Tamzine

Her name was Tamzine, and there was nothing formidable or impressive about her. Not even 15 feet long, and with a draft of just 18 inches, one would hardly have thought the little wooden fishing boat capable of military service of any sort. She was certainly no troop transport ship. She had none of the capacity, protection, armament, or speed of the Royal Navy's warships or of the Merchant Marine's cargo fleet. She was certainly no match for the weapons the enemy could bring to bear.

But there was no time to wait for the perfect ship, the ideal vehicle, if you were a British soldier trapped in Dunkirk in May of 1940. Indeed, the larger draft vessels could not get as close to shore as could little boats like Tamzine, and the larger ships were also larger targets for the Luftwaffe. So in what Churchill was later to call a "miracle of deliverance," Tamzine and some 700 other small craft and lifeboats did what the larger ships alone could not do: rescue over 338,000 stranded and imperiled British and allied soldiers, bringing them to safety in England. The boats and ships of that rag-tag flotilla in fact proved to have been the perfect vessels for the task.

What must at first have seemed like a desperate, ill-conceived, and amateurish response to a dreadful military disaster in fact provided the great rallying point for the British. What must have to the Germans seemed laughable and foolish in fact not only succeeded but also gave Britons the resolve to defend their island nation and (with a spot of help from the Yanks) win the war. Churchill's rousing "We will fight on the beaches" address was prompted by the events of Dunkirk. And that "Spirit of Dunkirk" lasted far longer than the operation itself, and remains still part of how Brits define themselves.

"Wars are not won by evaculations," Churchill told the Commons afterward, keenly aware that the heroism of "Little Ships of Dunkirk" was made necessary by a colossal military failure, for which he was largely responsible. "Operation Dynamo," as it was called, also came at the cost of six British destroyers, and many hundreds of artillery pieces, countless tanks, and other critical materiel left behind in France. And the end of the war was nowhere in sight.

Today, of course, we know how important that rescue was, especially to morale. The little fishing boat Tamzine is in the Imperial War Museum, the oldest and smallest of the surviving Little Ships, as representative of a bold and risky undertaking that saved countless souls and helped save a nation. Churchill was right not to "assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory." But he was perceptive enough even then to realize that "there was a victory inside this deliverance."

We learned today that on December 3rd in Wheaton, Illinois, a new Anglican church in North America will come into being. It will not be perfect. In many ways it will be decidedly imperfect, insufficient, and ill-equipped. But there is not time--and it is now plain there never could be--to create the perfect vessel to bring safely home the many thousands of stranded Anglicans in North America.

The undertaking will appear to some an act of desperation, and its success is by no means certain. As there must have been in late May 1940, there will be naysayers who rather than help this small boat into the water and speed it on its way would rather preserve the ability to say they "knew all along" it wouldn't work. We know who they are and we expect as much--and now we all need them simply to step out of the way. And this evacuation is not a moment of victory--far from it: we still need the help of others distant from our shores. The work is only beginning, and there will be many efforts designed to ensure this rescue (for that is what it is, in every sense of the word), will fail and come to naught. There will be great losses, and there will be property left behind. But as with Dunkirk, we can hope those losses prove ultimately to be costs of victory, not signs of failure.

All Britain in late May and early June of 1940 united in prayer for the success of their Little Ships. In the days ahead every orthodox Anglican in North America should unite in prayer for the success of our own Tamzine and wish those who steer her course Godspeed, so one day we will all be able to look upon this undertaking as the miracle of deliverance we so desperately need.