The Admirals: Canada's Senior Naval Leadership in the Twentieth Century

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

The editors have provided 16 biographical articles of the men who led
the Royal Canadian Navy—and after 1967 the Maritime Command of the
Canadian Armed Forces. These articles are essential to understanding the
RCN’s history. The writers are all distinguished naval historians,
veterans of the RCN or CAF, or both.

The articles originated as papers at the Sixth Maritime Command
Historical Conference, held in Halifax in September 2002. Richard
Gimblett begins with Admiral Sir Charles E. Kingsmill, first Director of
the Naval Service (commander of the Royal Canadian Navy), which began in
1911 with two ships, the Niobe and the Rainbow. Canadian by birth,
Kingsmill was knighted in recognition of services performed during World
War I. William Glover provides the biography of Commodore Walter Hose,
who succeeded Kingsmill in 1920 and had to contend with those who would
have abolished the RCN with the return to peacetime conditions. Roger
Sarty reviews Admiral Percy W. Nelles, who transformed the RCN from a
barely adequate coast guard to one of the most powerful navies of World
War II. Marc Milner describes Nelles’s successor, Rear-Admiral Warren
Murray, as “the only Canadian ever to command an Allied theatre of war
in the great wars of the early twentieth century.” Richard Oliver
Mayne portrays the next commander, Vice-Admiral George C. Jones (who
died in office in 1946) as tyrannical and personally too ambitious.

Chapters 6–10 deal with the Cold War period before unification.
Commanders supervised the transformation of the RCN from a junior
partner of the Royal Navy to one dealing with escort service,
anti-submarine warfare, and coast-guard duty. With the outbreak of the
Korean War, the RCN recovered somewhat, but remained well below World
War II levels. According to biographer Wilfred G.D. Lund, in 1956
Defence Minister Ralph Campney terminated the services of Vice-Admiral
E. Rollo Mainguy for exceeding his budget. In 1967, Defence Minister
Paul Hellyer fired Admiral William M. Landymore for his opposition to
the unification of the armed forces, and other problems.

The book ends in 1992, after Gulf War I, but before Bosnia and
Afghanistan.