During his research for this novel, Edward interviewed a number of veterans, and got hold of an old Royal Navy training film from 1943 for orienting raw recruits about shipboard life, and one about training air crew in how to attack subs. Both were helpful in researching scenes for this book.
Edward believes that the stories of the brave sailors who escorted the convoys bringing crucial supplies to Great Britain have not been told nearly as often as stories of battles such as the D-Day landings or the campaigns across France, the Netherlands and Belgium. “The Battle of the Atlantic was critically important to the outcome of the war, and it’s an under-represented story still waiting to be fully told.”
He also unearthed some attitudes that he hadn’t come across in other World War II references. Several veterans told him that they felt very unwelcome in Halifax whenever they were on shore — quite different from how they were regarded in Britain. They spoke of having to rent tiny rooms at high prices, hostility from some of the citizens, and having to contend with very high prices for any goods being sold near the harbour. The sailors were also not allowed to go very far from the harbour itself, so tensions were sometimes high. The shore patrol incident came from one of the veterans Edward interviewed.
One of the most intriguing things Edward discovered in his research was the fake telephone pole “guns” that the first corvettes had in place to fool German U-boat crews into thinking that they weren’t virtually defenceless. Though the corvette his character Bill serves on came slightly later in the war than the first handful that sailed to England, Edward thought the telephone pole “gun” was just too good a detail to leave out.
Edward’s earlier novels are Star Academy and Star Academy: Dark Secrets. He has also written for The Globe and Mail, Canadian Geographic and the CBC show This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Other books in the I AM CANADA series
Prisoner of Dieppe
World War II
Hugh Brewster
Blood and Iron
Building the Railway
Paul Yee
Shot at Dawn
World War I
Deadly Voyage
RMS Titanic
Hugh Brewster
Behind Enemy Lines
World War II
Carol Matas
A Call to Battle
The War of 1812
Gillian Chan
Storm the Fortress
The Siege of Quebec
Maxine Trottier
Fire in the Sky
David Ward
Graves of Ice
The Lost Franklin Expedition
John Wilson
For more information please see the I AM CANADA website: www.scholastic.ca/iamcanada
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Bill O’Connell is a fictional character created by the author, and his story is a work of fiction.
Copyright © 2014 by Edward Kay. All rights reserved.
A Dear Canada Book. Published by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
SCHOLASTIC and I AM CANADA and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
www.scholastic.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kay, Edward, author
Sink and destroy : the battle of the Atlantic / Edward Kay.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4431-0781-5 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-4431-2884-1 (html)
1. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Atlantic Ocean--
Juvenile fiction. I. Title. II. Series: I am Canada
PS8621.A79S56 2014 jC813’.6 C2014-901807-X
C2014-901808-8
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First eBook edition: September 2014