BY ROGER MCAFEE (NIGHTHAWK MARINE LIMITED, VANCOUVER, B.C., APRIL 2002; 130 PAGES, $24.95)
REVIEWED BY NORMAN RALPH
In Fort Ross: The Ship in the Shadow, Roger McAfee presents readers with a smorgasbord of nautical reading. The foreword raises the question, “What vessel first circumnavigated the North American continent?” This is not answered until the conclusion of the book. For the history buff, there is a bit of history of the Canadian Arctic and the role of the Hudson Bay Company and its arctic freighters that sailed the ice-choked Northwest Passage to service its far-flung trading posts. For the lover of wooden boats, there is the description of the building of the Fort Ross in 1938. And for the armchair sailor, there is the account of the trip in 1969 by the author and a group of friends to bring the Fort Ross from Nova Scotia on the Canadian east coast through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal to Vancouver, British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada.
The aforementioned topics each could stand alone as a fascinating subject for a book. However, the author has used the Fort Ross to tie these subjects together into one narrative. At times the reader feels like he is foundering in a sea of interesting, yet unrelated, material. But at no time does one lose interest in the story.
The information given on the construction of the Fort Ross reveals a wooden vessel that was built for the rigorous demands of the arctic north. She was 127 feet long with a beam of 28 feet 5 inches. Her frames were 10-inches x 10-inches on 18-inch centers. This meant that there were only 8 inches separating them, and a sister frame was bolted to each frame further reducing the space between frames. Her keel was 12 inches wide x 36 inches deep, with a 3-inch-thick shoe of oak. She was sheeted inside and out with planking from 3 to 5 inches thick!
The background events covered in the book take place over several hundred years and the account of the trip on the Fort Ross from the east to the west coast of Canada was told from a 30-year perspective. The reader must familiarize himself with the times of the late ’60s to fully appreciate the mindset of those on the cruise. An interesting feature in the narrative of the trip is the personal remembrances of seven of the members of the crew. The passage of time and the fading of details results in some insights that are enjoyable. One wonders what their comments would have been if they had written them at the conclusion of the trip.
This book has a lot to offer the reader who enjoys insights into events of our past as well as accounts of memorable cruises by those who don’t claim to “know it all.” Since few of us consider ourselves to be experts, we can relate with the events in this book.
