Book excerpt: This tribute to a proud service surveys the history of the Royal Canadian Navy from its inception in 1910 to its demise in 1968. Although established as a declaration of Canada's independence from the imperial fleet, the RCN was the child of the Royal Navy. Its first ships were RN cast-offs, and for the next forty years officers trained in the British fleet -- their 'big ship time.' From these modest beginnings, the book deals with such related issues as the problem of imperial defense, the development of a naval service with a Canadian identity, and the evolution of a Canadian naval engineering capacity.