I began searching for an action which would combine dramatic intensity with the eternal tedium of convoy -- something in the early phase of the War when the Atlantic sinkings far outpaced the building of ships and when, after the fall of Paris, Churchill's frank and audacious admissions sobered Britain to a sense of her peril. U-boats were multiplying fast and moving ever farther westward to concentrate on Atlantic shipping. Convoys were being located and trailed across the ocean with a climbing ratio of loss, which sometimes came close to annihilation. Much has been written during and since the War upon the slimness of the margins between victory and defeat, and the failure of a given convoy to get through at this most critical phase could mean general catastrophe.

The story of those ships comprising the Royal Canadian Navy and "the fourth arm of the Fighting Forces," the Merchant Navy, is now a part of the history of Canada's growth as a sea power, for at the close of 1942 Canada had become responsible for more than half of the convoys moving towards Europe. Those two arms of the Forces worked with the finest co-ordination, and in the spirit of mutual faith which was never betrayed, but rather reinforced, by the exercise of the democratic right to grumble -- the antidote to the Fascist lockjaw.

One episode in the six-year-old drama of the waters, which possessed practically all the elements required for my special task, was the struggle of convoy S.C. 42 for survival. It is significant as being the record of the first display of "wolf-pack" strategy directed towards Atlantic shipping, and hence the experience of this convoy became invaluable in the subsequent working out of countermeasures. The odds against survival were tremendous -- twelve U-boats (it was estimated) with the possibility of German surface raiders coming in for the kill. The target was sixty-six ships crawling at eight knots and protected by an all-Canadian escort of one destroyer H.M.C.S. Skeena, and three corvettes, Kenogami, Orillia and Alberni which were later joined by Moose Jaw and Chambly. Had the faster Skeena been destroyed, all the heroism imaginable would not have availed against the U-boats, which had a surface speed of three or four knots more than that of the corvettes.

I have an interest which has almost a cruel fascination for me, as I know it must for countless others, that is, the role that physical science is playing today in the construction and destruction of life, its relation to the bare elemental fact of existence. The irony deep in the life-and-death issues of our expanding knowledge is confronting us with every discovery and invention. We are learning only too well how any formula, the product of man's mind, or any instrument, the product of his hand, can be used with equal readiness to save or to kill, and I know nothing which, as material, offers a sterner challenge to drama and poetry. There was a time when writers, the dramatists and poets, relegated that material to prose out of a strange prepossession which was bound up with theories of inspiration and poetic diction, reason and imagination, and with the belief that anything so mundane as a machine should be treated only in textbooks and manuals on experimental procedure.

That revolution is taking place today. I am not qualified to say how far the visual and plastic arts have gone in this direction. All I wish to point out by way of introduction is that dynamos, lathes, drills, and turbines are humming their way into the measures of verse with the same ease and intimacy as the former reaping hook and the wheel and the plough.

Three years ago I was invited to go to sea with the Royal Canadian Navy to gather material and atmosphere for a poem. I went as a layman without any expert knowledge. My connection with ships had been with fore-and-afters and coastal steamers along the shores of Newfoundland where I was born and brought up. I had really to go to school and some of my teachers were my own former students who now in their reversed role did their best to kittle up my notion upon matters pertaining to the operations of His Majesty's ships in the Royal Canadian Navy [...]

Through all my work I was greatly helped by a few of my non-naval scientific friends. One was my lifelong friend, Dr R.W. Boyle, director of Physical Research in the National Research Laboratories at Ottawa, who a long time ago sat side by side with me in the college at St. John's, Newfoundland. Boyle, I am informed, made the greatest contribution to the science of sound, or ultra-sound, of any investigator in the First World War. I had to consult him a great deal to make certain that my technical terms and their applications were correct.

I may say just here that I have always realized the importance of a certain degree of accuracy in the relationship between poetry and its subject matter, that a writer who is attempting to put a theme to verse should be at least conscious of his theme, especially if the material is to be beaten into narrative, epic, and dramatic forms. The knowledge of the subject matter is related to the aesthetic value of the result. Communicated moods are dependent upon a large variety of factors as all of us know -- turns of phrase, rhythms, unity of impression, a common area of experience and understanding, and the feeling on the part of the reader that a segment of life, however small the focus, has been mastered and presented. This is not to say that there isn't a huge difference in the quality of errors which might be committed. There is, and some mistakes are relatively insignificant, but a writer must always be on guard to see that there is no disturbance of the mood by a sloppy inadvertence. Sometimes in an otherwise fine artistic production an error may creep in and have the same effect on a listener as if, for example, a clergyman should perpetrate a salacious joke in the midst of an evangelical sermon. Even if the joke were unintentional, the more profane element in the congregation would detect an aesthetic flaw within the moral edifice.

The necessity of research in dealing with historical subjects was brought home to me by many an experience and I discovered how the laugh could be turned against a writer even in the field of verse as it has been turned against myself.

I have tried to be as careful as possible to avoid the more egregious mistakes by consulting the specialists whenever a practical scientific point had to be worked out as an illustration within a dramatic context.

I asked the captain of the Skeena what he would call the most terrible moment of the sixty-hour battle. He replied that the whole sixty hours made one eternal moment because he knew that, with the loss of the little escort, the whole seventy ships would go in one complete slaughter; but if he had to pick two or three moments, one would be the instant when the Jedmore, one of the convoy, reported to the Skeena that a periscope was seen passing the bow and that two torpedoes had passed ahead. That was the first terrible [evidence of the] fact that the convoy, despite its northern remoteness, had been located. That was bad enough, to have the proof that there was one in the area, but in an hour they had all the proof they needed that the pack of perhaps a dozen subs had spotted the convoy. But the worst moment came -- the real nightmare -- when he knew that the subs had dived into the convoy and were attacking from within the lanes.

I read lines like these in the log. "Muneric torpedoed and sunk. Kenogami ordered to pick up survivors. Rockets observed in midst of convoy. Subs inside the lines. Convoy ordered to execute emergency turn of forty-five degrees as evasive tactics. Starshell could not be fired because of the blinding effect on the bridge at the time when every moment was valuable. Destroyer intended to ram the sub inside the convoy but danger of collision with ships was extreme in the darkness." And so on. The captain told me that he was pursuing the sub down one lane while the sub was going in the opposite direction in the lane adjoining. Here is another statement: "A merchant ship which picked up survivors from a torpedoed ship signalled that an officer had stated that no secret papers had been destroyed. As it appeared improbable that the torpedoed ship would sink, a corvette was ordered to close the merchant ship [and] embark the officer who would destroy the papers, which was done."

For the sixty hours this race against death was being run, with death the winner in the matter of sixteen ships, and always the breath-stopping thought that the escort would be destroyed, and then the extermination of the whole fleet [accomplished], while Britain waited for the oil and food and plasma and military supplies and the fate of the freedom of the world hung on the issue. And one of the most uncannily ironic features of this particular struggle as of the war in general is that tons of plasma sent across the ocean to replenish veins should have been sunk in the North Atlantic before it could replenish the veins on European battlefields. That fact itself could [be a] symbol of the most ghastly waste of function imaginable, were it not for the fact that behind it all there was a great base of heroic intention and sacrificial vision, but that it should futilely be shed and not given the chance to flow along preserving [illegible].
[Box 5, no. 42; On His Life and Poetry 143-144]