I went looking for the boy my grandfather Robert had been. The records kept leading backward to his father.
Captain Edward “Ted” Davies emerged as an orphaned Halifax boy held inside a family by his older sisters, then as a master mariner, convoy commodore and O.B.E. recipient. He was not background. He was the story that came first.
His son, Ted Jr., supplied memories the archives could not, and Susan Chamberlain helped make that conversation possible. I am grateful to them both.
One later family echo belongs here in miniature. Ingrid’s father — Chrissi’s maternal grandfather, whom the family called Apa — had served aboard a German U-boat. My great-grandfather had commodored Allied merchant convoys. There is no evidence their paths crossed; the small fact I keep is that decades later, Apa’s family welcomed Ted’s great-grandson.
— Brian Robert Lefebvre