Race to Fame: The Inside Story of the Bluenose

Elsie de Bruijn was Associate Head, Woodward Biomedical Library, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Quick — what legendary Canadian, racing in 1938, was clocked at under 3½ minutes for the mile? Hint: she was also 125 feet tall. Yes, of course, it has to be Bluenose. The story of this seagoing superstar has all the makings of a Hollywood script. It began one summer day in 1920, when an America’s Cup yacht race off New York was postponed because of a 23-knot breeze. Those were the rugged days of commercial sail, and disgusted East Coast fishermen pressed for a “real” race. Like the America’s Cup, it would be an international challenge match, but contenders would be limited to deep-sea fishing schooners. Canada’s entry? An untried design, her lines drawn by the manager of a Halifax ginger ale plant. The rest is, literally, history. Racing history, in part: Bluenose retired undefeated after defending the series for 18 action-packed years. Canadian seafaring history, too: those same years, 1921 to 1938, saw the end of the age of sail in North America. Once the pride of the Grand Banks fleet, Bluenose was reduced to carrying freight in the Caribbean, where she was lost on a reef in 1946.

Impossible, one would think, to write a lacklustre book about Bluenose. Regrettably, Claude Darrach proves it can be done. What makes this doubly disappointing is that Captain Darrach obviously knows and loves the schooner. He crewed on her throughout her racing career, and much of Race to Fame is based on his personal records. However, the men who helped to make sailing history are not always the best equipped to set it down. As Captain Darrach acknowledges, “Most seagoing fishermen are moderate in their language and don’t elaborate” (p.25). It is an apt summary of his own style, which most readers will find as dry and unleavened as ship’s biscuit. Even a hurricane rates fewer than a dozen lines:

On 17 September she had left the port of Falmouth despite the fact there was a heavy gale warning in effect. Significance of the warning had been underestimated, and Bluenose found herself in the teeth of hurricane force winds. It was three days before the storm began to subside. By now, the hull was damaged and Bluenose had sprung a leak. She was obliged to return and put in at Plymouth.... Captain Walters described the hurricane as being much worse than the one off the northwest bar of Sable Island, in 1926. (p.46)

And what happened off Sable Island? Captain Darrach never tells us.

The same tense, cryptic style can make the terminology hard going for non-sailing readers. The text runs to passages like the following: “Both vessels were under four lowers, staysail and main-topsail. Angus elected to try the ballooner” (p.27). While the book does include a brief glossary, none of the above terms are in it.

Hit-or-miss proofreading and some rather muddy illustrations add to the effect of a promising book poorly carried out. Readers still interested in Bluenose will turn with relief to books such as Silver Donald Cameron’s excellent Schooner (Toronto, Seal Books, 1984). In comparison, Race to Fame finishes well astern.