The Mystery of the Lost Anchor

Ted McGee is chair of the English Department at St. Jerome’s College,
University of Waterloo.

Published as part of the Nova Scotia Museum Program of the province’s
Department of Education, The Mystery of the Lost Anchor obviously has
didactic and promotional aims. These are well served by the vivid
characters (particularly the ever-present seagull sporting the gear of
an early aviator) and magical effects in the plot. The illustrations are
bright, complex, and fantastical, given frames that fail to contain the
action and figures that climb out of postage stamps or back into old,
wrinkled photos. The pictures suggest the characters’ imaginative
journeys into facts and fictions associated with anchors.

Unfortunately, the book fails to keep the promise implicit in the
title, because the mystery presented by one newly discovered anchor is
never solved. The characters begin to inspect it closely—with
magnifying glasses even—and to note its peculiar physical features.
But at this point, when discoveries about this particular material
object might be made, the story swings away to generic material about
kinds of ships and motives for maritime travel, about the Bluenose and
Sable Island, about materials, construction, types, parts, uses, and
terminology of anchors. A gregarious old seaman extends the scope
further with exciting, humorous yarns about how anchors have been lost.
None of this material is irrelevant or dull (indeed, it might well
inspire one to explore the Maritime Museum), but it takes readers away
from the case of the lost anchor.

Torn between a tight detective story and the delightful discoveries to
be made at the Maritime Museum, this book plumped for the latter. With
that in mind, I recommend it.