The Corvette Years: The Lower Deck Story

Dean F. Oliver is the assistant director of the Centre for International
and Security Studies at York University in Toronto.

Previous accounts of the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II, notes
Edward O’Connor, have been limited in their descriptive authority
because of the documentary sources employed. Relying heavily on ships’
logs, “known for their brevity and lack of much detail” and for the
fact that entries were usually made by busy, on-duty seamen, such works
either downplayed or

ignored commonplace but vital factors like sleeping arrangements, food,
morale, and interpersonal relations.

O’Connor offers a corrective to this approach by presenting new
testimonials from ordinary corvette seamen. The stories are organized
alphabetically by ship’s name. Some vessels—Chicoutimi, for example,
on which the author served—have five listings, while Chilliwack—one
of the few corvettes to participate in the destruction of more than one
U-boat—has none. Most entries are quite brief (even the longest has
only seven or eight pages), and there are many photographs. This is not
the most sophisticated of structures, but it makes for a handy and
highly readable volume.

Generalizations regarding life on the lower deck are arrived at with
relative ease from these recollections. The physical aspects of the
seaman’s existence were Spartan in the extreme, from rotten food and
cramped quarters to bad weather and foul ship’s air. The trip from
galley to mess was especially perilous on early vessels, where it
included an uncovered passageway that claimed numerous repasts and
drenched and rendered inedible countless others.

The Corvette Years is not a scholarly account of the corvettes’ war
and, despite the suggestive title, it adds little to the literature on
officer–lower deck relations. Still, the collection makes for
pleasurable reading and offers precious insights into the minutiae of
life at sea that are missing from most academic works, like the dietary
intake of the ship’s company or the weaknesses in the RCN’s
recreational program. Where else might one learn, for example, how
Canada’s wartime sailors could troll for shark with hemp line and a
grappling hook while remaining hidden from the captain’s prying eyes?