"Conceived in War, Born in Peace: Canada's Deep Sea Merchant Marine" (used book)

Conceived in War, Born in Peace: Canada's Deep Sea Merchant Marine

by S. C. Heal

About the Book

Used Book. Paperback. Good Condition.

-- from the back

Fifty and seventy-five years have elapsed since Canada and Canadians twice in this century turned to, with a huge will and sense of national purpose, and built a great fleet of ships to meet the challenges of war.

Ships which proclaimed their origins with pride as they went about their business, sailing singly or in convoy, sometimes never to arrive at their next port of call, and wearing names which said all that needed to be said about their place of birth, or subsequent origins. Such names as Outremont Park, Fort Edmonton, Canadian Winner, City of Vancouver, Yarmouth County and Ottawa Pandora. The casualties to the ships were frequently accompanied with heavy loss of life, often but not always Canadian for these ships were built as part of our national contribution to an international war effort in times of great peril.

These fleets both carried with them the hopes of Canadian business, industry, politicians, and ordinary people in the street, whose seat and tax dollars had been spent in profusion to achieve these results. Those hopes were that each fleet would create opportunities for long-term peacetime merchant shipping endeavours. To some extent the hopes were justified, but very few of the companies survive today.

Instead, what we have are memories and our imaginations to guide us. Picture the Fort Mumford whose torpedo-shattered, coral-encrusted hull rests in deep water somewhere off a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean, or the Taber Park whose remains have likely long since sunk into the shifting sands of Britain’s east coast. And then there is the City of Victoria, victim of the rocks in Hakodate Straits, and the Green Hill Park whose blazing hulk can still be pictured by many as it burned itself out against Siwash Rock, in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

This book has sought to record the names of all the ships involved, the yards which built them, some of the high drama of those days, and the companies which struggled against economic odds to become and remain great in every sense of the word.