Through a Canadian Periscope: The Story of the Canadian Submarine Service by Julie H. Ferguson (review)

Book Reviews 165 part, Canada has shunned maintaining an ocean-going merchant fleet, relying on others to carry our offshore trade. The two exceptions are the two world wars, when everyone else was so busy looking after themselves that Canada had to build and man its own fleet. Halford served in that fleet before making a career as a journalist. When he retired in 1988, he began a six-year quest to research and write a book. The effort paid off. The Unknown Navy is the most comprehensive assessment of Canada's Second World War merchant navy yet published. Not only has Halford drawn together much of the disparate literature on the subject but he has hit the high points of available primary sources, contemporary professional journals; and annual reports, and woven this documentary evidence together with solid first-person accounts. The result is a well-written snapshot of the . unknown navy that will inform both amateur and specialist alike. Whether any of these books will dent the armour of Canadian indWference about their experience of war is a moot point. It is not just that Canadians, in general, know little of their own history, but even in modern Canadian history courses the experience of war remains outside the syllabus. Halford stands a chance. His subtheme of merchant seamen caught between the state and a cruel enemy, and.denied veteran status for fifty years, fits the current fashion of undergraduate Canadian history courses. It is doubtful if the others will be read outside the circle of those who already know: more's the pity. MARC MILNER University of New Brunswick Through a Canadian Periscope: The Story of the Canadian Submarine Service. ruuE H. FERGUSON. Toronto: Dundurn Press 1995. Pp. xv, 364, illus. $36.99 Julie Ferguson begins this book by stating that she makes 'no apologies to naval historians or even to submariners themselves about the book's levity or lack of technical details. I never intended [it] to be solely for them - it has been written to promote an interest and an understanding ofthe Canadian Submarine Servke in a much wider audience.' The remark is not only insulting to naval historians but is inaccurate in every detail. It implies that there has been a Canadian submarine service, as some sort of separate naval division, since r9r4. Yet a Canadian submarine service certainly did not exist until the 1960s, if then. This is not a history of an institution, but of individuals. The book would have been much better if it had been subtitled The Story of Canadians in RN and RCN Submarines. 166 The Canadian Historical Review Since there is no institution to chronicle, this work's strengths are in its accounts of the exploits of individual Canadian submariners in the two world wars. There are some wonderful tales of the sea, from failed attempts to sink the German battleship Tirpitz by mini-submarines , to patrolling in the English Channel, the North Sea, the Mediterranean , and the Pacific. There are some interesting insights into the often neglected but important tasks performed by RN submarines. Overshadowed by German U-boats in the Atlantic and American submarines in the Pacific, British submariners nevertheless made a significant contribution to the Allied war effort in both wars. As an action adventure tale, this work can be captivating. The best part of the account of the postwar Canadian submarine service is the fictional sketch of a young Canadian officer taking Perisher, the Royal Navy's submarine command qualifying course. The rigorous program is described in wonderful detail, providing a fascinating insight into the training of a submarine captain. Where this book fails is in its attempts to provide analysis. Analysis is not merely the provenance of dry academic and technical works but is necessary if the 'wider audience' is to understand why all modern navies require submarines. What is missing here is a broader explanation of the role of submarines. Marc Milner has shown quite clearly that Canada's inability to provide adequate training programs for its escorts significantly lowered their effectiveness. A large part of this training failure was the absence of friendly submarines. No amount of classroom or simulator training can completely...