"Sink All the Shipping There": The Wartime Loss of Canada's Merchant Ships and Fishing Schooners

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.

The achievements of Canada’s military forces in World War II have been
well documented, but until now much less has been published about
Canada’s merchant ships and fishing schooners that fell victim to the
enemy. Fraser McKee’s book fills the gap admirably.

McKee’s experience as an active-duty officer in the Royal Canadian
Volunteer Reserve during the war years stands him in excellent stead
when he writes on nautical matters. His thoroughness as a researcher has
led to his uncovering details hitherto unpublished. His ability as an
author has let him produce an absorbing book rather than a lacklustre
catalogue of ships sunk and lives lost.

More than 60 vessels of all kinds met untimely ends, many with high
death tolls. Most were sunk by U-boats, but some were sent to the bottom
by mines and aircraft bombing. The ships, lightly armed or unarmed, were
nearly always unable to retaliate. In size, they ranged from Canadian
Pacific’s 16,900-ton passenger liner Empress of Asia to harmless
little Grand Banks fishing schooners. Although Newfoundland was not part
of Canada in those wartime years, the book includes losses of
island-owned and -crewed vessels. The photographs of the ships are
rather uneven in quality.

An excellent and lengthy introduction gives the story perspective,
while the appendix includes six useful statistical tables. A sharper
editor would have known that while commas are sometimes optional, there
are times when they are essential. Nevertheless, “Sink All the
Shipping There” is an important and well-told contribution to the role
of Canada (and Newfoundland) in World War II.