A tale to tug at the heartstrings

Most Canadians are familiar with the work of Farley Mowat, a populist historian and tale-spinner whose fictional, historical and reportage work featured in my school days, and likely many others. Americans and other foreigners may know of him from the films Never Cry Wolf and Lost in the Barrens.


I thought I was pretty familiar with his books, but I recently stumbled upon an early (1958) non-fiction entry of fairly specific nautical interest called The Grey Seas Under: The Perilous Rescue Missions of a North Atlantic Salvage Tug. "Perilous" is somewhat of an undersell; the ice-crusted, gale-lashed, and eventually U-Boat infested voyages of Foundation Franklin, an ocean-going salvage tug powered by steam and the near-infinite capacity for hardship of her various crew make for exciting page-turning. Part of this is because Mowat vividly brings to life the desperate poverty of the Great Depression in maritime Canada. The purchase of Foundation Franklin, originally built in 1918 as a Royal Navy tug intended to tow damaged destroyers to safe harbours, but superannuated by peace, gave the Foundation Company of Canada a new trade as ocean salvors, a dangerous but potentially lucrative sideline to dredging and running harbour tugs.

Once refurbished, Franklin had a less than stellar early career, as there was no real tradition of ocean salvage in Canada, and her skippers and crew had to learn on the job after many failures, some harrowing. Soon enough, however, it was Franklin that would venture out in the most appalling conditions to expertly lay messenger lines over the bows of disabled and sometimes actively sinking ships, and would, under threat of fuel exhaustion and with no hope of others rescuing them, get the ships back to Halifax or St. John's.

The salvage business is legalistic and highly competitive. Salvors have specific rights and duties, but the actual process was, in the days before easy radio communications and navigational beacons, also highly speculative. A disabled ship could issue an SOS, but might refuse to take a tow if the salvage tug could even locate them. Locating a drifting ship was a black art of the salvage skippers, who might have a rough bearing to go by thanks to primitive radio direction finding...but only if the ships afflicted could themselves continue to transmit. Some American ships wanted American tugs to take them to American ports, even when this course layered on extra hazards. Others would decline to take a tow because of the contractual obligation. Some ships were able to fix their problems and did not need assistance, leading to a wasted trip and tons of coal burnt for nothing. Others would simply disappear beneath the waves before the tug could arrive.

The Second World War brought added drama. The German subs were everywhere in the first years, and defence against them was weak at first. The tug itself was a legitimate target, but Franklin, despite some very close calls, still managed to bring dozens of ships with vital fuels, foods and war materials back to port. The job was so rough, it became hard to attract crews: overtime and regular meals in a nice, warm war factory must have seemed better than sidling up to out-of-control freighters in 25-foot seas and 80 knot storms.

The fact that I knew very little of this story is particularly poignant to me as my late father was a teenager in the British Merchant Marine during this time and it is quite likely that some of the ships damaged by enemy action or disabled by terrible storms were taken in tow by this little if powerful and hardy vessel. The role of the Merchant Marines of Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Norway is not nearly as venerated as is the role of the fighting forces, and yet to my mind, it takes greater nerve to crew on a single-hulled tanker filled with aviation fuel through the U-Boat "wolfpacks" than it did for large proportions of the armed forces, who, after all, may have served proudly without ever getting near the front.

So the story of the salvage tugs that saved these ships and their crews is perhaps doubly unknown, and at the time of this writing, May 8, 2011, the 66th anniversary of the allied victory in Europe, it seems fitting that Farley Mowat wrote such a fabulous and inspiring account of men who worked through the entire war as more or less sitting ducks, and yet did not hesitate to venture out in service to others. This review also notes that Mr. Mowat is still with us and still writing, and this week will celebrate his 90th birthday. My wife's grandmother died last year at age 93, would occasionally mention Mr. Mowat as she was his babysitter around the year that Foundation Franklin came to Canada for a long and eventful career. Small world, but I'd hate to take it under tow.

Highly recommended if you can find it.