Final Voyages, Vol. 2

Gordon Turner is the author of Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific’s
Greatest Ship and the editor of SeaFare, a quarterly newsletter on sea
travel.

Few occupations are more dangerous than deep-sea fishing, and in
Atlantic Canada dozens of fishers die at sea each year, according to
author Jim Wellman. Final Voyages consists of 28 stories that were
originally published in The Navigator magazine between 1997 and 2003.
The tales cover the years between the mid-1920s and the early 21st
century. Although the book’s title suggests that either the boats sank
or their crews perished, sometimes there were survivors who lived to
relate their often-harrowing accounts of storms, collisions, and
mechanical failures. These men accepted the dangers of the sea as an
occupational hazard, but when their boats and their lives were in peril,
they fought back with skill and determination.

Most of the stories concern Newfoundland boats and fishers, and each
takes only a few pages; but the longest, “The Loss of the Annie L.
Johnson,” is perhaps the most interesting. It provides details of the
vessel’s construction, the crew’s battle to save it, the boat’s
sinking, and the inquiry into its loss.

When disaster struck, it was a common practice for local writers to
commemorate the event in verse, often at great length. Final Voyages
contains four such poems, and if the writing seems somewhat strained,
the sentiments are at least sincere.

The book is competently written, but an alert copy editor would have
corrected the errors that sprinkle the text.