Unknown Fathoms

The Cascadia earthquake of 1700. The wreck of the Aeneas in 1805. The Nanaimo mine explosion of 1887. The Britannia Mountain landslide of 1915. The Halifax explosion of 1917. The ice storm of 1998. The Fort McMurray fire of 2016. The Quebec City mosque shooting of 2017. The Humboldt Broncos bus crash of 2018.

“Lest we forget,” Rudyard Kipling repeats eight times in “Recessional”— and lest we forget, in the dossier of misfortunes, there also stands the USS Pollux and USS Truxtun tragedy of 1942 off the coast of Newfoundland.

In accounts of the disastrous details of the annus horribilis of 1942 — the Japanese assault on the Philippines, England’s surrender of its “impregnable fortress” just off the Malay Peninsula, the heartbreak and horror of Canadian soldiers in the Dieppe Raid — the fates of the Pollux, a practically new general stores issue ship, and the Truxtun, a practically ancient destroyer, are...