In 1979 the Ottawa
Branch of NOAC initiated an oral history project to record for posterity
the reminiscences of some of its members. Salty Dips© was the
result. It was the brainchild of the late Hal Lawrence, a master story
teller and published author, who had an exciting career at sea. Since its
first beginnings, eight volumes have now been published.
Salty Dips does not pretend to be complete
history. The stories are the personal recollections of Canadian sailors
both in war and in peace bringing with them a special character which enhances
an event seen through the eyes of 'those who were there'. These recollections
of life at sea and ashore are invaluable towards understanding a unique
part of Canada's history.
Our debt to the dedicated group of volunteers who recorded, transcribed,
edited and published this part of our proud maritime heritage for a new
generation of Canadians is indeed very great because this is no conventional
naval history series, recounting events from an academic, dispassionate,
after-the-fact perspective - it contains the highly personal, frequently
colorful, always exciting experiences of a remarkable and diverse group
of Canadians who served in the Navy. Readers, regardless of age, will enjoy
these stories for their immediacy and their informality - history from
those who lived it.
Except for Volume Four, the contents are transcribed
from taped conversations with veterans or 'old salts'. Volume Four is a
reproduction of the original newsletters which were issued from Canada
House (HMCS Niobe) in London during World War II. They describe
the activities of the many Canadian naval officers serving in British ships
and shore bases in the period and are a fascinating glimpse into less newsworthy
events of the time.
Now
available – Salty Dips Volume
9 – “Carry On”
This
latest edition of Salty Dips is now available for purchase in both a soft
cover edition to complement existing collections and a hard cover edition as a
coffee-table collector’s item.
As
most of the stories in Volumes 1 through 8 dealt with events that took place before 1965, Volume
9 deliberately attempts to fill in the post-Korea years—more than
half of the Navy’s life—to demonstrate that, far from slipping into
anonymous inactivity, the Navy, even with reduced resources, has fought other
wars, cold and hot, and been involved in a variety of peace-keeping and
humanitarian operations around the globe.
Volume 9 contains dips
demonstrating that the navy didn’t die with Unification and that, despite a
reduction in the number of ships and personnel, life in the modern Naval
Service could in fact be just as exciting and challenging as it ever had been.
As such, Volume 9 contains stories
from naval personnel who have participated in modern wars, in multi-national
and UN peace-keeping or humanitarian operations, and who have toiled in exotic
locations in Asia, Africa, Central America, the Persian Gulf, and Eastern
Europe—wherever hostilities or other extreme circumstances demanded.
Volume 9 addresses two other “gaps” in the Navy
story that needed filling, and so it includes as prologue two “chapters”
which are not dips, although in the loosest sense they might be considered as
such. They deal with pivotal periods and issues in the Navy’s history that
were inadequately dealt with in the verbal accounts of the earlier volumes,
yet are essential to an understanding of how the navy evolved, and why it is
what it is. The first is Prologue Part 1, “Canada’s Neglected Naval
Service”, about the RCN’s difficult early life prior to World War II; the
second, Prologue Part II, concerns the integration/unification of the Canadian
forces in the 1960s. Both are in
fact essays reflecting events and how the authors viewed them.
If the latter chapter seems strident in its distaste for unification
and the architect thereof, the reader need only know that, even today, mention
of either to many an old salt will get nostrils flaring and the nautical
vocabulary flexing over the idea that someone would mess with our Navy and our
traditions.
To
link the stories of the modern Naval Service with the RCN of the wartime past,
and to provide dramatic contrast between then and now, Volume
9 also includes a half-dozen dips about events that took place before
1965: one from the earliest days of the navy, and another that vividly
recounts what life was like on the lower deck, in a small ship, on convoy duty
in the North Atlantic during the winter of 1942-3, reputedly the worst of the
century. Of all the stories in the nine volumes of Salty
Dips, none better illustrates the extreme conditions under which men
served, and none better illustrates the pure terror which punctuated those
seemingly endless, monotonous days. It goes to the very heart of the navy
experience.
Unique
to the Salty Dips collection, Volume 9 -
“Carry On” is available in both hard cover as a table book and in soft
cover to complete and complement your collection.
See
the link below for details on how to order and costs.
Read a Synopsis
of each of the Volumes
Order Form
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