Abstracts
Abstract
While HMCS Uganda’s operational records have been examined along with the impact of the volunteers-only policy for the Pacific Theatre implemented by the Canadian Government in April 1945, historians have largely overlooked HMCS Uganda’s shipboard newspaper called The Uganda Tar Paper. Recognising the importance of a newspaper to its community and that HMCS Uganda was the sole Canadian warship in combat operations in the Pacific Theatre, this oversight has impacted our understanding of the importance of the newspaper aboard ship and the experiences of the ship’s company. In response, this article offers an examination of the newspaper and its importance to the sense of community aboard while also contributing to the historiography of HMCS Uganda. Furthermore, this article examines the possible use of the newspaper by the senior leadership aboard to influence the results of the Pacific volunteer vote held aboard HMCS Uganda in June 1945.
Résumé
Bien que les archives opérationnelles du NCSM Uganda aient fait l’objet d’un examen, tout comme l’impact de la politique d’admission des bénévoles dans le théâtre du Pacifique mise en œuvre par le gouvernement canadien en avril 1945, les historiens ont largement négligé le journal de bord du NCSM Uganda, intitulé « The Uganda Tar Paper ». Il importe de reconnaître l’importance d’un journal pour sa communauté et le fait que le NCSM Uganda était le seul navire de guerre canadien qui participait aux opérations de combat dans le théâtre du Pacifique. Cette omission involontaire de la part des historiens a eu une incidence sur notre compréhension de l’importance d’un journal de bord et des expériences de l’équipage. Le présent article propose donc une analyse du journal et de son importance pour le sentiment d’appartenance collective à bord, tout en contribuant à l’historiographie du NCSM Uganda. De plus, cet article considère l’utilisation possible du journal par la haute direction du navire pour influencer les résultats du vote sur les bénévoles du théâtre du Pacifique tenu à bord du NCSM Uganda en juin 1945.
Download the article in PDF to read it. Download
Appendices
Biographical note
Malcolm Butler served in the Royal Canadian Navy as both a Naval Supply Rating and a Naval Logistics Officer from 1990 until his retirement in 2015. Having lived the past seven years in the landlocked Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, he is currently relocating back to Canada along the shores of Lake Ontario where he will start a PhD in History in the fall with the University of Portsmouth.
Bibliography
- “Admiral Pullen Retires.” The Crowsnest (July 1960): 7.
- Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. Verso, 2016. Kindle.
- Baumgartner, Joseph. “Newspapers as Historical Sources.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 9, no. 3 (1981): 256–258. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29791732.
- Behrisch Elce, Erika. “ʻOne of the bright objects that solace us in these regions’: Labour, Leisure, and the Arctic Shipboard Periodical, 1820–1852.” Victorian Periodicals Review 46, no. 3 (2013): 343–367. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43663188.
- Canada. Parliament. House of Commons Debates, 19th Parliament, 6th Session. Vol. 1. Edmond Cloutier, 1946. https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC1906_20/1?r=0&s=1
- Canadian War Museum. “Canada’s Naval History: The Second World War: War in the Pacific and South East Asia – The Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and Hong Kong.” Accessed 25 June 2023. https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/navy/galery-e.aspx@section=2-E-3-b&id=4&page=0.html.
- Coppinger, Eve. “Publishing on Ice: Personal Experiences and Incarnations of Print Culture Aboard the HMS Hecla.” Constellations 2, no. 2 (2011): 118–124. https://doi.org/10.29173/cons10499.
- De Schmidt, Johanna. “‘This strange little floating world of ours’: Shipboard Periodicals and Community-building in the ‘Global’ Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Global History 11 (2016): 229–250. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022816000073.
- Douglas, W.A.B., Roger Sarty, Michael Whitby, Robert H. Caldwell, William Johnston, and William G.P. Rawling. A Blue Water Navy: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1943–1945. Vol. 2, part 2. Vanwell Publishing, 2007.
- Forster, D.F. and J.W. Pickersgill. The Mackenzie King Record: Volume II 1944–1945. University of Toronto Press, 1968.
- Geneja, Stephen Conrad. The Cruiser Uganda: One War, Many Conflicts. Tyendinaga Publishers, 1994.
- Hall, Karyn. “Create a Sense of Belonging: Finding ways to belong can help ease the pain of loneliness.” Loneliness (blog), Psychology Today, 24 March 2014. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pieces-mind/201403/create-sense-belonging.
- Isbell, Mary. “Diplomatic Editions of a Handwritten Shipboard Newspaper.” In Handwritten Newspapers: An Alternative Medium during the Early Modern and Modern Periods, edited by Heiko Droste and Kirsti Salmi-Niklander. Finnish Literature Society, 2016. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11991n1.8.
- Keate, J.S. Stuart Keate fonds, RBSC-Arc-1299. University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Vancouver.
- Knudson, Jerry W. “Late to the Feast: Newspapers as Historical Sources.” Perspectives on History 31, no. 7 (1993). https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-1993/late-to-the-feast.
- Littler, John Caldecott. Sea Fever. Kiwi Publications, 1995.
- Mallett, Peter. “Veterans Association Holds Last Reunion at CFB Esquimalt.” The Lookout Newspaper, 26 September 2016. https://issuu.com/lookoutnewspaper/docs/2016-09-26-39.
- Milner, Marc. Canada’s Navy: The First Century. University of Toronto Press, 1999.
- Nelson, Robert L. “Soldier Newspapers: A Useful Source in the Social and Cultural History of the First World War and Beyond.” War in History 17, no. 2 (2010): 167–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344509357127.
- Rawling, Bill. “Paved with Good Intentions HMCS Uganda, the Pacific War, and the Volunteer Issue.” Canadian Military History 4, no. 2 (1995): 23–33. https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol4/iss2/3/.
- Rawling, Bill. “A Lonely Ambassador: HMCS Uganda and the War in the Pacific.” The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord 8, no. 1 (1998): 39–63. https://doi.org/10.25071/2561-5467.661.
- Schull, Joseph. The Far Distant Ships: An Official Account of Canadian Naval Operations in the Second World War. King’s Printer, 1950.
- Statistics Canada. “Population of Canada and the provinces, annual, 1926–1960 (x 1,000).” https://doi.org/10.25318/3610028001-eng.
- Uganda Tar Paper. 14 February–9 August 1945. https://www.forposterityssake.ca/RCN-DOCS/TAR-PAPER.htm.
- Waters, Conrad. British Fiji Class Cruisers and Their Derivatives: Design, Development and Performance. Seaforth Publishing, 2024.
- Wombacher, Joerg and Joerg Felfe. “United We Are Strong: An Investigation into Sense of Community among Navy Crews.” Armed Forces & Society 38, no. 4 (2012): 557–581. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X11428787.