Walking the Berkshires

Lt. Colin A. Canham's Royal Navy Service

On this Memorial Day, I am grateful to my Uncle Colin Archibald Canham, Jr.: a veteran of Viet Nam.  Over the weekend, in his shy and unassuming way, he delivered to our family a beautiful display of the medals, insignia and badges reflecting the service in WWII of his father-in-law - my grandfather - Robert H. Barker.  It was a labor of love that for most of the family was completely unexpected and we were all deeply touched.

Colin also shared a small bit of his father's service in the Royal Navy during WWII, including a  story heard at his memorial service in 2003 which seems so fantastic that it requires a leap of faith to believe, yet which very well might have happened.  I'll get to that in a moment, but first I'd like to share what my curiosity about Colin A. Canham Sr.'s war record has subsequently turned up on-line.

Colin Archibald Canham was born near the end of the Great War, and he first appears in the navy lists as a Midshipman RNR on January 10th, 1935.  He resigned from the Royal Navy with the rank of Commander on August 15th, 1956.  Along the way he served on vessels as varried as submarines and aircraft carriers. 

From January 20th, 1940 to May 30, 1940, he was a junior officer of the battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood.  During this period, the old WWI battlecruiser patrolled north of the Shetlands on convoy duty supporting operations in Norway.  When the Hood put into Liverpool at the end of May, Lt. Canham left the ship's company, and was therefore not on board when the Bismark sank the Hood with practically all hands in May of 1941.  He had a very good reason for leaving.  He volunteered to assist the evacuation of Dunkirk.

There was a story told at his memorial service about Dunkirk that my Aunt Marty recounted over the weekend.  He had a brother with the British Expeditionary Force and so had an extra motivation for volunteering to ferry the soldiers back across the channel in the face of the German Blitz.  There was a heavy surf and a strong offshore breeze as Lt. Canham loaded up whatever little vessel he had found and tried to pull away from the beach.  The engine suddenly gave out, with the sea pushing them back and the Germans already coming down the shore.

My aunt said that a family record tells of all those soldiers in the boat, standing with their arms outstetched and their greatcoats open to catch the breeze and win free of the coast as human masts and sails.  Stranger things have happened, and the image is so quintessential of the Dunkirk spirit that one yearns to believe it as gospel truth.

From July, 1940 to February, 1941, he was assigned to the accounting section at Portsmouth, which the Navy records as service on H.M.S. Victory III.  While Nelson's Flagship of the name is berthed at Portsmouth, there were various designations of H.M.S. Victory used during WWI and WWII for different establishments.   Portsmouth was heavily targetted by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain and Lt. Canham would have endured several months where bombing was an all too frequent threat.

His next sea assignment was as First Lieutenant on the long range patrol sumbmarine H.M.S. Parthian.  The namesake of her class, the Parthian was assigned to Malta and Lt. Canham joined the ship's company on August 20th, 1941.  She crossed the Atlantic to the USA to refit and was back in the Mediterranian the next year stationed first at Beirut and then at Malta conducting supply runs and engaging with enemy targets as this link shows:

16 Nov 1942 At 1048 hours HMS Parthian fires four torpedoes against a convoy made up of the small Italian tanker Labor (510 BRT), the German merchant Menes (5609 BRT) escorted by the Italian torpedo boats Calliope and Climene north-east of Isola Marettimo, Italy in position 38?03'N, 11?51'E. All torpedoes fired missed their target(s). 

28 Mar 1943 sinks the Greek sailing vessel Archangelos (120 BRT) with gunfire and ramming in the Aegean Sea in position 39.19N, 25.18E.

29 Mar 1943 sinks the Greek sailing vessel Angela Mitylene (120 BRT) off Mitylene, Greece.

4 Apr 1943 sinks the Italian San Isidro Labrador (322 BRT) off Merichas, Greece.

4 May 1943 Lt. M. B. St. John sinks the Italian sailing vessels Despina II and Spina Secundo (both 13 BRT) with gunfire off Kos, Greece.

5 May 1943 Lt. M. B. St. John attacks the German auxiliary minelayer Drache with gunfire 7 miles north-east of Doro in position 38.20N, 24.46E. 

7 May 1943 Lt. M. B. St. John sinks the Italian sailing vessel Barbara some 10 miles north of Cape Stavros, Naxos, Greece

25 Jun 1943 attacks the German merchant Gerda Toft in the Aegean Sea off Cape Midia. Possibly there was one dud torpedo hit.

Lt. Canham was awarded a DSC (Distinguished Service Cross) for these and other operations between July 1942 and June 1943.  He was not on board when the Parthian was subsequently assigned to patrol the southern Adriatic.  On August 6th she failed to respond to a signal and is believed to have been sunk by a mine off the southeast coast of Italy near Brindisi with the loss of all hands.

He was assigned to the battleship H.M.S. Royal Sovereign on July 26th, 1943 while the H.M.S. Parthian was on its last patrol.  He was part of this ship until December, 1943.  An old WWI battleship, she was in poor condition and underwent refitting during this period in the United States.  The following year, she was transferred to the Soviets in lieu of Italian war reparations and renamed the Arkhangelsk.

On October 1, 1944, Lt. Canham joined the light cruiser H.M.S. Newfoundland and soon dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranian, where in February 1945 an explosion in a port torpedo tube casued casualties.  She was repaired and then sent Pacific Theatre, arriving at Sydney in April and supporting operations by Australian land and naval forces in New Guinea that May.  Involved in operations at Truk in June and supporting operations against the Japanese home islands in July, the H.M.S Newfoundland was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.

There are gaps in this chronology, and much more that will only be known by those who served.  Still, if there is information here that is new to my Uncle Colin and his family, then perhaps in some small way I  can say thanks to him for the way he has honored my grandfather.

Caption This! Reconstructionist Edition

This image from a University of Iowa collection of political photos is rather unimaginatively captioned:

"Tableau representing Confederate and Union reconciliation to free Cuba - Spanish American War"

I am confident that you, dear readers, can do far better than that!

 

The Drama of the Herring Run

I watched a herring gull live up to its name as Emily and I were leaving Windrock last weekend.  My annual pilgrimage to the Agawam River Herring Run is a favorite springtime ritual.  I start checking in late March, when the very first Osprey come winging northward, and the river herring out in the cold Atlantic sense something warmer in the meltwater that calls them home.  By late April the blueback herring and alewife should be in the river and making their way to the flume.  Here they collect beneath the plunging water and negotiate the fish ladder up and under the highway and into a chain of ponds by Myles Standish State forest where the lucky ones will spawn.

The herring fishery is closed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and several other states as far away as North Carolina because stocks are so depleted.  I can remember times when the Agawan was crammed with fish from bank to bank, and any Town resident could get a bucket for fish for fertilizer or lobster bait.  Even so, there is usually still at least one other car at the herring run when we arrive: another Pilgrim like me who is there just to check on the fish.  There are a number of herring gulls there, too, a species much maligned for its attraction to garbage.  On this ocassion, however, Emily and I saw one catch a herring.

The bird stood on a stone in the rushing water, poised above the dark river and the fish striving in the current.  Suddenly it struck and came up with a foot long fish.  It flew to the bank and choked down the herring in a few great gulps while other gulls closed in to try and snatch away the prize should the bird falter.  It was a great mouthful that stuck for a short time in its gorge as it worked to swallow its prize.  I have seen herring gulls with corncobs wedged in their gullets, but this bird managed to complete its task in short order and demonstrated that it still derserved the name.

Emily felt badly for the fish, yet here before us was the great cycle of life and death played out in one of the great migration dramas of this or any other place.  It is the same with salmon and grizz, lion and wildebeast.  We saw the power of the school to overwhelm the predators even as it loses individuals, and felt something of the compulsion of instinct that draws the fish to the river in our desire to be there to watch it happen.

Herring in the river is a reassuring sight.  It gives me faith that at least for another year, a part of the natural heritage of New England will still abide.  I never knew the East's great rivers with their full compliment of sturgeon and salmon, but herring face their greatest struggle in our time.  Long may they run.

Dad and Daughter Weekend

My daughter and I are down at Windrock this weekend, and already I can feel the cares of my workaday life melting away in the cool fog off the bay.  The day broke in a warm rain, then got downright steamy and seduced my child to take a dip in the downright frigid ocean.  True to form, she stayed in for 10 minutes passed sanity and took an hour of shivering in blankets afterward to revive.  Then the fog unfurled and the wind picked up and it became another type of day altogether (though any day at the shore beats a gorgeous day at the office).

The daffodils are still in full bloom here, but unlike the late March visit Elias and I paid where we camped out in the livingroom to take advantage of the fireplace in an unheated house, it is now warm enough to dispense with such things.  We've walked in the woods, made a doll out of found objects and a toy sailboat that was inspired by a piece of driftwood and now looks capable of sailing close to the wind.

Emily and I found a number of great books to read on our own and to eachother - one of the great pleasures of this grand old house withseveral generations worth of reading material tucked into every corner.  She polished off Misty of Chincoteague last night, and is into The Great Brain and Owls in the Family at the moment.  I found The African Queen and am thinking about its diorama possibilities...

We'll be cooking up a stack of blueberry pancakes for Sunday breakfast.  There is a claw foot tub to soak in tonight.   The replacement windows don't rattle like the old ones but the timbers of the house still respond to the wind at night.  I planted butterfly weed from seeds I collected last Fall, and reintroduced Siberian iris to the property with some divided plants from mine.  I wish I had a month here, but even a weekend is such balm for the soul.

Geographically Inspired

Cool geography links:

I wish someone would give Beantown the same treatment.

Back when you could sail across Kansas... if the Tylosaurs weren't hungry!

This will come in handy the next time the globe experiences a reverse in polarity. 

Tracing Human History Through Genetic Mutations...And why European Eve Lineage "X" suggests North America's actual "St Brendan" may have been female.  

B-Side Meets Beeswing: Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III Tour Together

This is, hands down, the concert tour you do not want to miss this year. 

"Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright III, long time friends and collaborators commence their first ever North American tour together for the 2009 / 2010 season. While they have performed and recorded together intermittently over the years, this will be their first full scale North American tour together. Be prepared for a once in a lifetime concert event when they join forces on the same bill."

2 October    Lebanon, NH   - Opera House
3 October    Burlington, VT -  Flynn Center
4 October    Cambridge, MA - Sanders Theatre
8 October    Tarrytown, NY  - Tarrytown Music Hall
9 October    Red Bank, NJ  - Count Basie Theatre
10 October  Westhampton Beach, NY - Westhampton Beach PAC
12 October  Wilmington, DE - Grand Opera House
13 October  Towson, MD - Kraushaar Auditorium...

I hope to be in at the Flynn and am conspiring to fit Cambridge in as well.