Dusty Dreams & Troubled Waters: A Story of HMCS Sackville and the Battle of the Atlantic

Dusty Dreams & Troubled Waters: A Story of HMCS Sackville and the Battle of the Atlantic, an historical graphic novel, interweaves two stories in alternating chapters, each being represented by a portion of the book’s short title, with a young man, Wally, at the centre of both stories. The “dusty dreams” refers to Wally’s life on the drought-stricken Saskatchewan prairies during the Great Depression while the “troubled waters” references his World War II service as a novice sailor aboard the Canadian warship HMCS Sackville, a corvette.

A “Prologue”, set in the summer of 1942, establishes the historical wartime context in which the Allies are losing large numbers of ships due to German U-boat activity. “We needed escorts; we needed better equipment.” The opening chapter then takes Wally, a freshly trained sailor, aboard his first ship, HMCS Sackville where readers, through Wally’s eyes, are given a tour of the corvette on which he will be serving. The second chapter provides a quick overview of the economic conditions on the Prairies during the Dirty Thirties before zeroing in on the love triangle involving Wally, his older brother Tom, and Winnie, a girl from a neighboring farm. This personal story plays out throughout the rest of the book while remaining secondary to the main storyline, the recreation of events involving HMCS Sackville during the Battle of the Atlantic, especially its three direct encounters with German submarines.

At the beginning of the book, a two-page map, labelled “Convoy Route”, details the course that convoys sailing from Halifax to the United Kingdom would have followed. Additionally, the map indicates both the areas where convoys could receive additional protection from air support and the “black pit’ where German submarine wolfpacks, unhindered by allied aircraft, could operate more freely. A much smaller (and likely unneeded) map shows how far Wally would have travelled from Saskatchewan to Halifax.

End matter consists of a three-page “Glossary” and a closing page, “Acknowledgements”. The terms included in the glossary are those words “which appear in grey” in the text; however, since everything in the book is in black and white and shades of grey, the words really don’t readily stand out. An unusual feature of the glossary is that the terms being defined are arranged alphabetically by chapter. Consequently, if readers don’t seek out a definition the first time a term is met and then encounter it in later chapters and decide at that point to seek its meaning, they may conclude it was not defined. A more traditional single alphabetized list might have been more functional choice. Creating this glossary must have been challenging as the naval setting required the use of nautical slang and numerous technical terms. Undoubtedly, readers will come across some that are not in the glossary. For me, there were many, with one example being “red lead and bacon” and another, “make and mend”.

The “Acknowledgements” page explains that the book’s illustrator, Richard Rudnicki, died in November, 2019, as he was nearing completion of the book’s artwork and that his wife, Susan Tooke, stepped in to complete the illustrations. Rudnicki had remarked on how demanding a task it was to bring Bowman’s story to life via images, especially the shipboard events which occurred in a “real” physical setting and, therefore, had to be rendered accurately. “It’s roughly 3+ days to do a page. It’s really a two-person job. Image research takes time.” “It’s a lot more work than I ever thought. Flags, camouflage, insignia and lots of fine detailing, revising and touching up.”

Though Dusty Dreams & Troubled Waters was published by a Halifax-based publishing house, there is no mention that the HMCS Sackville is still afloat and can be visited in its dock in Halifax Harbour. The vessel also has a website: https://hmcssackville.ca/

That Dusty Dreams & Troubled Waters is illustrated in black and white rather than full colour may be off-putting to some readers; however, that choice is most appropriate in reflecting the time period in which this graphic novel’s events occurred. Neither the Dirty Thirties nor the carnage of war shout colour. Additionally, movie goers during the prewar and war years would have been used to “seeing” their national and international news at their local cinemas via the black and white newsreels that were shown prior to the main feature.

A good recreational read, Dusty Dreams & Troubled Waters would be a most useful support resource in Canadian history classes.