ISBN 1-55750-959-X
624 pages

Introduction; Acknowledgements; Explanatory Notes; Abbreviations; photos; tables; Index

Heal, S.C. A Great Fleet of Ships: The Canadian Forts and Parks. St. Catherines, ONT: Vanwell Publishing Limited, 1999

ISBN 1-55125-023-3
312 pages

Acknowledgements; Introduction; photos; tables; diagrams; Bibliography; Index

Finding information on World War II warships has always been relatively easy, with many reliable books containing specifications and histories of fighting ships from aircraft carriers to submarines. Other than for some specific classes (like Liberty and Victory ships), finding similar kinds of information for the merchant vessels that carried critical cargoes across dangerous waters has been much more difficult. As Fate would have it, more than fifty years elapsed after the end of the war before these two magnificent volumes about WWII-era shipping arrived, but they appeared on the scene within a couple of months of each other.

Fortunately, the authors have delved into different components of the WWII shipping inventory, so these books are very much complementary with almost no overlap. While Jordan covers all the ocean-going vessels in existence at the end of 1939, Heal looks at the Canadian-built Fort- and Park- class ships constructed during the war. The World's Merchant Fleets is more ambitious, covering over 6000 merchantmen, but limited to a strict tabular presentation supplemented with footnotes and photos. A Great Fleet of Ships covers just over 400 merchant ships, but devotes considerable space to sea stories, documents, and background information as well as tabular data and photos. Heal also includes a nice folding insert of the original plans from which the Canadian vessels were derived (as well as, after further modification, the American Liberty ships).

Jordan organizes his book according to nationality, within each nationality according to ship owner, within each ship owner according the name of the line or fleet, and within each line or fleet according to general type. Under "Great Britain, Dominions, and Colonies," for example, can be found "Holt & Co, Alfred" with its "China Mutual Steam Navigation Co Ltd" and "Ocean Steamship Co Ltd," each with its own numerous ships listed alphabetically according to "passenger/general cargo vessels" and "general cargo vessels."

Most shipping lines have a note with funnel colors, hull colors, routes serviced, and so on. Data displayed for each individual ship includes:

• Name
• Type of machinery (such as steam turbine or steam-reciprocating)
• Number of screws
• Numbers of first class and second class passengers carried (where applicable)
• Year completed
• Name of builder
• Gross register tons
• Deadweight tons
• Length
• Breadth
• Draught or registered depth
• Speed
• Former names, with year of change
• Major conversions

All these are coded and abbreviated and thoroughly explained at the front of the book. Here's a typical example:

HOLT & CO, ALFRED, (Blue Funnel Line), India Bldgs, Water St, Liverpool

CHINA MUTUAL STEAM NAVIGATION CO LTD
Passenger/general cargo vessels
Antenor (st2,P155/1)  1925  Palmer  11,174  11,165  517-6  62-2  30-11  15.0

Many ships have a footnote with further particulars, such as sales and transfers, and a wide range of representative vessels are illustrated with surprisingly crisp wartime (or pre-war) black-and-white photos.

As if this wealth of information were not sufficient, Jordan goes on to offer a lengthy section on losses. This includes extensive details on sinkings due to marine hazard and wartime action as well as vessels scuttled, vessels used for breakwaters, vessels intentionally sunk post-war with surplus war materials (such as poison gas), vessels lost after the war to mines, etc. This data is also tabular and arranged by nation with date, position, fatalities, survivors, cause of loss, etc.

Here are examples of a couple of loss records:

Andulasian 17.3.41 Torpedoed (in convoy SL68) by U106, sunk, 14 33N 21 06W (0†, 42 surv)
Jalapadma 14.4.44 Badly damaged following Fort Stikine explosion Bombay Docks (-†); broken in two; BU

Heal, on the other hand, spends the first 220 pages of his book providing short, informative chapters about specific topics and selected vessels. These include, among many others:

• The Concept of the Standard Ship
• Marine Insurance and the War Risks Markets
• The Bari Disaster
• The Bombay Explosion
• Conflagration at Algiers
• Some Captains I Have Known
• The Green Hill Park Disaster
• Maintenance and Supply Ships for the Pacific War

These chapters range from one to twenty pages, with most in the neighborhood of two or three. Here's a brief excerpt from one:

   By then it was probably too late to save [Fort Stikine]. Some 32 hoses poured a thousand tons of water into the seat of the fire in No. 2 hold, but at 3:45 pm the explosives caught fire. Minutes later a sheet of flame shot up and the ship became a blazing inferno. At 4:05 pm the ship exploded with a deafening noise. Flaming drums, white-hot shards of metal and burning cotton poured down on ships in Victoria Dock, dockside sheds, and the city, spreading death and destruction in their path.
   The explosion created a tidal wave sufficient to lift the Indian-owned freighter Jalapadma across No. 2 shed. High and dry, she broke her back. Under the dense clouds of smoke eleven other vessels were on fire and four had already sunk. Other ships were aground or listing and dockside installations like gates, bridges, warehouses and sheds were in ruins, destroyed totally or on fire. The dock roads and railways were a tangled mass of wreckage. Where the forepart of Fort Stikine had blown up and sunk there was a huge crater in the berth.

Following these chapters, A Great Fleet of Ships includes eighty pages of tabular data for each Fort and Park with name, tonnage, completion date, builder and yard location, changes of name and ownership, fate, and particulars of the actual fort or park for which the ship was named plus other pertinent notes.

FORT STIKINE  7130 gt  7.42  NS    PRDS Prince Rupert, BC
Nominated manager, (WSA) Port Line Ltd London
14.4.44  Loss by fire and explosion, Victoria Dock, Bombay. What remained was sold for scrap.
FORT STIKINE - The history of this fort is also that of Fort Highfield and Fort Wrangell. The name of this ship will forever be remembered with infamy in the history of Bombay, as it set off the biggest accidental explosion of WWII, rivalling in size and consequences that of Halifax, NS in 1917 (see separate story).

Both of these books are very well done. Heal has the advantage of offering many folksy yet informative stories about his subject along with the tabular data while Jordan relies exclusively on row upon row and column after column to provide more structured data. Given its format, Jordan's book would have benefitted from a few totals and sub-totals along the way. For example, there is no way to find out how many ships were owned by Alfred Holt & Co, and amounting to how much tonnage, without actually counting all the lines and pulling out a calculator. These kinds of totals and sub-totals would also be useful on a nation-by-nation basis.

That, however, amounts to picking a minor nit. These are both incredible sources of data for WWII-era merchant shipping. Anyone with an interest in that topic, along with anyone who admires massive compilations of painstakingly assembled information, will insist on acquiring both these excellent volumes.

Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Naval Institute Press and Vanwell respectively.

Thanks to the publishers for providing these review copies.