"Frederick William Wallace, a young Montreal journalist and an accomplished commercial artist, was enthralled by ships. Between 1911 and 1916, in the last age of unassisted sail, he made seven voyages aboard fishing schooners to the banks off Nova Scotia. Taking a simple box camera, Wallace photographed the men, the vessels, and the work itself, knowing that he was capturing a way of life at the moment of its passing. Wallace's clear, dramatic photographs recreate a turning point in history and the men who lived it." "Wallace published few of these photographs. Instead, he became a well-known writer of articles for magazines, including National Geographic, and the author of many popular seafaring novels. His most famous book, the encyclopedic Wooden Ships and Iron Men, is still in print." "In A Camera on the Banks, M. Brook Taylor presents the story of a fishery on the brink of change and the pioneering photojournalist who documented it so lovingly. A professor of history at Mount Saint Vincent University, he curated the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic exhibit that displayed Wallace's work to the public for the first time."--BOOK JACKET.