The earliest treatment of the battle is in Canada’s War at Sea, by Stephen Leacock and Leslie Roberts (Alvah Beatty, 1944). The first post-war treatment of the battle was Jack McNaught’s two-part Maclean’s magazine article “The Battle of the St. Lawrence” (October 15 and 22, 1949). Joseph Schull’s Far Distant Ships: An Official Account of Canadian Operations in World War II (1950; Stoddart, 1987) sketches the battle. The Battle of the St. Lawrence, produced by Brian and Terence McKenna for the National Film Board (1995), is interesting but excessive in its criticism of the Canadian navy. More useful is the NFB series Seasoned Sailors, which contains interviews with both Desmond Piers (rear-admiral, retired) and John Pickford (rear-admiral, retired). Henri-Paul Boudreau’s Cette mer cruelle (Ed. Nord-Côtières, 2000) is a French-language history of the battle.
Both Arms, Men and Governments: The War Policies of Canada 1939–1945, by C. P. Stacey (National Defence, 1970), and The Naval Service of Canada, vol. 2, Activities on Shore during the Second World War, by Gilbert N. Tucker (National Defence, 1952), are essential reading for anyone interested in policy, budgets, bases, building schedules and ship specifications. The first three chapters of Out of the Shadows: Canada and the Second World War, revised ed., by W. A. B. Douglas and Brereton Greenhous (Dundurn, 1995), are especially useful in understanding how Canada geared up for war production. “Army Participation in Measures Taken by the Three Services for the Security of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Lower River during the Period of German Submarine Activity, 1942–5,” Report No. 3 prepared for the Historical Section (G.S.) Army Headquarters, is an excellent source of information on the army’s role in the Battle of the St. Lawrence. The first volume of Tucker’s history The Naval Service of Canada, Origins and Early Years, is the basis of every other history of the Canadian navy’s beginnings. A more up-to-date work on the Canadian navy’s history is Roger Sarty’s The Maritime Defence of Canada (Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, 1996). Sarty and Michael Hadley’s Tin Pots and Pirate Ships: Canadian Naval Forces and German Sea Raiders: 1880–1918 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991) is useful for understanding the basis for Canadian naval defence thought. Ready, Aye, Ready: An Illustrated History of the Royal Canadian Navy, by Jack Macbeth (lt.-cdr., RCNR, retired) (Key Porter Books, 1989), is a good introduction to the history of the RCN during the war.
Though they cover much more than the Battle of the St. Lawrence, Marc Milner’s North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys (University of Toronto Press, 1985), The U-boat Hunters: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Offensive against Germany’s Submarines (University of Toronto Press, 1994) and Battle of the Atlantic (Vanwell, 2003) are extremely useful for understanding the tactics and limits of anti-submarine warfare during the Second World War. More popular histories of Canada’s navy in the Battle of the Atlantic are Donald E. Graves’s In Peril on the Sea: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic (Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, 2003) and Tin Hats, Oilskins and Seaboots: A Naval Journey, 1938–1945 (Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, 2000). Robert C. Fisher’s “‘We ‘ll Get Our Own’: Canada and the Oil Shipping Crisis of 1942,” Red Duster (1993), also available on the Web, is a good introduction to the oil crisis that followed the U-boat offensive off the US east coast. Max Reid’s D.E.M.S. and the Battle of the Atlantic 1939–1945 (Commoner’s Publishing Society, 1990) is the only available history of Canada’s defensively equipped merchant ships.
Of the twenty-three ships sunk in the St. Lawrence, only SS Caribou has had a book written about it: The Night of the Caribou, by Douglas How (Lancelot Press, 1988). My source for information on the Postal Assorting Office aboard Caribou is C. R. McGuire’s “Remember the S. S. Caribou: A Memorial to a Great Steamship Ferry,” a three-part article published in the Postal Historical Society of Canada Journal, no. 110 (October 2001), no. 113 (March 2003) and no. 114 (June 2003). A three-part interview with William Lundrigan, titled “The Caribou Disaster: William Lundrigan’s Story as Told to Newfoundland Woman” was published in three installments in Newfoundland Woman, vol. 3, no. 3–5 (October-December 1964). John Dominie’s story was published under the title “I Survived the Wreck of the S.S. Caribou: The Words of John (Jack) T. Dominie” in Downhomer, vol. 13, no. 1 (June 2000). Thomas Fleming’s story was published under the title “The Caribou Disaster: Thomas Fleming’s Story” in an article by Cassie Brown in St. John’s Woman (October 1963). Commander Fraser McKee and Captain Robert Darlington devote chapters to the sinkings of HMCS Raccoon, Charlottetown and Shawinigan in their The Canadian Naval Chronicle, 1939–1945 (Vanwell, 1996). In his 1947 book Wandelaur-Sur L’Eau, the Belgian historian Paul Scarceriaux devotes a chapter to the sinking of SS Hainaut.
The battle is memorialized by James W. Essex and James B. Lamb, both of whom served in the St. Lawrence during 1942. Essex’s Victory in the St. Lawrence: Canada’s Unknown War (Boston Mills Press, 1984) is valuable for giving a feel for the men and the times but should be handled carefully; in addition to repeating the canard that the battle was hidden from the public, Essex includes a picture he claims is the sighting of a ship in the St. Lawrence through a periscope, a claim that cannot be substantiated. The sections devoted to the sinking of HMCS Charlottetown and SS Donald Stewart in Lamb’s On the Triangle Run: The Fighting Spirit of Canada’s Navy (Stoddart, 1986) are especially affecting.
Together with his The Corvette Navy: True Stories from Canada’s Atlantic War (Macmillan of Canada, 1977), Lamb’s work presents a most complete picture of life on Canada’s corvettes. Two other books essential for understanding Canada’s corvettes are Mac Johnston’s Corvettes Canada: Convoy Veterans of WWII Tell Their True Stories (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1994) and Frank Curry’s memoir War at Sea: A Canadian Seaman on the North Atlantic (Lugus, 1990). Fading Memories: Canadians and the Battle of the Atlantic, edited by Thomas G. Lynch (Atlantic Chief and Petty Officers Association, 1993), contains several useful short memoirs of life in the Canadian navy during the war. Though not Canadian, The Battle of the Atlantic: The Corvettes and Their Crews, an Oral History, by Chris H. Bailey (Royal Naval Museum, 1994), contains useful information about life on board these redoubtable ships. Also worth reading is Nicholas Monsarrat’s novel Three Corvettes (Granada, 1972).
There are three books that are indispensable to anyone interested in the history and structure of Canada’s corvettes: Canada’s Flowers: History of the Corvettes of Canada, by Thomas Lynch (Nimbus, 1981), Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy 1939–1945, by Ken MacPherson and Marc Milner (Vanwell, 1993), and HMCS Sackville 1941–1985, by Marc Milner (Canadian Memorial Naval Trust, 1998). N. Roger Cole’s four-part article “Despite All Odds: Flower-Class Corvettes and Temptress-Class Gun Boats,” Nautical Research Journal, vol. 43 (1998) and vol. 44 (1999), contains much useful information about the building of corvettes. Maurice D. Smith’s “Kingston Shipyards—World War Two,” Fresh Water: A Journal of Great Lakes Marine History, vol. 5, no. 1 (1995), presents an invaluable picture of the building of these important ships.
David Zimmerman’s The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa (University of Toronto Press, 1989) explains the infighting that led Canada’s asdic and radar to lag behind both the Americans’ and the Royal Navy’s. Derek Howse’s Radar at Sea: The Royal Navy in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1993) presents a complete story of the role Canadians played in winning England’s naval radars. Best Kept Secret: Canadian Secret Intelligence in the Second World War, by John Bryden (Lester, 1993), is the best source for information on Canadian huff-duff. The most complete history of huff-duff is Kathleen Broome Williams’s Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Directional Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic (Naval Institute Press, 1996).
Stephen Kimber’s Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War (Doubleday, 2002) contains useful information on censorship rules and the feud between admirals Murray and Jones. Less accessible (but well worth the trouble to get) is Douglas How’s unpublished MA thesis, “The Career of Rear Admiral Leon
ard W. Murray, C.B., C.B.E., RCN, 1896–1971” (Dalhousie University, 1972), which details this rivalry and the damage Jones’s manning policy did to the RCN’s operability. Commander Frederick B. Watt’s memoir, In All Respects Ready: The Merchant Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic, 1940–1945 (Prentice Hall, 1985), is the best available history of the Naval Boarding Service.
There are two histories of Canada’s merchant fleet during the Second World War: S. C. Heal’s A Great Fleet of Ships: The Canadian Forts and Parks (Vanwell, 1999) and The Unknown Navy: Canada’s World War II Merchant Navy, by Robert G. Halford (Vanwell, 1995). Running the Gauntlet: An Oral History of Canadian Merchant Seamen in World War II, by Mike Parker (Nimbus, 1994), does not contain any information about the Battle of the St. Lawrence; it is, however, useful for getting a sense of the lives of the merchant seamen who sailed from Canada. Though not Canadian in focus, Survivors: British Merchant Seamen in the Second World War, by G. H. and R. Bennett (Hambledon, 1999), contains extremely useful information about lifesaving equipment and procedures.
My source for information about British shipbuilding is Correlli Barnett’s The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (Macmillan, 1986). Barnett’s The Collapse of British Power (Methuen, 1972) is an invaluable source for understanding how the British Empire deluded itself about Nazi Germany’s naval policy.
There are few books that deal with Quebec during World War II. The most important is Eric Amyot’s Le Québec entre Pétain et De Gaulle: Vichy, la France libre et les Canadiens français 1940–1945 (Fides, 1999). The history of the Fusiliers du St-Laurent can be found in Soldats de la Côté: Les Fusiliers du St-Laurent d’hier à aujourd’hui (Les Fusiliers du St-Laurent, 1992), by Major François Dornier and Marie-Claude Joubert. The history of the EAC base at Mont-Joli can be found in Major Dornier’s Des bombardiers au-dessus du Fleuve: Histoire de la 9e école de bombardement et de tir de Mont-Joli.
General histories of the Battle of the Atlantic abound. Perhaps the single best is Martin Middlebrook’s Convoy (Penguin, 1976). Three of the most recent are Spencer Dunmore’s In Great Waters: The Epic Story of the Battle of the Atlantic, 1939– 1945 (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), Dan Van Der Vat’s Standard of Power: The Royal Navy in the Twentieth Century (Pimlico, 2001) and At War at Sea, by Ronald Spector (Penguin, 2001). Dunmore’s book underlines the importance of the RCN’s and Royal Canadian Air Force’s contributions to winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Van Der Vat and Spector’s histories are especially interesting because, though neither is written by a Canadian, both stress Canada’s role and point out that for decades historians have underappreciated the fact that in the darkest days of 1941 and 1942, the RCN provided the margin that prevented the U-boats from cutting the supply lines to North America. Michael Gannon’s Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-boat Attacks along the American Coast in World War II (Harper & Row, 1990) and his Black May: The Epic Story of the Allies’ Defeat of the German U-boats in May 1943 (Random House, 1999) are also essential reading. My source for information about the force of torpedo explosions is Robert H. Cole’s Underwater Explosions (Dover, 1948). Perhaps the most accessible source of information on the Battle of the Atlantic is uboat.net; let me take the opportunity to thank the many correspondents on the site who steered me away from error.
The literature from the “U-boat side” is also quite large. A good place to begin is with Peter Padfield’s biography Dönitz: The Last Führer (Cassell, 1984) or either of Bernard Edwards’s books, Dönitz and the Wolf Packs: The U-boats at War (Cassell, 1996) and Attack and Sink: The Battle for Convoy SC42 (New Guild, 1995). David O’Brien’s HX72: The First Convoy to Die: The Wolfpack Attack That Woke Up the Admiralty (Nimbus, 1999) is an especially good introduction to the Canadian role in fighting U-boats. Equally important is Deadly Seas: The Duel between St. Croix and U305 in the Battle of the Atlantic, by David Bercuson and Holger Herwig (Random House Canada, 1997). Bercuson and Herwig’s The Destruction of the Bismarck (Stoddart, 2001) is my source for the quote from Herbert Wohlfarth (U-556) on page 17.
Though none of these memoirs should be taken at face value, Herbert A. Werner’s Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-boat Battles of World War II (Da Capo, 1998), Peter Cramer’s U-boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic (Bodley Head, 1984) and Jost Metzler’s The Laughing Cow: A U-boat Captain’s Story of the Terrors and Excitement of Undersea Warfare (William Kimber, 1955) are important works for understanding the world the U-boatmen lived in. Graf’s U-69 sank both SS Carolus and Caribou. A good short introduction to the U-boatmen is Grey Wolf: U-boat Crewman of World War II, by Gordon Williamson (Osprey, 2001). The two best English-language studies of U-boatmen (including their politics) are Wolf: U-boat Commanders in World War II, by Jordan Vause (Naval Institute Press, 1997), and Timothy P. Mulligan’s Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany’s U-boat Arm, 1939–1945 (Naval Institute Press, 1999). Also useful is Erich Topp’s “Manning and Training the U-boat Fleet,” in The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1945, edited by Stephen Howarth and Derek Law (Oxford University Press, 1993); this book also contains important articles by William Glover, “Manning and Training in the Allied Navies,” and Axel Niestle, “German Technical and Electronic Development.” Mullmann Showell’s U-boat Commanders and Crews 1935–1945 (Crowood Press, 1998) is also exceedingly useful. Michael Hadley’s Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995) contains important information on the U-boatmen’s view of themselves. A good introduction to the technical side of U-boat operations and torpedoes is Robert C. Stern’s Type VII U-Boats (Brockhampton Press, 1991).
Histories of the Nazis and of German anti-Semitism abound. Among the most useful are Daniel J. Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Random House, 1996), Richard Bessel’s Life in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1987) and William L. Shirer’s The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940 (Little, Brown, 1984). My source for the difference between the Italian and the German attitudes toward Jews is Jonathan Steinberg’s All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (Routledge, 1990). Richard Grunberger’s The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) contains important information about youth and schooling in Hitler’s Germany. Also useful is Paul L. Rose’s Heisenberg and the Nazi Atom Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture (California University Press, 1998). My sources for Nazification of school texts is “Life in Nazi Germany” at the German Propaganda Archive maintained by Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A short history of illegal rearmament during the Weimar Republic can be found in Inspection for Disarmament, edited by Seymour Melman (Columbia University Press, 1958). Uboat.net also contains a history of the illegal creation of the U-boat Arm, as well as links to other Web sites that detail this history.
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This essay gives the publication information for articles and books used while preparing this book. In the interest of space, it does not provide bibliographic information for either newspaper articles or operation reports referred to in the text.
NOTES
PREFACE
1 Between 1939 and 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy lost twenty-four warships and more than two thousand officers and ratings; Canada’s merchant navy lost seventy ships and almost two thousand crew members.
2 See Appendix C for a list of ships torpedoed. Because the torpedoing of SS Essex Lance, Pan York, Meadcliffe Hall and Fort Thompson resulted in neither deaths nor destruction of these ships, I have relegated reference to them to endnotes.
3 The first recorded use of the phrase “la bataille du Saint-Laurent” was by L’Action Catholique on May 18, 1942. The first English use of “The Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence” was in the May 1943 edition of the Royal Canadian Monthly Review.
4 In his 1985 U-Boats against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters, which
more than any other work has given shape to the battle, Michael Hadley agrees with Schull’s assessment. Unlike the historians to whom Sarty refers, however, Hadley makes extensive use of newspapers and of Hansard, thus demonstrating that the Battle of the St. Lawrence was not hidden from the Canadian public, even if on many occasions the articles were liberally sprinkled with fare that would go down well on the home front.
5 Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War, The Free Press, 1987.
6 An earlier version of this preface appeared in the summer 2003 issue of Gaspésie (vol. 40, no. i), which was published to coincide with the May 2003 opening of an exhibit on the Battle of the St. Lawrence at the Musée de la Gaspésie.
INTRODUCTION
1 The US and UK were each granted the five capital ships in recognition of the US’s two coasts and the UK’s worldwide imperial responsibilities.
2 During the First World War, this first generation of U-boats sank 5,700 Allied ships totalling over 11 million tons of shipping. During the Second World War, 830 U-boats sank 2,759 Allied and neutral ships, totalling 13 million tons of shipping.
The Battle of the St. Lawrence Page 31