In Peril on the Sea: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic

Serge Durflinger is a professor specializing in Canadian military and
diplomatic history at the University of Ottawa.

A German victory against Allied merchant shipping during World War
II’s Battle of the Atlantic would have severely limited Britain’s
ability to wage war and might have altered the outcome of the conflict.
The participation of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) proved vital to
securing an essential and costly Allied victory. Noted Canadian military
historian Donald Graves ably recounts the RCN’s remarkable wartime
odyssey and transformation of a tiny naval force to one that, despite
the teething problems associated with inexperienced personnel and
obsolete equipment, helped substantially in defeating the German
submarine menace. By 1945, the RCN had become the world’s
third-largest fleet, enlisted some 100,000 men and 6500 women, and
operated more than 400 warships. It was one of Canada’s wartime
“miracles.”

Commissioned by the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust, which maintains HMCS
Sackville, a wartime corvette berthed in Halifax, the book is meant to
sensitize a broad readership to Canada’s pivotal role during the
campaign; it is also a tribute to the sailors’ endurance and
sacrifices. Graves reviews Canada’s naval history to 1939 and then
takes readers through the different periods of the Atlantic war,
including the difficult days of 1941–42, the RCN’s mid-war training
and equipment crises, and the Allies’ technological breakthroughs and
intelligence successes that cemented the U-boats’ doom.

Each chapter properly places the RCN’s operations in a broader
context and is supplemented by excerpts from the Salty Dips series of
oral history testimony from Canadian naval veterans. With drama and
immediacy, they describe a deadly and determined enemy, atrocious
weather, exhaustion, fear, survival, and, ultimately, victory.

The book’s excellent layout allows for many user-friendly sidebar
explanations and graphics of such complex subjects as anti-submarine
warfare tactics, the convoy system, and the technical workings of
weapons and communications systems. There are 200 rarely or
never-before-seen photos complemented by fine drawings by L.B. Jenson.
Taken together, these provide an evocative visual review of shipboard
life and routine. Robin Brass Studio has again produced an impressive
publication.

Although purists might quibble with some of Graves’s statistics, or
note that he has not taken into account all of the latest U-boat
“kill” information (e.g., Graves still credits HMCS Dunver and
Hespeler with having sunk U-484), this highly recommended book blends
first-class scholarship with an accessible form. The academic works of
Roger Sarty, Marc Milner, and others will remain the standard
interpretive sources and Graves would not argue, as his footnotes
testify. But his book is a great place to start.