---
title: '''She Sails at Midnight...'' He Talked... This Happened'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-he-talked-this-happened-1942/
description: 'Two photographs are stacked: men talking over beer in a bar while others listen, and below it a ship sinking with a lifeboat adrift.'
section: Collection
---

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3. 'She Sails at Midnight...' He Talked... This Happened

[!['She Sails at Midnight...' He Talked... This Happened, 1942 Canada poster: Two photographs are stacked](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/canada-he-talked-this-happened-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/canada-he-talked-this-happened-1942.jpg)

# 'She Sails at Midnight...' He Talked... This Happened

Two photographs are stacked: men talking over beer in a bar while others listen, and below it a ship sinking with a lifeboat adrift. The sequence 'He talked... this happened' asserts a direct cause from a pub remark to deaths at sea, and the slogan names the cost in lives.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
"SHE SAILS AT MIDNIGHT...."
HE TALKED..
..THIS HAPPENED
CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

ISSUED BY THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, OTTAWA.
BY AUTHORITY OF HON. JAMES G. GARDINER, MINISTER OF NATIONAL WAR SERVICES.
```

[← Get Your Teeth Into the Job](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-get-your-teeth-into-the-job-nichol-1942/) [It's Got to Fit... To Do Its Bit! Get your work into the "Scrap" not the scrap heap →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/canada-its-got-to-fit-to-do-its-bit-1942/)

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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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