About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Canada is a great maritime nation. Although ships and the sea have been part of its history for centuries, very little is known about the men and women who have worked in its coastal and lake fleets. Ships and Memories is a fascinating account of life at sea during the age of steam. In it, seafarers tell ther own stories and remember the good times as well as the bad, in peace and war and during the depression.
Eric Sager draws on interviews with master mariners, engineers, able seamen, cooks, stewards, and many others who worked aboard steamships from 1920 to 1950.
Contributor Notes
Eric W. Sager is a professor of history at the University of Victoria. He is the author of Seafaring Labour: The Merchant Marine of Atlantic Canada and co-author of Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914.
Editorial Reviews
The design of this book will do much to attract a working-class readership as much as it will academics. Lavish use of illustrations and boldfaced type of quotes from the seafarers' own words set this book apart from the often monotonous presentations of more pedantic efforts. Ships and Memories may be brief in content, but it is not superficial in intent. The purpose of this book is not to give readers a dry study of workers in the shipping industry, but rather to set a new course by encouraging seafarers and other workers to value, and build on, the memories of their own experiences.
— The Northern Mariner
Here is a book that provides a fascinating, detailed and authoritative account of Canada's merchant marine, coupled with memorable years told by seafarers who served in these ships during the three decades from 1920 to 1950 when the Age of Steam witnessed the final demise of sail and the advent of diesel-driven merchant ships ... a worthy and genuine documentation of the oral history of a bygone era.
— Left History
Ships and Memories reads beautifully. Sager has deftly woven together these reminiscenses into a narrative that with human passion and energy documents the historic course of Canadian merchant shipping over a 40-year period. As one of the seafarers put it: readers shun "dry fact, one fact after another" (p. 8); history needs "anecdotes, and interesting happenings to make it readable" (p. 9). Ships and Memories does this admirably.
— Pacific Northwest Quarterly
