Frederick William Wallace
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Frederick William Wallace (11 December 1886-15 July 1958) was a novelist, photographer and historian. He was the author of Wooden Ships and Iron Men a now-classic 1924 book about the last days of the Age of Sail in Maritime Canada. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he went to sea as a youth, settling in Canada. He died in Montreal.
About forty years later than he preferred to, he said, he published Wooden Ships and Iron Men as a testament to the spirit of the age. He also wrote the novels Blue Water and Captain Salvation and several other works. Blue Water was made into a film in Canada, directed by David Hartford but it was never released [1]. Captain Salvation was purchased the Hearst Corporation and released as a film in 1927, directed by John S. Robertson. [2][3] Both films were from the silent era.
He edited the monthly journal Canadian Fisherman for forty years. The journal, which ran from 1917 to 1970, remains an important source of information for researchers today. [4] [5].
He also wrote Bound for the Rio Grande, an operetta based on English shanties, performed at the 1929 CPR Festival in Vancouver. [6]
His epic poem about his time aboard the Effie M. Morrissey, "The Log of the Record Run," was widely read. [7]
An accomplished photographer, in 2006, he was the subject of a book by Nova Scotia writer M. Brook Taylor entitled A Camera on the Banks, which documents seven voyages to the Newfoundland Grand Banks where he toiled alongside other fishermen at the same time documenting their condition in photographs and words. In conjunction with the launch of Taylor's book, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic opened an exhibit on June 6, 2006 entitled A Camera on the Banks: The Work of Frederick William Wallace, which displayed part of the museum's extensive collection of Wallace's photographs. After the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, the exhibit was expected to travel around Nova Scotia and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
[edit] Publications
- Blue Water: A Tale of the Deep Sea Fishermen, Toronto: Musson, 1907.
- The Shack-Locker, 1916.
- The Viking Blood, 1920.[8]
- Salt Seas And Sailormen, 1922.
- Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The story of the square-rigged merchant marine of British North America, the ships, their builders and owners, and the men who sailed them, London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1924 (reprinted by White Lion (London) in 1973).
- Captain Salvation, Grosset & Dunlap, 1925 (reprinted in 2005 by Formac with an introduction by Brook Taylor) ISBN 0-88780-676-7
- Tea From China, 1926.
- In the Wake of the Wind-Ships , London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1927.
- Record of Canadian Shipping: A List of Square-Rigged Vessels, Mainly 500 tons and over built in the Eastern Provinces of British North America from the Year 1786 to 1920, Toronto: Musson, 1929.
- The Romance of a Great Port: The Story of Saint John New Brunswick, Saint John: Barnes & Co., 1935.
- Under Sail in the Last of the Clippers, Boston: Charles E. Lauriat, 1936.
- Canadian Fisheries Manual: Thirty Years Progress in Canada's Fish Industry (1914-44)
- Roving Fisherman: an autobiography recounting personal experiences in the commercial fishing fleets and fish industry of Canada and the United States, 1911-1924, Gardenvale, Quebec: Canadian Fisherman, 1955.
[edit] Further reading
- Taylor, M. Brook, A Camera on the Banks: Frederick William Wallace and the Fishermen of the Grand Banks, Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2006. ISBN 0-86492-441-0
