Collision at Sea: The Little-Known Marine Tragedy Felt on Both Sides of the Atlantic

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and co-author
of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Shadows of War, Faces
of Peace: Canada’s Peacekeepers.

Lunenburg, N.S., has a long tradition of sending its sons to sea, and
the list of shipwrecks (and deaths) inevitably is a long one. This
volume, a labor of love by an Anglican clergyman from the beautiful,
tiny community of Blue Rocks on the edge of Lunenburg, is an examination
of one terrible disaster in 1943. The fishing schooner Flora Alberta was
run down by the Fanad Head, a Northern Irish merchantman sailing in a
wartime convoy. How did it happen? Who was to blame for the loss of 21
men? Those are the questions asked by the author as he searches for the
answers in the memories of survivors and the records of the subsequent,
inevitable law suits. The story, informed by knowledge of the sea and
the local community, is a well-presented, clear, and fascinating account
of one of the local tragedies that so shape our lives.