Once Upon a Schooner: A Foreign Voyage in «Bluenose II»

James R. Midwinter was senior assistant secretary to the Cabinet and
inspector general of the Foreign Service before his appointment as
Canadian ambassador to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.

Silver Donald Cameron is a prolific and eclectic Canadian writer who
chooses to live in Nova Scotia in order to be near the sea. He is as
fascinated as a lover by the sea’s many moods and by the ships and
sailors who have to contend with them every day. A sentimentalist to the
core, Cameron obviously considers a well-found sailing vessel to be
among humanity’s noblest creations, and writes accordingly.

In 1983 the author sailed “before the mast” in Bluenose II on a
passage from Nova Scotia to New Jersey. Later, he published an account
of the Maritime schooner tradition as exemplified in the careers of the
original Bluenose, of its replica of the same name, and of the people
who have sailed in them. The present volume updates that account,
bringing the story forward to 1992 and, above all, making the case for
construction of a Bluenose III, for the second vessel of this famous
lineage is itself nearing the close of its useful life. Along the way,
Cameron has many gossipy tales of adventure and misadventure from the
first master of Bluenose, the now-legendary Captain Angus Walters, to
the present commander of her successor, Captain Don Barr. It was the
crotchety schooner-master Walters, of course, who raised Canadian pride
by sailing Bluenose to victory in a dozen hard-fought races, a tradition
the author strives to sustain.

Cameron has made himself a competent sailor and shipwright, and it
shows. His narrative combines the easy flow of the professional writer
with solid knowledge of his subject. He writes with authority as well as
verve. He tells us of the triumphs of Bluenose, of its shabby death on a
reef off Haiti, of the struggles to build and maintain a replica to keep
alive the memory of its kind, and of the need now, as he perceives it,
to carry the tradition forward with a third Bluenose.

For anyone interested in the sea, in the Maritime history of Nova
Scotia, and in the particular tradition of the working banks schooner,
this is a book worth having.