862-3 (#212, p. 173)and workforce size in 1867-8 (#217, p. 175). Ashe never discusses the data’s significance, welearn nothing about the changing relative sizeand importance of Portsmouth dockyard withinthe context of all the home yards. Nor is therediscussion of the type of workforce whichemerged with the growing application oftechnology to shipbuilding and ship repair.

The data compiled from the sessionalpapers show that in 1852-3 there were 10,667artificers, and other workers on theestablishment in the home yards, less than 10 percent worked in the so-called “steam factories” atWoolwich and Portsmouth. By 1869-70, theworkforce (establishment and hired workers) hadgrown to 11,875 men, when the steam factoryworkers composed almost 19 per cent of theworkforce. This was hardly a revolutionarychange, though steam factories had beenestablish since 1855 as well at Sheerness andDevonport (ex-Plymouth). In the interval,Portsmouth ceased to have the largest workforceestablishment of artificers and labourers, havingbeen overtaken by Devonport. A study of thegradually changing workforce composition, hadthe editor attempted it, might have providedsupporting evidence to indicate how tenaciousthe Navy as a whole, and hence the dockyards,remained in the comfortable era of sail beforeship boilers became sufficiently reliable androbust enough to replace the Navy’s faith in sailsalone. It would be many decades after 1869before welders replaced shipwrights as the mostcommon skilled workers in any dockyard.

None of this was discussed by the


editor. Instead the book's Introduction (pp. xv-lv) rather disappointingly focuses onadministrative changes recommended byparliamentary inquiries, and then resisted orembraced by dockyard managers.

Julian GwynBerwick, Nova Scotia

David Hepper. British Warship Losses in theIronclad Era, 1860-1919. London: ChathamPublishing, www.chathampublishing.com, 2006. xvi + 168 pp., photographs, bibliography,indices. UK£25.00, cloth; ISBN-13:9781861762733; ISBN-10: 1861762739,US$49.95 (St. Paul, MN: MAI Publishing).

David Hepper’s British Warship Losses is areference rather than an analytical work, and assuch it succeeds admirably. The work isarranged chronologically, with indices thatenable the reader to locate an incident readily bythe name of the vessel or of the commandingofficer. Hepper draws predominantly onAdmiralty documents, but as he notes in a shortessay on sources, contemporary newspaperreports or other secondary sources were usedwhen necessary. In general, “the larger the ship,the greater the amount of material” (p. vii). Each entry includes a citation to its sources.

Hepper’s analysis is limited to hispreface, in which he contrasts modern marinecasualties with those of the Royal Navy “at theheight of its prestige and power.” Hisobservation that without modern navigation aidsand radar, “the sea can be a very hostile placeduring a moonless night and poor weather,” isprecisely on target (p. vii). In the fifty-five yearsbefore the outbreak of the First World War, theRN lost 88 ships, all but one to collision,grounding, or weather. More remarkably,fourteen of those years show no losses.

The detail this work provides and itschronological format make the absence ofanalysis both engaging and provoking –presented with an array of data, the reader isdriven to try to discern patterns and trends. Forexample, the average number of yearly losses

slowly declined through the 1890s and thenturned upward again. It appears that thedevelopment of the torpedo boat and destroyer inthe early twentieth century increased the numberof collisions in step with the number of small,fast, fragile vessels commanded by relativelyjunior officers. Handicapped in peacetime bythe low silhouette that worked to their benefit inwar, the early submarines suffered from beingrun down by larger vessels.

The beginning of war in 1914 addedenemy action to the hazards, and the RN’s yearlylosses rose from one vessel in 1913 to over 240in 1917. The need for high-speed close-quartersmanoeuvring made collisions frequent, andoperations in vile weather made strandingssimilarly common. More strikingly, the book’schronological arrangement highlights theemergence of underwater threats. In 1914, theRN lost an average of 1.5 ships per month ofwar to torpedoes, with the loss rate peaking atfour ships per month in 1917. In 1914, minesaccounted for just over one ship per month ofwar; in 1915 nearly four ships per month, and by1917, eight ships per month, not countingvessels that simply failed to return. In terms ofnumbers, minesweepers suffered most, andRudyard Kipling’s “Epitaphs of the War” cameimmediately to mind:

He from the wind-bitten north with ship andcompanions descended.

Searching for eggs of death spawned byinvisible hulls.

Many he found and drew forth. Of a suddenthe fishery ended

In flame and a clamorous breath not new tothe eye-pecking gulls.

A more technical pattern emerges froma review of the losses due to grounding: thecrew’s intuitive desire to lighten ship wascounterproductive. Removing weight reducedthe draft, but rarely enough to let the ship pullfree, and the increased buoyancy allowed the seato pound the vessel against the bottom or driveher farther aground. Either way, a ship thatmight have been salvaged became a total loss.

Hepper’s data provide a rich vein forresearchers to mine, but both scholars and casual

Book Reviews 85

readers alike will find that this valuablereference is well worth its price.

William RobertsColumbus, Ohio

Andrew Lambert. Nelson: Britannia’s God ofWar. London: Faber & Faber, www.faber.co.uk,2005. xxviii + 446 pp., maps, illustrations,bibliography, notes, index. UK£8.99, paper;ISBN 0-571-21227-1.

One of Britain’s premier contemporary navalhistorians, Andrew Lambert, has taken up thecudgels and has written a profound biography ofBritain’s premier naval hero – Nelson. Theinevitable question arises as to why anyonewould feel the need to pen yet another biographyof the iconic Nelson – what new could therepossibly be to say?

This is a fair question. Lambertanswers it by noting that it was his students, orrather the queries from his students, combinedwith long periods of reflection teaching navalhistory had afforded him that persuaded him toembark on this biography. In particular, thereare new things to say regarding Nelson’shistoriography, his place in the British, orspecifically English, pantheon, and what hemeant to the naval community. It is a well-worntruism that each generation must write its ownhistory in light of its own priorities and tastesand “truths”. Perhaps there is room for yet onemore book on the naval historian’s orenthusiast’s bookshelf on Admiral HoratioNelson, hero of Trafalgar and saviour of hisnation at its time of greatest peril. Lambert alsohonestly acknowledged that the happycoincidence of the 200th anniversary of the Battleof Trafalgar wouldn’t hurt publishing prospects.

Now that that anniversary of blessedmemory is safely past, is Lambert’s tome aworthy addition to one’s library?

First, a quick sketch of the book’sstructure seems appropriate. The introductorychapter covers the historiography of Nelson andhow he was remembered over the generations. From there, a series of chapters cover the majorincidents and progression of his career – familiar

enough to most of the readers of this review, butartfully drawn out in a thoroughly moderninterpretation that is immediately relevant to amodern audience. The book concludes with twokey exemplary chapters discussing Nelson’sapotheosis and a further analysis as to hismeaning over the past two centuries. A numberof maps helps illustrate either the strategicsituation or the tactical details of a given battle– these are adequate and serve the purpose wellenough. In addition there is a selection ofpaintings, most of them iconic and thoroughlyfamiliar to anyone with a smattering of exposureto naval history. Lambert’s commentary on thepaintings is original, insightful and pointed.

Lambert usefully addresses thequestion of Nelson and his meaning by notingthat the man transcends the facts and has aspiritual dimension that has resonance andsignificance to this day. This transcendenceclearly existed in his own time, making Nelsonlarger than life and crucial to the British wareffort in a way that is quite unusual and evenunique. (One hesitates to use the word “unique”given its regular abuse, but in this case, it suits.) The reaction of the country on his death makesthis quite clear, as was the well-attested reactionof the navy from the most humble to Nelson’speers in rank and authority. His funeralprocession by barge up the Thames and hisburial in the intended and appropriately opulentsarcophagus of Cardinal Wolsey was certainlyfurther indication of Nelson’s place in theEnglish imagination. Indeed, as Lambert notes,Nelson had become England’s god of war, aliving symbol of English resistance to tyrannyand the “Corsican Ogre”, of physical and moralcourage, of devotion to duty and of rare andcomprehensive political insight. Nelson, inshort, was irreplaceable and undeniably“unique” – a man transfigured by his heroicdeath at the moment of his greatest and mostcomprehensive triumph into the pantheon of thegods. A very English god, no doubt, but a godnonetheless.

Others might cavil at this descriptionwith particular reference to Nelson’s behaviourafter his victory over Napoleon’s fleet at the Nilein 1798, and his dalliance with Emma Hamilton,the wife of the British plenipotentiary at the


Kingdom of the Two Naples. For many, hisaffair with Lady Hamilton remains a blot on hisreputation and an inexplicable breach ofconventional values. Lambert addresses thissanctimony head on. Far from a two-yearAWOL situation in Naples, Nelson was engagedin critical work securing British interests in theMediterranean. This quite naturally involvedwork ashore in Naples. There was nothinguntoward in his behaviour or activities in thisregard. Indeed, his judgement and the activitieshe engaged in or caused to happen while therewere of significant value in furthering thoseBritish interests. Lambert also places the affairwith Emma Hamilton in context. While notingthat such behaviour was absolutely a breach interms of correct behaviour it wasn’t asexceptional as Victorian writers would have usbelieve. Many naval officers had irregularprivate lives, one thinks of Augustus Hervey inthe mid-eighteenth century as an example, andthat the disapproval registered by manybiographers was misplaced. Critically, forLambert as well as Nelson’s contemporaries,duty came first, was seen to come first andabsolutely did come first.

Lambert is a good guide through suchthickets, bringing a modern sensibility toquestions that, in some ways, are closer to howNelson and his contemporaries looked at thingsthan perhaps how later generations of the “greatand good” perceived them. He is particularlystrong in his discussion on what Nelson meant inhis time, as well as how this has evolved overthe past two centuries, and into our present day. Nelson remains a potent symbol to Britain asthe recent bicentennial celebrations of Trafalgardemonstrated, and he remains the epitome ofnaval leadership and surely will, as long asnavies continue to exist into the future. All willbe grateful to Lambert’s students over the yearsthat pushed him to writing this excellent volume– indeed, it should have a place on yourbookshelf.

The only caveat I have, or ratherrecommendation, is with the quality ofproduction of the paperback edition of the book– the edition used in this review. Faberpaperbacks are not that robust and I suggest thata hardcopy edition be secured for your library.

There is no question that this is a book that allinterested in Nelson should get without delay. Itis excellent.

Ian YeatesRegina, Saskatchewan

Joshua E. London. Victory in Tripoli: HowAmerica’s War with the Barbary PiratesEstablished the US Navy and Built a Nation.Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,www.wiley.com, 2005. xii + 276 pp.,illustrations, bibliography, index. US$24.95/CDN$31.99/ UK£15.99, cloth; ISBN 0-471-44415-4.

Predatory attacks on shipping in the early-modern Mediterranean provide fascinatingsubject matter. Corsairs representing theBarbary states of North Africa developed asystem of prize taking and tribute extractionfrom the merchant shipping of numerousChristian states. Recent scholarly attention hashighlighted the role of enslaved Christians inshaping western perceptions of extra-Europeancultures (as in Linda Colley’s recent workCaptives). From a maritime perspective, theMediterranean was an arena intertwined bynumerous societies, their diplomatic relations,and international trade (as Peter Earle outlines inhis Pirate Wars). Privateering by Muslimsailors challenged the legal regime in theMediterranean. Although labelled “pirates” byChristians who feared both enslavement andIslam, corsairs did not violate any laws of theBarbary states and operated with permissionfrom their governments.

Joshua E. London outlines thediplomatic and operational story of Americaninvolvement with Barbary. Of central interest isthe war with Tripoli (1801-1805). Following itsbreak with the British empire, America’sshipping no longer received protection from theRoyal Navy nor from corresponding treatiesbetween the British and Barbary governments. The Americans were, therefore, required to sendconsuls to each state and negotiate their ownarrangements. The demands of monetarypayments, presents and delivery of naval storesby the leaders of Tripoli proved too extravagant

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for a struggling nation depending upon itsforeign trade. When negotiations over thedelivery of tribute failed, Tripoli declared war onthe US in May 1801. What followed wereseveral largely ineffective attempts at blockadeby successive US naval squadrons. TheAmericans suffered the humiliating capture ofthe frigate Philadelphia in October 1803, until adaring raid led by Lieutenant Stephen Decaturblew up the ship the following February. Theprincipal American success came via a boldoverland expedition designed to forcibly replaceTripoli’s head of state, Yusuf Qaramanli, withhis brother Ahmad, a man more amiable towardAmerican interests. Operating largely on hisown initiative, diplomat-turned-general WilliamEaton assembled a mercenary force anchored bya small detachment of marines to attack Tripolioverland across the desert. Eaton captured thecity of Derna in late April 1805, and defended itagainst counter-attack. At this juncture, theAmerican consul-general, Tobias Lear,orchestrated a diplomatic solution to the war,thereby ruining Eaton’s plans. Eaton and hisgroup had nevertheless worried Tripoli’sgovernment and thereby contributed to a quickconclusion to hostilities.

Despite the war effort, the Americansstill paid cash to free its captured citizens and thegovernment of Yusuf Qaramanli remained inpower. The whole affair caused someconsternation back in the United States as therather unceremonious peace terms fed into thedebate between American politicians whofavoured diplomacy versus those who favouredaction. Barbary was soon forgotten as issues oftrade embargo and war with Britain tookprecedence, effectively eliminating US trade inthe region. The threat to American shippingfrom Muslim attack ended only with theoverwhelming naval presence assembled for the1815 campaign against Algiers. Finally,American freedom of shipping in theMediterranean was secured as was thesovereignty and honour of the young nation.

London writes for a popular Americanaudience and therefore “refrained from usingfootnotes or otherwise littering the text withsource citations and references” (p. 243). Alarge bibliography is provided, listing secondary

sources, manuscript collections, and numerousprinted primary sources. The narrative is framedwith heroics and adventure and effectivelyemploys personal memoirs and correspondencefrom the principal American mariners anddiplomats. A vivid tale emerges of men caughtbetween the task at hand and the sometimesincomprehensible actions of both theiradversaries and the government supposedlysupporting them. London argues that the bestmethod for securing American freedom of tradelay in the development of naval power.Unfortunately it took time to marshal adequateresources and convince detractors, such as theindecisive Thomas Jefferson, that force alonewould eliminate the Barbary threat. Theexpansion of the United States Navy resultedfrom efforts of those Americans who believeddiplomacy with the Barbary states only served tosully American pride and honour.

Readers should be aware that, in theinterest of lively storytelling, an unfortunateethnocentrism creeps into the narrative. Mostexamples reflect an occasional inability toseparate the author’s arguments from opinions ofcontemporaries. Thus, the Dey of Algiersbecomes a “shaggy, shabby, piratical Turk” (p.5). Meanwhile, “[t]he tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered, earnest twenty-five-year-oldStephen Decatur had a warrior’s mentality andthe charisma of a natural leader” (p. 160).

The most obvious examples of suchbias relate to the interchangeable use of theterms corsair and privateer with piratethroughout the text (sometimes in the samesentence as in “pirate corsairs”, p.27). Pirate isa convenient adjective to describe a despisedadversary, but the maritime definition of piracyrefers to the indiscriminate taking of prizes byparties bearing allegiance to no flag beyond theirown. This cannot be said of the Barbarycorsairs. London continues to refer to Tri-politanian warships as pirates, even after therewas a declared war against the United States(pp.99-104). Overwhelmingly, Christiansregarded the Muslim corsairs as pirates becausetheir interdiction of shipping and custom ofenslaving captives differed from the rules underwhich most westerners believed they operated. But to continually refer to Barbary corsairing as


piracy within a modern analysis does little tohelp analyse and explain the multi-ethnicenvironment of the early-modern Mediterraneanworld that led to its particular system of tributeand trade war.

William R. MilesHalifax, Nova Scotia

Kevin D. McCranie. Admiral Lord Keith and theNaval War Against Napoleon. Gainesville, FL:The University Press of Florida, www.upf.com,2006. xv + 256 pp., illustrations, maps, notes,bibliography, index. US$55.00, cloth; ISBN 0-8130-2939-2. (New Perspectives on MaritimeHistory and Nautical Archaeology Series)

Admiral Lord Keith is hardly a household name. Although Keith was given a wide range ofcommands in the Royal Navy, he is notassociated with any famous battles and“biography has been dominated by studies ofmen victorious in combat” (foreword). To someextent, Keith was lost in the shadow of morefamous contemporaries like Nelson. HistorianKevin McCranie examines George KeithElphinstone’s career and produces a verythorough analysis of a highly competent – butnot particularly inspiring – workhorse of theRoyal Navy during the age of sail.

It is the “Great Men” who tend tocommand our interest but the simple fact is thatthe Navy relied heavily upon men like Keith. His career was far more typical than that of iconslike Nelson. Keith’s career in the Navy revealsa great deal about advancement and thechallenge of controlling the seas for Britain inthe eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was a captain during the American War ofIndependence and went on to hold four verydifferent commands between 1795-1815. Certainly, the author is correct in emphasizingthe impressive “geographic diversity and therange of his objectives” (p. xiii). Furthermore,McCranie asserts that the “diversity andlongevity of his naval service meant that heplayed a major, if under-recognized, role in theimplementation and the crafting of British navalpolicy” (p. xiii). By reading the book, we come

to appreciate the difficulties inherent in holdingseveral different commands over the years andhaving to make critical decisions with little or noconsultation with Whitehall. Keith’s job wasespecially difficult, given the problemsassociated with joint operations and howstretched Britain’s naval resources were globallyduring this time.

One enduring theme throughout thebook is the importance of patronage. AlthoughKeith was a member of the Scottish nobility, helacked wealth and was tied to his patrons foradvancement. Even though he could rely on thefriendship of the Prince of Wales, Keith was stillvulnerable to whomever was in ascendance atthe Admiralty. Commands were obviously verypolitical and having allies in high places wasvital: we are told that “Keith created a tangledand constantly changing web of powerfulsupporters” which “did not rest on friendship oreven admiration” (p. 182). Although Keithactively courted favour, there were times whenhis lack of influence in the Admiralty cost him,although his long career testifies to his successin ingratiating himself with the “right” people.

We are also shown just howdemanding a naval career was. While he spentincreasing amounts of time ashore because of illhealth during later life, there is no doubt thatKeith was afforded little time ashore with hisfamily throughout his career. Instead, he wasforced to negotiate his way around the rockyshoals of politics and patronage as well as globaldiplomacy and warfare. We find little ofNelson’s infamy or passion in Keith, but we docome to admire his dedication and lifetime ofservice. His greatest success is arguablyamassing a considerable fortune from prizemoney, thus making up for the lack of means inearlier life.

By his own admission, McCranie findsKeith a “fascinating, complex and difficultcharacter who in many respects epitomized theBritish navy in the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries” (p. xiv). For the most part,the author seems to respect his subject but doesfind him petulant and difficult at times. Keith’scontrary behaviour with Wellington’s army in1812 is a case in point. While McCranie canappreciate that taking a subservient role to the

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land forces galled this navy man, he also admitsthat Keith’s poor attitude towards joint forcesmade a taxing exercise even more so.

Although McCranie points out thatKeith could be “arrogant, abrasive” and“dictatorial” (p. 184), the reader comes to admirehis sense of duty and treatment of those he felt tobe his equals. One of the most interestingsections of the book is Keith’s brief relationshipwith the defeated emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. While the Admiral was accustomed to carryingout orders, he allowed Napoleon to keep hissword despite orders to the contrary: this was amark of respect from an aging adversary andexemplified Keith’s understanding of honouramong warriors.

We may well agree with thebiographer that Keith “proved steady, capableand able to meet the challenges he faced” (p.xiv); however, this will hardly earn him a placein the pantheon of naval heroes. No doubtKeith’s role has been under-appreciated, butMcCranie’s description of his subject won’tendear Keith to us: “Even though he had somereprehensible personal traits, they were sharedby many of his contemporaries” (p. 188). LikeMcCranie, we may not always like thepersonality of this “sullen old Scotchman” (p.122) but he was doubtless an “importantfunctionary” in Britain’s naval manoeuvres.

This well-written and researchedbiography does illuminate several themes in thecareer of a high-ranking naval officer during acritical time. McCranie’s analysis may wellhave rescued this capable commander fromobscurity and he has unmistakably demonstratedthat the business of “seeking for Bonny on thesea” was often far from glorious.

Cheryl FurySaint John, New Brunswick

Keith McLaren. A Race for Real Sailors: TheBluenose and the International Fisherman’sCup, 1920-1938. Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre,www.douglas-mcintyre.com 2006. 250 pp.,photographs, maps, appendix, glossary,bibliography, index. CDN$29.95, cloth; ISBN 1-55365-161-8.

Not for nothing is the effigy of her victory stillon our coinage after so long. Bluenose is asmuch at the heart of Canadianism as the beaver,the maple leaf and the RCMP. To the oldergeneration of Nova Scotians, Bluenose was tooclose to their hearts for a book to ever be writtenabout the International Fisherman’s Racesduring their lifetime. But now that they are longgone, the tale can at last be told, chronicling allthe pain and anguish that they suffered. KeithMcLaren has done a fine job in recounting theBluenose story without glossing over the moredifficult parts – problems that at times threatenedto put an end to any attempt to get the vesselcompeting again.

In 1920, the return to peacetimemarked the resumption of an America’s Cupseries that had been interrupted by the war. Nowhere was interest in racing keener than inthe seaport of Halifax, centre of Canada’s GrandBanks fishery. The blustery weather underwhich local yachtsmen raced was in sharpcontrast to the more effete conditions that moreprestigious New York Yacht Club was preparedto tolerate – cancelling a race, for example,because of 23 knots of wind. The proprietor ofthe Halifax Herald, who had his ear close to thegroundswell, decided to offer a trophy forinternational competition between the fishingfleets of the world, open to all comers. That therace swiftly narrowed down to only twocompetitors was natural, given thecircumstances, and this book tells of the battlesthat ensued over the next two decades betweenthe fishing fleets of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia andGloucester, Massachusetts.

Little could anyone have visualized theproblems that would develop. The Americansbeing closer to their markets, built theirschooners to handle fresh fish and get it quicklyto the market. Canadian vessels, on the otherhand, were saltbankers, schooners designed tocatch their fish and salt it down before moving totheir markets. There was, thus, a naturalinferiority in speed between the Canadian andthe American craft. One up to the Americans.

The race gave designers on both sidesof the border an opportunity to build faster andmore competitive vessels. Bill Roue respondedwith the Bluenose and Starling Burgess with the


Mayflower, both very different designs than thetraditional Grand Banks vessels, finer in line butalso able to carry a much greater spread ofcanvas. There were murmurings about neitherbeing bona fide fishermen, but the racecommittee in Halifax, anxious for a win,endorsed Bluenose. The stalwart fishermen ofGloucester were not about to have a businesssyndicate, with no connection to their industry,muscle in on their bailiwick, and banned theMayflower. As a substitute, they sent Elsie,woefully inadequate to match the new brand ofracing schooner.

Over the years, American-designedschooners copied Bluenose’s profile in an vaineffort to beat her, but without success. As befitscompetition between fishermen, racing ruleswere at a minimum, but as each seriesprogressed more and more clauses were added,often in a very makeshift way, that is, betweenraces, after a series had started. In 1923, thecommittee disqualified Bluenose for going thewrong side of a buoy in the middle of a series. In disgust, Captain Angus Walters took hisvessel back to Lunenburg and said he would notrace again.

For seven years the bitter wranglecontinued between Gloucester and Halifax, butAngus could not be persuaded to agree to aformula for a continuation. The difficultrelations were made no easier by a catastrophicdecline in the number of sailing schooners stillfishing the Banks, their markets being rapidlytaken over by steam trawlers. An equally seriouscause of decline was the American ProhibitionLaws which turned many a sound hull to the farmore lucrative Rum Row trade.

Prospects for a race revived with thefortuitous creation of the Gertrude L. Thebaud. Built as a schooner rather than a fisherman, shewas finally accepted as bona fide byGloucestermen keen to get their hands on thetrophy that had so long eluded them. AngusWalters, now one of the last Lunenburgschoonermen still fishing, at first refused to raceagain, at least under the InternationalFisherman’s rules. He did however, agree torace in Gloucester for the lesser prize of a “SirThomas Lipton Cup”, one of many suchdistributed to yacht clubs around the continent

by the wealthy tea baron. In this substituteseries, Bluenose was beaten for the first time inher career.

In the midst of the Depression andamid rumours of war, 1937 first saw the imageof Bluenose on the Canadian dime. This mayhave been the catalyst needed to convince Angusto race the Thebaud in American waters. But heinsisted on the proviso that half the races shouldbe off Boston, where he was sure of a morefriendly reception.

Both vessels were feeling their age. Bluenose had already had an engine fitted andmost of her sails were far from new. Thebaudwas perhaps in better condition, but money wasfar too tight for either craft to be brought up tofull racing efficiency. Nevertheless, the 1938Racing Series assumed the now well-establishedpattern of Angus manoeuvring for all he couldget, and endless bickering with the racecommittee. After a long, drawn out series, hejust managed to get his beloved old schooneracross the line in the last race when his riggingcame tumbling down about his ears.

Because there is never likely to beanother book as comprehensive and wellresearched as this work, there is a need to besomewhat more critical than usual in the reviewof such a unique contribution to Canadianhistory. Firstly, the choice of title is unfortunate. The phrase “A Race For Real Seamen”,originally created by some tabloid news houndin Halifax, would have made any Grand Banksfisherman squirm with embarrassment. Theword “sailor” conjures an image of Jolly Jackcoming ashore, and is normally applied to thecrew of warships. Sailing people rarely use theterm, and this is a book about sailing!

There is a further problem with thetitle. In an abstruse endnote (p. 87), the authorjuggles with the various terms that wereemployed to describe the prize, before selectingthe word “Cup”. But the official title inscribedon this emblem for competition in the NorthAtlantic should surely be the one used, “TheInternational Fishing Vessel ChampionshipTrophy”. Why therefore not the word“Trophy”? This misuse of the word “Cup”denigrates the whole book.

The author has wisely concentrated on

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the races, rather than the complete story ofBluenose. Therefore, his introduction andhistorical background are brief. This is noreason, however, for contending that “until theturn of the twentieth century fishing methodsremained virtually unchanged from the days ofthe earliest Basque fishermen” (p. 13). There isa good reference readily available, M.B.DesBrisay’s History of the County ofLunenburg, first published in 1898, andfrequently reprinted, that gives a far morecorrect account of the Lunenburg fishery fromits earliest days.

Information on the building ofBluenose is sparse. Bill Roue’s previousexperience was limited to the design of smallracing yachts. Smith & Rhuland built bytraditional methods, and the sole drawing of herlines supplied by the designer may well havebeen the first time that their shipwrights wererequired to work from the creation of a navalarchitect. Although, as the author points out,Roue agreed to raise the forecastle 18 inches tomake her drier, he overlooks a more importantchange. When framing up, the shipwrights’experienced eye found the vessel still too tenderforward. They therefore opened out the framesof her forebody to give greater driving power.(When asked to build Bluenose II, they were soaghast at the concept of a replica of their sacredvessel being used as an advertisement for abrewery, that they deliberately built her withoutincorporating this critical change. The differenceaccounts for the latter not being so fine aseaboat).

More discussion of her design wouldhave been useful, but this is lightly skipped over. Bluenose may have been built for speed ratherthan fish-carrying capacity, but her power camefrom her 10,000 sq ft of canvas, at least a thirdgreater than that of the more conventionalsaltbankers. This made her so tender, that hermore solidly built counterparts could pass herwith ease coming in over the Sable Bar in ablow. Reefed far down, she was quite unable tocarry their spread of canvas.

The author is overly concerned withthe modern style. Bill Roue’s name was neverspelt with an é, and C.H.J. Snider, the editor ofthe Toronto Telegram, who did so much to

publicize the races, would have turned in hisgrave by being repeatedly referred to as “Jerry”. Throughout the book, the author irritatinglyuses the term “boat” to define schooners whichany Grand Bank fisherman would haveautomatically referred to as “vessels”.

Fortunately, one can find nothing butpraise for the illustrations, a quality we wouldnaturally expect from the author of theenchanting Light on the Water (1998). McLarenhas a great eye for a good photograph, and hasgone to considerable extremes to locate the bestarchival photographs, many never publishedbefore.

Although there is excellent coverage ofthe American side, the work fails to bring outthat fully two-thirds of the schooner captainsworking out of Gloucester and Boston were“White-washed Yankees”, skippers fromNewfoundland and the Canadian Maritimes whohad moved to New England. Ben Pine, AngusWalters’ archrival, was one of these. This littleknown aspect of the events puts a somewhatdifferent complexion on the rivalry between thetwo factions.

The beauty of the InternationalFishermen’s Trophy Races was that, for once,Canadians out-trumped the United States at theirown game. In the whole history of theAmerica’s Cup, as long as the trophy stayedwith the New York Yacht Club, Americansnever lost a single protest. Now it was time forthe Halifax Race Committee to play our southernneighbours at their own game. In this, as theauthor effectively brings out, they were aidedand abetted by their Gloucester counterparts,who were not about to let outsiders muscle in onwhat was essentially a race between professionalfishermen.

The author generally does a first-classjob of describing the racing and the incessantinfighting that went on both during and betweeneach Series. But towards the latter part of thebook, his interest tends to flag and the politics ofracing assumes more importance. This isespecially true of the last Series, which althoughsometimes bogged down by incessant wranglingwas wonderfully described at the time byGordon Sinclair of the Toronto Star, a storyMcLaren forgets to tell.


Perhaps the biggest criticism of thebook is that it fails to convey the salty tang ofthe ocean that blows in from Chebucto Head orCape Ann. Too many years have passed, andthere are too few old timers left today whoremember those heady days when Bluenosereigned supreme. Although the author workedtwo summers aboard her successor, he is not asailing man, and therefore does not convey theirlanguage.

Nevertheless, we are lucky to havesuch a thoroughly researched book. Despite theserious shortcomings described above, this is awork that is likely to become a classic in itsfield, and as such is a worthy and long overdueaddition to our national history. It is thereforerecommended to all readers.

John CrosseVancouver, British Columbia

Chris Mills. Lighthouse Legacies: Stories ofNova Scotia’s Lightkeeping Families. Halifax,NS: Nimbus, www.nimbus.ns.ca, 2006. viii +240 pp, map, photographs, bibliography, index.CDN$24.95, paper; ISBN 1-55109-561-0.

It is harder to imagine a more solitary yetultimately rewarding profession than that of alightkeeper. Entrusted with the safety of allshipping within the range of their light, it was avery demanding and sometimes incrediblylonely job that could tax both your stamina andyour resources to the limit. In some cases thelight was manned by a small crew, and in othersan entire family was living in seclusion at thelight, whether it was on a rough stretch of coastor on an isolated island. On some islands, theposition of lightkeeper was a family tradition,with the job being passed like a torch from onegeneration to the next. In his excellent newbook, Chris Mills shines a light on the lives andcareers of the men, women and families thattended the lights of Nova Scotia.

One of the chief strengths of the bookis the passion that Mills has for his subjectmatter. He has actually worked as a lightkeeperin Nova Scotia, starting with a three-weekassignment on Cross Island. Over the next nine

years, he saw service at eleven lighthousesacross Canada and developed a love for thelights and their stories. Each chapter of the bookdeals with a different facet of the history oflightkeeping, from the building of the lights tothe lives of the people who worked in them andthe technical skills required to ensure safety atsea. Each chapter is richly detailed with the talesof the lights, either those directly related to Millsor those that he has carefully researched.

Mills is able to consistently find justthe right tone for each chapter. While the life ona rugged section of coast could be wearing andlonely, it is surprising to find that many of thestories related in the book are full of warmth andgood humour. This extends to some of the photocaptions, which have a touch of whimsy aboutthem, including one for a photo of lightkeeperWalter Mclaughlin, who spent thirty-five yearsas the mainstay at the lonely station at GannetRock. Mills uses humour effectively throughoutthe book, with truly delightful sub-headings suchas I’m Never Gonna Be On No Space Shuttle andHoly Jesus! You Saw Old Jim Burgoyne!

Mills uses the firsthand accounts ofkeepers and their children throughout the bookto illustrate the theme of each chapter and hassome tremendous photographs at his disposal tofurther document his stories. The lives of thewives and families of the keepers are detailedwith great affection, with tales of real sadnessand heartache being related. Mills uses thesetales to underscore the loneliness that was oftenfelt on isolated outposts. It is hard not to feel forMarjorie Fairservice, a young mother trying toraise her family in almost total seclusion fromthe rest of the world, enduring day after day offoul weather and isolation and living a life whereall she wanted to do was to climb the tower andcry. Mills finds a sense of real strength in thesetales, and in particular takes pleasure in tellingus the story of Evelyn Richardson, a beacon toall wives, who raised her family and found timeto petition for better conditions and equipmentfor keepers across Canada.

Mills tells of the weather conditionsfaced on the coast, using more greatphotography to illustrate his points. Lighthouseshave also been the subject of tales of the ghostly,supernatural and downright weird. Mills

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introduces some of the most famous and chillingof these in a suitably creepy chapter thatmentions lighthouses haunted by spectres asdiverse as Sambro Island’s famous “DoubleAlec” and Admiral Horatio Nelson, who hauntsthe light on Kent Island and has been a source ofwonder to the many generations of the Kentfamily who have tended the light.

Like Evelyn Richardson, Mills hassome criticism for the government and how thegradual automation of lighthouses across Canadahas led to the ultimate decline of a truly nobleprofession. In some cases, a keeper’s positionwhich had been passed down from onegeneration to the next was rudely phased out bythe stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. Today, groupssuch as the Nova Scotia Lighthouse PreservationSociety continue to raise awareness for the lightsand their upkeep in an age when there is noallowance for day to day maintenance,something that was always a part of the keeper’slife.

This is a splendid book, rich in detailand lovingly crafted by an author who reallyloves his subject matter. Highly recommended.

Richard MacMichaelDartmouth, Nova Scotia

J. Forbes Munro. Maritime Enterprise andEmpire: Sir William Mackinnon and hisBusiness Network, 1823-1893. London: Boydelland Brewer, [email protected], 2003. x +525 pp., illustrations, maps, tables. UK£75,cloth. ISBN 0-85115-935-4.

Maritime Enterprise and Empire is a richlytextured analysis of Sir William Mackinnon’sIndian Ocean-based business network. Drawingon detailed archival research and a thoroughknowledge of networking theory, as well as thecurrent controversies in British imperialhistoriography, J. Forbes Munro has written animpressive study. Mackinnon’s rise fromobscure birth in Campbelltown on the edge ofthe Scottish Highlands to become one ofBritain’s great ship owners is the story ofVictorian legend. His British India SteamNavigation Company, BI to contemporaries,

became, after his death, the foundation of thecurrent Inchcape Group.

This volume is divided into eighteenchapters in three unequal parts plus a separateintroduction. In the twelve-page introduction,Munro outlines his main themes. At the core ofMackinnon’s business network were five tradinghouses, which he or his family controlled. Inturn, these inner-core partnerships managed theaffiliated firms through interlockingshareholdings, directorships, and agencycontracts. There was a further element to thisnetwork, an outer layer of allied or associatedbusinesses. It was Mackinnon’s successfulhandling of this third component thatdemonstrated his entrepreneurial skills and madehim a businessman of the first rank.

Part One, “Enterprising Scots”, coversthe time period 1823-1870. Mackinnon’s earlyyears were not particularly auspicious. It wasnot until he left for India in 1846 to join familyacquaintance Robert Mackenzie that Mackinnonfound his true calling. The partnership,Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co, became the first ofthe young Scot’s profitable enterprises. Hequickly realized that there was more profit in theIndian import-export business than there was intrading in the interior. By the early 1850s,Mackinnon was at the centre of three family-owned British-Indian trading houses based inGlasgow (Wm. Mackinnon & Co), Liverpool(Hall Mackinnon & Co) and Calcutta(Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Co). Between themthey owned a small number of sailing ships thathelped connect their trading entities. Thisnetwork was briefly extended to Australia. Business was profitable, particularly the trade toCalcutta, but by the end of the decade thepartnerships were still relatively modestconcerns. Among the investments made bypartners in the Mackinnon firms was theCalcutta and Burmah Steam NavigationCompany formed in 1856. Initially a single shipcompany operating in the coasting trade on theeastern side of the Bay of Bengal, it wastransformed into the British India SteamNavigation Company after William Mackinnonwas able to win the Indian government’s mailsubsidy in 1862. The contract was awarded tothe small firm with the energetic managing


partner because of Mackinnon’s developingfriendship with Sir Henry Bartle Frere, amember of the Governor-General’s SupremeCouncil, and from April 1862 Governor ofBombay. Frere was not only an up and comingAnglo-Indian bureaucrat, he was a true believerin the privatization of government services. By1864, BI had the mail contract from Calcutta toBombay and Mackinnon’s fortune was made. Inthe same year, he took control of theNederlandsch Indische Stoomaart Maatchappij(Netherlands India Steam Navigation Company,NISM). The network now controlled coastalshipping in India and the Indonesianarchipelago. Taking advantage of hisnetworking skills and his personal friendshipwith Frere, Mackinnon extended BI’s routes tothe Persian Gulf.

Part Two, “Suez and After”, deals withMackinnon’s maturing business network. Oncemore Mackinnon was able to use his contacts toextend the shipping business to Zanzibar. Hewas fully aware of the possibilities thecompletion of the Suez Canal in 1869 opened upfor the United Kingdom-India trade. Notwanting to antagonize the powerful P & O lobbywith a direct London-India service, however,BI’s first line through the canal ran from Londonto the Persian Gulf via Aden and Karachi.Mackinnon only opened a London-Calcuttaservice in 1874. It was during this period that hecemented a relationship with the Dumbartonshipbuilder, Peter Denny. Denny became BI’sfavourite builder, producing 30 ships of 65,000tons for Mackinnon’s firm between 1870 and1872. This was more than two-thirds of thetonnage added by BI during the decade. Dennyalso became a shareholder in the new syndicate,British India Association, that Mackinnonestablished to operate the London-Calcuttaservice. While the new trans-Suez service wasprofitable, the same cannot be said for thecoasting run to Zanzibar. Indeed, the east coastof Africa provided little freight and BI’scontinued interest can only be explained byMackinnon’s fascination with the “darkcontinent”.

As Mackinnon grew older, he found itmore difficult to profitably adapt to changing

times. He survived the collapse of the City ofGlasgow Bank in 1878, but only after a longcourt case. During the 1880s, BI’s servicesremained profitable but the NISM came undersustained attack from a resurgent Dutchnationalism. This chauvinism was no more thanthe Dutch version of the exaggerated Europeannationalism that created the race for Africa. Itswept away the NISM’s monopoly and then itsvery existence in 1890. But Mackinnon’s realfailure took place not in the Indonesianarchipelago but in Africa. Out of his depth, hefell under the spell of the great unexploredcontinent and more particularly one of itsgreatest exploiters, Leopold II of Belgium. Mackinnon was taken in by Leopold’s visionaryschemes and it is perhaps fortunate that theScotsman did not live long enough to learn thetruth about the Congo Free State. Mackinnon,however, did invest heavily in the ImperialBritish East Africa Company (BEA). From thestart, this colonial trading company was a failureas a business enterprise. The BEA suffered fromconflicting commercial and political goals. ButMackinnon’s major problems stemmed from thefact that the territory that became Kenya notonly had a weakly developed market economybut its trade with the outside world was meagre. When Mackinnon died in 1893, his Africanfiasco was forgiven by his contemporaries as anoble failure because they believed he had putthe Empire ahead of personal gain.

Today, Sir William Mackinnon is notremembered for his African adventures butrather, as the man who founded the British IndiaSteam Navigation Company. His career caneasily be held up as the epitome of businessnetworking. The author has done full justice tothis canny Scot. Maritime Enterprise andEmpire is not only essential reading for scholarsinterested nineteenth century maritime history,but it is also indispensable for students ofbusiness history.

M. Stephen SalmonOttawa, Ontario

Book Reviews 95

Robert C. Parsons. Ocean of Storms, Sea ofDisaster: North Atlantic Shipwrecks of theStrange and Curious. Lawrencetown Beach,N.S.; Pottersfield Press,www.pottersfieldpress.com, 2005. 255 pp.,illustrations, sources. CDN$19.95, paper; ISBN1-895900-74-3.

Of the thousands of shipwrecks, sinkings andother North Atlantic marine disasters, only thesmall proportion involving either great loss oflife or human survival in spite of insurmountableodds appear to have piqued the interest of theaverage reader.

While Robert Parsons has included anumber of stories familiar to most of us with aninterest in North Atlantic and East Coastshipping in this collection of essays, he has also,through a diligent search of Atlantic Provincesnewspapers and other sources, rediscoveredmany long-forgotten tales of shipwrecks andother unexpected occurrences.

Among the 60-or-so essays whichcomprise the main content, the author hasrevisited such well-recorded incidents as theArctic disaster, the sinking of the Atlantic, thewreck of the Humboldt and the LaBourgoune-Cromartyshire collision. The student of nauticalhistory will, however, find the subject matter ofmany of the other essays to be quite fascinating.

This group includes the story of Ida C.Howard, the daughter of Captain Howard,master of the brig George S. Berry, who helpedfoil a mutiny; the loss of Lightship No. 19; andthe strange tale of George Lohnes, who spent tendays alone adrift on a newly-built 70-footwooden harbour tug. While there appears to besomething for everyone in this interestingcollection of nautical tales, it does have anumber of major problems.

For example, a knowledgeable editormight have been expected to note and correct thedescription of the S.S. Commonwealth as “asteam-powered tern schooner” and also thestatement that “the Italian barque Bozzo wassteaming from London to Baltimore.” Something might also have been done about therecurring misuse of nautical terms, such as mastsbeing supported by lanyards, and average-sizedvessels being constantly referred to as “great

ships”.Geography appears to be another of

this writer's problems, and in his account of thewreck of Lightship No. 19 we find him locatingthe community of Liscomb about 100 milessouth of Halifax, instead of that same distance tothe northeast. This results in his final paragraphmaking absolutely no sense.

Many of the other errors and omissionscould have been easily avoided had the authorundertaken a little bit of research, instead ofrelying solely on old newspaper reports. In thecase of the Humboldt essay, this would haveenabled him to determine that his so-called“Diamond liner Cabot” was not, in fact, a largepassenger vessel, but a little, 465-ton BlackDiamond Line collier owned by the DominionCoal Company.

Incomplete essays which leave toomany questions unanswered are anotherproblem. In one instance, we have the story ofthe wreck of the William and Mary and theabandonment of the vessel and most of itspassengers by Captain Stinson and most of hiscrew. On arriving in New York, the captainclaimed that the vessel, with between 170 and185 passengers still on board, had sunk withinminutes of its abandonment. This proved to bea pack of lies, especially when the passengers,who had been rescued the following day, arrivedin New Orleans. This is a great story, but it hasno ending, as Parsons has neglected to recountthe fate of Captain Stinson and his cowardlycrew.

The assumption that the reader willknow what the author is talking about also raisesquestions, as in the story of the rescue of foursurvivors from the Columbian, after 14 days inan open boat, by the United States RevenueCutter Seneca, which happened to be on icepatrol in the area. Luckily, in this instance, thequestion as to what was the Ice Patrol and whatwas a United States Revenue Cutter doing in theNorth Atlantic were answered with onetelephone call to a friend knowledgeable in suchfields. It turned out that a few years after theTitanic disaster, the United States had organizeda North Atlantic Ice Patrol, based at Halifax, towhich Department of Revenue cutters wereassigned prior to the formation of the Coast


Guard. This essay is particularly disjointed, andit is unfortunate, since knowing that these foursurvivors – referred to as “castaways” by theauthor – owed their lives to the Titanic disasterwould have tied things up very nicely.

Irrelevant illustrations present a furtherproblem. The author has used, in addition tocontemporary newspaper clippings, prints fromsuch publications as The Illustrated LondonNews and Harper's Weekly. While one cannotdeny that these are wonderful examples of theirgenre, only 3 of 29 illustrations bear any relationto the essay they accompany. Knowing that thedrawings were not based on actual experience ofthe events, one questions the decision to usethem at all.

In conclusion, Mr Parsons’ collectionof essays leaves much to be desired. Had a littlemore care been taken with editing, checking outsupporting material and research, and theinclusion of an index, this book could haveprovided readers with a most enjoyable read andthe marine historian with a useful reference.

Robin H. WyllieEast LaHave, N.S.

Dudley Pope. Flag 4: The Battle of CoastalForces in the Mediterranean, 1939-1945.London: Chatham Publishing,www.chathampublishing.com reprint 2006. xv+ 300 pp., illustrations, maps, appendices, index.UK£9.99, paper; ISBN 1-86176-067-1.

Flag 4 is the naval signal for “attack withtorpedoes”, and this book is an account of therole of the motor torpedo boats of BritishCoastal Forces in the Mediterranean during theSecond World War. It is based on officialdocuments and interviews with the officers whocommanded flotillas and the men whoparticipated in this perilous campaign, obtainedin the early 1950s before, as the author says,their memories faded. It is a stylishly writtenbook, as befits the author of the Lord Ramageseries of eighteen sea novels and some ten booksof naval history.

Dudley Pope did not serve in thistheatre of war but was a cadet in the MerchantNavy until wounded in the Battle of the Atlantic. He then spent seventeen years in Fleet Street asa naval correspondent, while writing severalbooks in his spare time, including Flag 4published originally in 1954. He became a full-time writer in 1959 and, on publication of hisfirst Ramage novel in 1965, he and his wife setsail for the West Indies where they cruised andlived until his death in 1997.

The author sees the European theatreof the Second World War falling convenientlyinto four parts: Dunkirk and the Battle ofBritain; victory in the Atlantic and D-Day; theBattle of the Mediterranean; and the finalcrushing blow of the Second Front. He arguesthat it was British naval success in theMediterranean that finally stopped the Axisadvance, made a German victory impossible,and gave the Allies time to regain their strengthand plan for the final assault on Europe. Germany knew the strategic importance of theMediterranean to Britain and had built up a fleetof motor torpedo boats before the war,circumventing naval treaty obligations by mass-producing them as coastguard cutters. Theyeven withdrew planes from the Eastern front tocombat the smallest fighting ships of the RoyalNavy. These motor torpedo and gunboats wereable to fight in the shallowest waters, penetrateminefields and hide in the inlets of enemy-heldislands.

Pope believes that the war at home hasbeen fully documented in existing literature andin the introduction he asks rhetorically why thealmost incredible story of Coastal Forces in theMediterranean was so scantily reported incommuniqués and newspapers. The book is nota diary account of the work of individual boats,as set out in some war memoirs, but is a broadand detailed record of the war at sea in theMediterranean. The first half concentrates onthe prominence of British MTBs in clandestineoperations in which they landed spies, operatedSpecial Boat Squadrons in support of British andAmerican troops in North Africa, made nightassaults on enemy coastal convoys off

Book Reviews 97

Yugoslavia and Southern Italy, and then hidbefore daylight brought the inevitable swarms ofLuftwaffe to attack them. Encouraged by signalsfrom Churchill that they were putting up “anextremely sporting fight”, the high-poweredBritish MTBs and American PT-boats were theonly surface craft able to continually seek outand attack the enemy. The turning point came in1943, when the offensive at sea passed into thehands of the Allies, and the second half of thebook emphasizes the frustrating politics andstrategies of the combatants working withgroups of partisans in the Adriatic and Balkans.

Since many of Pope’s potentialinterviewees had already returned to their homecountries, their personal contributions do notcontain as much oral history as he probablywould have liked, but he has achieved his aim ofpreserving their role in the conflict. He hasskilfully organized his primary sources of navalcontact reports, cabinet memoranda and capturedGerman documents translated specifically forthis account with the whole-hearted cooperationof the Admiralty. Their censors also dealt lightlywith his manuscript, which had to be cut bymore than a third due to space limitations in analready-lengthy book for its type.

The narrative is lively and the authorhas been careful not to detail incidents which,while probably interesting in themselves, aresimilar to ones previously told. He has madelittle attempt to give physical descriptions ofplaces, but to be fair, probably because of spacelimits, and he recommends readers consult theirown maps. The index is limited to names ofships and personnel rather than battles andplaces, and operations are classified by theircodename and flotillas identified by theirnumber, but there are four appendices listingtorpedoes fired and enemy ships sunk.

Unlike some other war histories, theauthor’s attention to detail is remarkable andwoven into the narrative are eyewitness accountsretold with all the vivid style that typifies hisnovels. By incorporating much new evidence,and despite lacking a bibliography, the book willappeal to both naval historians and generalreaders of military history. Althoughoccasionally let down by a limited knowledge ofthe wider historical context, Dudley Pope has

gone some way to explaining why the Allies –and the Axis – fought so hard for a large expanseof sand and water.

Michael ClarkLondon, UK

Sheli O. Smith. The Low-Tech ArchaeologicalSurvey Manual. Columbus, OH: The PASTFoundation, www.pastfoundation.org, 2006. vi+ 62 pp., photographs, illustrations. US$15.93,paper (coil bound) or US$10, downloadable pdf;ISBN 978-1-4243-1031-9.

Sheli Smith’s purpose in writing this guide is tolay out a basic survey manual primarily for useon underwater archaeological sites, includingboth the search for, and the recording of, suchsites. The author’s intent is to focus on basic,pragmatic, “low-tech” site-search and recordingmethodologies that can be used by those withlimited resources.

The author has completed this text innine well-organized chapters. There are threeevident strengths throughout the book which willendear the author to those who have to actuallydo, or teach others how to do, underwaterarchaeological surveys.

The first thing that stands out aboutthis manual is that it is rife with good, commonsense suggestions based on direct practice. There is nothing like practical experience todeflate an idea that sounds like it will workbeautifully when discussed on the surface, butthen quickly unravels when taken underwater. Ms Smith draws directly upon her ownexperience and that of others working in thefield. Most important in the author’s approachis the idea of keeping things simple – whether itis in laying an underwater baseline or taking ameasurement. Her section on tools, for example,extols the virtues of the five-gallon bucket andthe many uses it can be put to. On underwatersites, there is nothing like a simple device that ischeap, multi-purpose, and has very few, if any,moving parts to corrode.

The final chapter of the text is entitled“Just Lists”, where the various techniques shediscusses are broken down into lists of materials


that must be taken to the field in order tocomplete these tasks. Again, useful practicaladvice and a reminder that valuable field timecan be lost without such planning.

The second important strength is costconsciousness. This inexpensive bookemphasizes a frugal approach that is so oftennecessary, as the costs of underwater surveys areusually exponentially higher than for land-basedsurveys. There are innumerable examples ofusing cheap, commonly available materials thatwill do the job well without resorting tocommercial fabrication. A “junkyard” and“Home Depot” approach is most often essentialto the success of a survey.

Thirdly, there are excellentillustrations throughout the text. Grasping aconcept of how something will work is oftenmore difficult for underwater applications. Illustrations, such as the “Bob-O-Bar”, are ofgreat help. Many variations of this underwaterdraughting machine are found in the field, andby providing a quick, clear snapshot of what isbeing described, Smith allows her readers todiscuss and devise what is best for theirparticular site application. The survey patterns,datum lines and measuring techniques are alsowell illustrated.

Under the subject of survey systems,the book illustrates three basic survey techniquesthat can be used in both clear and limited-visibility situations. Visibility permitting, one ofthe most successful and common methods forlocating underwater sites is the towed search,where a diver or divers are towed behind a boaton a surface-oriented fixed course. Because ofsafety considerations, procedural details andboat availability, this technique may have beenconsidered too “high tech” for this particularpublication.

Within the photography documentationchapter there could be more information onunderwater photography and underwater videorecording. The fastest way to obtain the mostsite information, visibility permitting, is throughthe use of underwater photomosaics and videomosaics with scale. The author states that thestrengths of underwater video are in recordingaction, wide expanses of features and sitechanges. These are excellent points. Capturing

the site-recording methodologies and work onthe site is important, as it can provideunderstanding of the work and ultimatelysupport for such work. Smith also states,“Moreover that video can be used later fordetailed analysis and mapping.” This could beelaborated on somewhat.

For a variety of reasons, underwaterarchaeological surveys most often do not includethe recovery of artefacts. Given this fact, thesection on surface photo recording of artefactsmight be better spent elaborating on theunderwater photo or video recording of artefacts,more particularly, the inclusion of an example ofa cheap two- or three-dimensional scale.

The author stresses consistency inrecording, stating, among other points, “I am afirm believer in developing the site map in thefield as you go. That way if there aremiscalculations, wandering baselines ortransposed numbers they can be caught andremedied.” This is absolutely excellent advicethat cannot be overemphasized. The same pointcould also be made for the overall archaeologicalrecord which is the field notes. The author statesthat everyone should be keeping a field notebookand transcribing underwater data to it. Againexcellent advice. This could be taken a stepfurther by following the same advice as used inthe site map, which is to develop the overallarchaeological records as the project proceeds. Too often, individual field notes are consideredthe property of the writer when it should beemphasized that they are a part of the projectrecord. These records should then “belong” tothe survey-sponsoring organization and bearchived and available for future work orreference. This process includes cataloguing andfiling in a central location all underwaterrecording sheets and field notes, which shouldbe kept in the same standardized format by allparties.

Overall, this text is an invaluable toolfor underwater archaeology site surveys. Further, if it doesn’t offer the exact tool ormethodology for completing a survey task, itgives something that can be modified or alteredto better suit the needs of the individual task orproject. It puts together in a simplified format,most, if not all, of the approaches to tasks that

Book Reviews 99

are undertaken on underwater sites. Thoseinvolved in underwater archaeologicalinstruction will find it of particular benefit. It ishighly recommended.

Peter WaddellOttawa, Ontario

Dana Story, Frame Up!: A Story of Essex, itsShipyards and its People. Charleston, SC: TheHistory Press, www.historypress.net, 2004. 122pp., photographs. US$19.99. paper; ISBN 1-59629-019-6.

Maritime historians, not unlike their colleaguesin other areas of historical inquiry, often findthemselves at a loss looking for source materialthat sheds nuanced perspective on the everydayworkings of artifact production. This can befrustrating for those studying shipyards,particularly given the foundational role theseenterprises played in supporting maritimeactivity that was at the heart of a locale orregion’s identity. Given the advances made inresearching the shipbuilding industry –momentum generated by labour history, thehistory of technology, tall ship restoration, andthe wooden boat movement – the re-issuing ofDana Story’s 1963 Frame Up!: A Story of Essex,its Shipyards, and its People could not be moretimely. Story, who passed away in 2005 at theage of 85, was among the last of Essex,Massachusetts’ legendary line of shipbuilders, agroup that launched approximately 3,300 vesselsfrom the late-eighteenth through mid-twentiethcentury.

Frame Up! mixes personal memoirwith the informal narrative of a local chroniclerwho saw the community’s shipbuilding historyas not only a bulwark of its identity, but as ameans to insure awareness ofmaritime/environmental connections thatcontinue to consume Essex and theMassachusetts North Shore today. Notsurprising, Story’s shipyard is now the EssexShipbuilding Museum with Frame Up! takingform as living history, along with Story’s otherwritten works: Growing Up in a Shipyard; TheBuilding of a Wooden Ship; and The

Shipbuilders of Essex.Frame Up! epitomizes Story’s

accessible style; indeed, the book reads asthough you are sitting alongside the author at theshipyard as he tells stories passed down throughpast generations, as well as events heexperienced himself. Having been raisedaround, and worked in, his family’s shipyard –to say nothing of his experiences around Essex’sother shipyards and supporting industries – Storyprovides elaborate details of the personalitiesand skills that animated the everyday rounds ofthis occupation. Specifically, Story takes usfrom half-hull model, to the lofting floor, toframing, planking, caulking, and ship joinery,and ultimately to the ship’s launching. Rarely isthe execution of these tasks so ably described intechnical terms and so humanly rendered interms of the social, economic, and emotionalaspirations each worker and community memberbrought to these tasks.

Story’s keen observations provide afuller view of how the town of Essex and itssurrounding environment (both natural andhumanly-wrought) framed the context of thecommunity’s shipbuilding. Obviously,shipbuilders were not immune from local andnational political affairs, the town’s culturalactivities, and other occupations that werequintessential parts of coastal Massachusetts life.Having spent a lifetime in the community, Storyis able to shed ethnographic insight on thecultural temperament that drove Essex andlinked its people and institutions. Story’ssympathetic treatment of the community’sYankee culture is understandable, given hisstatus as a native-born son, and he gives lessattention to the influx of Irish, Portuguese, andItalians who were increasingly affected byEssex’s shipbuilding industry during the latternineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Going beyond contextualizingindustries that directly supported shipbuilding,Frame Up! also describes other signatureoccupations such as salt hay farming, theharvesting and exporting of beach sand and ice,and, of course, the community’s legendaryreputation as a clamming centre. Given the timeperiod in which he came of age, Story astutelychronicles Essex’s transformation from a


shipbuilding community to a popular touristresort. Although not an environmental history,Frame Up! leaves readers with an unmistakableunderstanding of how the Essex River hasstructured life in the community for centuries.

In Frame Up!’s concluding chapters,Story provides important details on thecarnivalesque atmosphere surrounding shiplaunchings as well as an intimate portrait of hisfather, Arthur D. Story, during his tenure asowner of one of Essex’s most renowned yards. Story’s careful description of the variousmethods used to launch a vessel, as well as theimpact of weather and river conditions on thisprocess, provides important information oftenobscured or missing in the historical record. Contending that media coverage added to thefanfare surrounding ship launchings, Frame Up!leaves little doubt that the celebrationsaccompanying these events embodied the fullrange of sentiment associated with vesselconstruction.

Ship launchings provide an apttransition to Story’s focused account of hisfather’s life. The elder Story presided over thefinal glory days of Essex shipbuilding – a careerconsisting of boats built for the most prosperousyears of Gloucester’s fishing industry in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries to thosebuilt for the more celebratory and boosteristicaims of competing for the InternationalFishermen’s Trophy. The younger Story’saccount of his father’s life shows the parallelismbetween the elder’s political and social life andthe manner in which he managed his shipyard. Frame Up documents A.D. Story’s contractualrelations with clients, his cooperation with otherEssex shipbuilders, and his desire to build boatson speculation simply to keep his workersemployed.

While Frame Up! is not an academictreatment of Essex shipbuilding, it is a rareaccount of its production and social life from thestandpoint of an insider. Dana Story makes thefrequently arcane details of ship constructionaccessible to a wide audience. Few writerscould so clearly portray the views and habitsheld by shipyard workers and communitymembers alike. In ably documenting elementsof Essex’s shipbuilding industry, Story has also

provided valuable comparative material for thoseresearching similar topics in the United Statesand Canada.

Michael J. ChiarappaKalamazoo, Michigan

John Lester Sutherland. Steamboats ofGloucester and the North Shore. Charleston, SC:The History Press, www.historypress.net, 2004.160 pp., photographs, appendices. US$19.99,paper; ISBN I-59629-000-5.

Gloucester lies at the head of a sheltered inlet onCape Ann, on the north shore of MassachusettsBay. Much of the city’s fame is derived fromthe tall, elegant Banks schooners which oncecalled the port home and whose story,romanticized in Kipling’s 1897 CaptainsCourageous and the 1937 motion picture of thesame name, has been well recorded in numerouspublications. Until now, however, little has beenwritten about the coastal passenger-cargosteamers which connected Gloucester withBoston, the fishery-related industries, or theindispensable harbour tugs, which moved theschooners from berth to berth and towed themout to sea to begin their long voyages to thefishing banks.

In Steamboats of Gloucester and theNorth Shore, John Sutherland combineshistorical essays, photographs and personalreminiscences in a commendable effort tocorrect this omission.

In his first essay, the author providessome background on Gloucester industries, withnotes on the day boats, gill-netters andwaterfront industries. In the next three chapters,he records the history of the Boston &Gloucester Steamship Co., and the early days ofsteam passenger and freight service betweenBoston and the North Shore.

The first steamer on the Boston-Gloucester run was the Yacht, c.1841, whichmaintained a somewhat irregular service until1847, when the Gloucester branch railroad wasopened. She was followed in 1849 by the JacobBell, and in 1859 the Boston & GloucesterSteamship Company inaugurated year-round

Book Reviews 101

service with the steamer Mystic. At this pointSutherland’s account of the company historyvaries to some extent with that of Fred IrvingDayton in his classic Steamboat Days (NewYork, 1939). Dayton records that the Mysticwas taken over by the US Government in 1863and lists a number of successors, none of whichlasted for any length of time. It is also recordedby Dayton that in 1875 the company wasreorganized and two small steamers, the J.W.Todd and Ella Knight, were placed on the rununtil 1876, when the George A. Chaffee waspurchased.

From this point on, apart from therebeing no mention in the text of the City ofHaverhill, which called at Gloucester between1902 and 1903, and the omission of anyphotographs of the Mascotte, which thecompany purchased in 1923 and ran untilSeptember 1925, the author has compiled anaccurate and profusely illustrated history of theBoston & Gloucester Steamship Company untilits dissolution in December 1926.

His focus on the company’s secondvessel, the 561-ton City of Gloucester, added tothe roster in 1884, and 718-ton Cape Ann, builtin 1895 to replace the aging George A. Chaffee,is understandable, as his father, William J.Sutherland, began his career with the companyas an oiler in 1910 and subsequently wasemployed as acting-second engineer on both theCape Ann and City of Gloucester. He obtainedhis marine engineer’s ticket in 1920 and, justprior to the company’s demise, joined theMariners Towboat Company, in January 1924.

William Sutherland’s tales of life inGloucester, as recorded by his son, plus theauthor’s own entertaining reminiscences ofadventures and misadventures during a lifetimespent around the waterfront, add a very humantouch to what, apart from its concentration onmarine-related industries, would otherwise bejust another local history.

This is particularly true of the latterportion of the book, comprising a detailedhistory of towing in Gloucester harbour, and aseries of brief essays on various aspects of thatwork, entitled “Delivering Water”, “Working theLines” and “Salt, Coal and Lumber”. These arefollowed by a number of brief notes ranging in

subject matter from “Those Aging Schooners” to“Working the Essex River” and “Accidents andMishaps”.

Apart from the irrelevant inclusion ofan account of the 1989 loss of the side-wheelerPortland, Sutherland’s Steamboats of Gloucesterand the North Shore provides us with a rareinsight into many aspects of life and commercein a major fishing port.

There are a few problems with theindividual components of this book. Theirmanner of presentation and the almost randomorder in which they have been published leavesmuch to be desired. This suggests a sad lack ofeditorial influence and inevitably createsconfusion in the mind of the reader. It shouldalso be noted that, while the author’s collectionof essays and his five appendices, consisting ofship lists, crew lists and employee lists, will beof considerable interest to those familiar with thearea, without a general index and a map ofGloucester Harbour, Sutherland’s commendableeffort is unlikely to appeal to a wider readership.

This is really too bad, as these arefascinating stories, well told and superblyillustrated and, when sorted out and read in theproper sequence, they are both informative andhighly entertaining.

Robin H. WyllieLe Have, Nova Scotia

M. Brook Taylor. A Camera on the Banks:Frederick William Wallace and the Fishermen ofNova Scotia. Fredericton, NB: Goose LaneEditions, www.goose.lane.cam, 2006. 152 pp.,photographs, map, sources, bibliography, index.CDN $24.95, US $19.95, paper; ISBN 0-86492-441-0.

Born into a Scottish seafaring family in 1886,Frederick William Wallace moved to Quebecwith his parents in 1904 and subsequentlyachieved fame as a journalist and writer offiction and history. He also dabbled in moviesand composed a well-known sea shanty, and ifhe did not coin the phrase “wooden ships andiron men,” he certainly popularized it. He wasno dilettante either, for he made seven working


voyages aboard bank fishery schooners between1911 and 1916. Wallace and the photographsthat he took during those voyages are the mainsubjects of M. Brook Taylor’s book.

Taylor begins by plunging the readerinto the 1911 Digby fishermen’s regatta, whichWallace had come from Montreal to cover forCanadian Century magazine. The regatta wouldserve as Wallace’s entrée into the world ofDigby bank fishermen, enabling him to fulfillthe dreams of nautical adventure that hisglobetrotting father had inspired in him sincechildhood. By 1916, Wallace had amassedenough personal experience to draw upon for therest of his days, proving Jack Kerouac’s dictumthat every life contains the seeds of myth.

As Taylor states in theacknowledgements, this book places “imagesrather than words at the centre of the tale.” Mostof the photographs are from the collection of theMaritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax andare likely to be familiar to readers and museum-goers interested in the Atlantic Canadianfisheries. To his credit, Taylor goes one betterby rescuing the men in the photographs from theoblivion to which working people are usuallyconsigned. He gives us their names and familybackgrounds, while Wallace’s photographsconvey their warmth, courage and hard-earnedwisdom. As fishermen, it was perhapsinevitable that some of Wallace’s subjects wouldlater die accidentally at sea, although ironicallyfew are likely to have been as reckless asWallace, who would go to any lengths to get aphotograph (and, in the process, to gainacceptance).

Although there is much to like here,problem areas abound. Taylor offers a curiousinterpretation of the modus vivendi to the 1888Chamberlain-Bayard Treaty, which establisheda license system for American fishing crews toobtain commercial privileges in Canadianterritorial waters. By describing the system assomething that Great Britain “granted” to theUnited States, Taylor forgets (or dismisses) theinternational joint high commission thatnegotiated the agreement in Washington. Hewould also have us believe that the migration offishery labour from Nova Scotia to New Englandwas a product of late-nineteenth-century

conditions, whereas Nova Scotia’s“whitewashed Yankees” had long followed thepath blazed by Newfoundland fishermen in themid-seventeenth century. Labour mobility hasbeen and remains a hallmark of the northwestAtlantic fisheries.

On the whole, Taylor skilfully handlesthe intricacies of fishing and sailing terminology(although a fisherman “pays” out his line, hedoes not “play” it out). Still, in a book rife withtechnical details and in which the word “camera”figures prominently in the title, it is odd that,other than passing mention of a box camera, welearn nothing about Wallace’s camera or how hiswork compares with photo-documentaries of asimilar nature. Taylor’s admission that some ofthe images were cropped or detailed forinclusion in the book makes it impossible toassess Wallace even on such basic grounds ascomposition.

The publisher’s hand is palpable, withthe lack of endnotes, insertion of sidebars andoccasional use of the historical presentsuggesting that a popular readership wasintended. The text is scholarly, however, and attimes, highly specialized, begging the questionof why there are no endnotes, only a note onsources that is followed, unnecessarily, by aselected bibliography. Surprisingly, HaroldInnis, The Cod Fisheries: The History of anInternational Economy (Toronto, 1940) is notcited.

Every book must stake its claims tosignificance, and it is here that Taylor strainscredibility. His assertion that Wallace hadphotographed “the last age of unassisted sail” isso muddy as to be meaningless, as is hisdeclaration that there is “no comparablecontemporary collection” of photographs. Theadoption of auxiliary engines in the northwestAtlantic fisheries was a protracted affair thatfollowed a different schedule depending on thenationalities involved. As Taylor notes, theprocess was already underway in Nova Scotiaduring the period covered by this book, but heneglects to add that it had yet to run its course aslate as 1939. Moreover, Alvaro Garrido hasshown that pure sailing vessels persisted in thePortuguese White Fleet until 1958, forty-twoyears after Wallace’s final fishing voyage. The

Book Reviews 103

White Fleet has its chroniclers, including AlanVilliers, The Quest of the Schooner Argus: AVoyage to the Banks and Greenland (New York,1951), and Patricia Doel, Port o’ Call:Memories of the Portuguese White Fleet in St.John’s, Newfoundland (St. John’s, 1992). TheMaritime Museum of Ilhavo holds an extensivecollection of photographs of the White Fleet;Villiers’ photographs (and film footage) can befound at the National Maritime Museum,Greenwich.

James E. CandowHalifax, Nova Scotia

Michael Whitby, Richard Gimblett, and PeterHaydon. The Admirals: Canada’s Senior NavalLeadership in the Twentieth Century. Toronto,ON; Dundurn Press, www.dundurn.com, 2006. 414 pp., photographs, tables, notes,bibliography, index. CDN$25.99, paper; ISBN10: 1-55002-580-5.

This volume is a compendium of the paperspresented at the Sixth Maritime CommandHistorical Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia inSeptember 2002. The goal of the conferencewas to fill a gaping lacuna in the historiographyof the RCN, namely, the biographies of thesenior leadership. The book opens with anintroduction by Michael Whitby, head of theongoing official history of the navy project, andis followed by short essays or papers written bynine separate authors on the eleven Chiefs ofNaval Staff (CNS) who served from 1910 to1968. The conclusion of the unification crisis ordisaster, depending on taste, was the dividingline selected since that was when the post ofCNS disappeared and was replaced with theCommander, Maritime Command. The bookconcludes with a series of short vignettesprepared by many of those who served in thatlatter role. This is a nice touch, as the holders ofthe appointment had to deal with crises andchallenges that were as difficult in their way asany faced by their predecessors.

There is not the space in a short reviewto examine each paper and the attempt will notbe made. I will note, however, the short

biographies of the first two holders of the officeof CNS who were, in my estimation, the criticalplayers in the development of the RCN over thesixty-year period covered by the book. Thesetwo men, Rear-Admiral Charles Kingsmill andCommodore Walter Hose, established the RCNand dealt with enduring themes that resonate tothis day.

Admiral Sir Charles Kingsmill, thefirst Director of the Naval Service, was criticalto the development of the navy, as noted byauthor Richard Gimblett, because he set the toneof much of what was to follow. Kingsmill, amember of the Ontario Liberal aristocracy, hada full, if not particularly spectacular, career inthe Royal Navy. He finished up a captain, butwas promoted Rear-Admiral on taking up theappointment in Canada as the first DNS. Despite a lifetime of living in England, or in theBritish milieu of the RN on numerous overseasstations, Kingsmill had a realistic appreciation ofwhat was required in the establishment of theRCN and was a robust defender of Canadiannational interests. He never compromised thoseinterests or principles in favour of Britishinterests, and consequently, firmly establishedthe principle of creating a navy that wasCanada’s and not a detached RN squadron. Kingsmill was also realistic in his grasp of whatwas affordable and hence “doable”. He wellknew that Jellicoe’s analysis of the kind of navyCanada “needed” after the First World War wasnot remotely probable in terms of securingpolitical or financial support. He did, however,insist on a bare minimum. When this wasrejected in early 1920, Kingsmill retired infrustration. Nevertheless, Kingsmill hadestablished the RCN as a viable instrument ofnational policy, had fought for Canada’sinterests against a paternalistic Royal Navy, andhad set the professional tone crucial for itsfuture.

The second critical personality wasCommodore Walter Hose, the DNS whoreplaced Kingsmill, and served for 13 lean yearsof biblical proportions. Hose is important givenhis role in ensuring the survival of the RCN –the 1920s were bleak as far as the navy wasconcerned, and it came within an ace ofsuffering the same fate as the nascent RCAF,


which was absorbed by the militia at this time. Given the wholly inadequate funding availablefor the RCN during this period, Hose took theheroic decision, as recounted in WilliamGlover’s paper, to establish the reserve divisionsystem across Canada at the expense of a sea-going fleet. This was intended to be a temporaryexpedient, as indeed it was, but ironically, itsaved the RCN from oblivion.

Like Kingsmill, Hose had his start inthe RN – he retired in his late thirties as acommander, in order to seek the advantages ofpromotion in the infant RCN. In the RN, Hosehad a modest career and was not obviouslydestined for anything particularly spectacular interms of achievement. He was competent, aswere virtually all officers in the RN as simplesurvival demanded it, and was well regarded bysuperiors. He might best be described as aplodder who got the job done, but not muchmore. As did Kingsmill, Hose had a solid graspof what the RCN required in order to survive. He perceived the need to secure public supportfor the navy, hence the stroke of near geniuswith the establishment of coast-to-coast reservedivisions, that it had to be affordable, and that ithad to serve national interests – not imperialones. The end of his tenure in 1933 saw theRCN in much better shape than it had been in1920, let alone the locust years of the mid-1920s. Modern ships were operating out ofHalifax and Esquimalt, new ones were on orderand en route. And, the reserve divisionsrendered excellent service in the war that was onthe horizon.

What were the themes that these firsttwo DNS/CNS office holders dealt with? Thereare several. The first is the perennial difficultythe RCN has had in securing the attention of thepolitical leadership of the nation. Despite theessential importance of seaborne trade to theCanadian economy, a navy designed to helpsafeguard it has simply never been regarded asparticularly important in political terms. Inconsequence, neglect and paucity of financialresources is a never-ending problem. Part of theexplanation for this circumstance is the book’ssecond theme, the Canadian penchant for relyingon someone else to do the heavy lifting in regardto defence issues. In Kingsmill’s and Hose’s

days, this burden was borne by Great Britain;towards the end of the period, this responsibilitywas assumed by the United States.

A third theme has been the ongoingresentment and frustration with the paternalismof either the British or American guarantors ofCanadian sovereignty. While the RCN hasalways taken pride in its professionalcompetence, occasionally in defiance of reality,its independence has always been fundamentallycompromised in fact, given the relationship witheither of Great Britain or the US It is ratherdifficult to declare one’s independence in navalmatters when others provide the training, theships, the equipment and the doctrine. The factthat this dependence is appropriate given thefinancial resources available ought to make itsacknowledgement straightforward, but it neveris. The final theme is the “Britishness” of RCNculture. This has been a sensitive issue for muchof the period covered by the book and hasechoes into the present. Indeed, the issue was ofsignificance with regard to the “mutinies” of thelate 1940s and 1950s, and was identified as suchby Vice-Admiral Mainguy (a subject of thebook). At one level, given the professionalrelationship between the RCN and the RNthroughout the period, it is scarcely remarkablethat the officers and men adopted manners,attitudes and habits of thinking from GreatBritain. As well, Canada was far more “British”for much of the period than is generallyunderstood today – in other words, nationalcircumstance reinforced a natural tendency. This question is of less relevance in the modernnavy, but the fact remains that the RCN hasmany cultural links with the RN, as do all ourServices with their equivalents in Britain. Perhaps growing national self-confidencepermits the relationship to be acknowledgedwithout compromising pride. That said, thequestion of the RCN’s adoption of Americancultural norms has rarely triggered the samedegree of hand wringing as did the Britishcircumstance – an interesting difference.

Any student of RCN affairs willrecognise the ongoing nature of all these issues:plus ça change, plus c’est la mème chose.

One final comment. The book suffersfrom a lack of data – a fact that cannot be

Book Reviews 105

corrected, as the records are simply not there. For example, Gimblett notes the lamentable factthat most of Kingsmill’s papers were destroyedin the 1930s as they were assessed asunnecessary. More importantly, the apparentlylacklustre personalities of most of the subjects ofthe book could be simply a function of whatrecords do exist. The Silent Service has nothelped its cause owing to the universal reticenceof its most senior members to write down muchregarding their experiences, motivations andintentions. The fact that they are thus perceivedas rather grey men is surely no surprise. Perhapsthis lack of definition will inspire more recentholders of the office of professional head of thenavy to leave a fuller record behind.

Ian YeatesRegina, Saskatchewan

Rif Winfield. British Warships in the Age ofSail, 1793-1817. London: Chatham Publishing,www.chathampublishing.com, 2005. 432 pp.,photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography,index. UK£50.00, cloth; ISBN 1-86176-246-1.

In the last two decades, the British Navy hasbecome quite a growth industry for academics,researchers, military analysts, ship enthusiastsand writers of stirring salt-water fiction. TheRoyal Navy may nowadays be in the secondclass, as far as relative sea power is concerned,but books about its influence on world history,its organizational and social structure, and itsships and equipment seem to appear every fewmonths. This book is about the RN’s shipsduring the heyday of fighting sail and is aworthy companion to other well illustrated,large-format books on the same general subjectby Lavery, Harland, Marquardt, Harbron andothers.

Rif Winfield has set himself, andachieved successfully, an enormous task:nothing less than listing every British warshipthat floated during the Revolutionary andNapoleonic wars, with the addendum of the1816 expedition against Algiers (the 1812-14war with the United States fitting within thistime frame). The larger ships are catalogued by

rate and class; small unrated ships by type. Their designer, builder, dimensions, armament,cost and a concise history of their service,including their commanders, is given in everycase and the same information is provided forcaptured ships. The amount of researchnecessary can be imagined, but the author hasgenerously acknowledged the contributions of alarge number of collaborators and previouspublications, such as The Sailing Navy List byDavid Lyon.

The book is illustrated by small blackand white reproductions of paintings showingidentified ships, a number of elevations and linesplans and, in the case of some of the capturedvessels, by examples of Beaugean’s superbdrawings. What would normally be appendicesare in the first part of the book along with thepreface where they are, in fact, more useful. Among them is a concise chronology of thenaval wars from 1792 to 1817 which can be usedin conjunction with the ship histories.

This book would appeal both tostudents of the naval wars of the period and tothose fascinated by the statistical details of theships. It could be very useful to writers of“cannon and cutlass” fiction – the successors toC.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, Alexander Kent,et al. They could then place their heroes inactual ships and actions (like Kent’s heroBolitho) or make sure they were in imaginary,but realistic ones, (like O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey). The popularity of such novels has created alarge population of knowledgeable enthusiastswho are prepared to discuss cross catharpinswith Aubrey or boxhauling with Bolitho withoutever having set foot on a wooden deck! For bothwriters and readers, books like this are a greathelp in placing the events of the period, real oreven fictional, in perspective.

Charles D. MaginleyMahone Bay, Nova Scotia

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