Former Dominion Archivist W. Kaye Lamb remarked that "author and publisher alike have set a high standard for the publications of the new Press.
Gough was advisory editor to Macmillan Publishing for World Explorers and Discoverers (1992)[12] and was editor-in-chief of the magazine American Neptune based at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts (1997–2003).
Continuing as a historical consultant to CFB Naval and Military Museum, Esquimalt, B.C., in 2017, he was curator of the Canada 150 Public History Project, "The Royal Canadian Navy and the Pacific Gateway to Wider Seas."
[19] The highest award bestowed by the Washington State Historical Society, the Robert Gray Medal for lifetime achievement, was given to Gough in September 2016.
"[21] A life member of the Society for the History of Discoveries, Gough was in November 2019 named a Fellow of the Society "for his many outstanding publications in Canadian and British imperial and naval history; for his fine record of teaching and mentoring students, particularly at Wilfrid Laurier University; and his contributions to the scholarly community of imperial, international and maritime historians.
[39] In The Times Literary Supplement, Jan Morris wrote: "This enthralling book by an eminent Canadian naval historian is a work of profound scholarship and interpretation….
Barry Gough has himself heightened the book's sense of personal drama by surrounding his central characters with powerful expositions of the state of the world around them.
"[40] James Wood attended to the book's accounts of the struggles within the Admiralty and British Cabinet in formulating strategy and policy for war and the "bitter complications" of Churchill's and Fisher's fall from power.
[41] The Australian Naval Institute forum noted an approach in which the author "distilled and weighed the rancor, political intrigue, strategic and operational challenges and the (mostly) dismal record of the war at sea up to Jutland.
"[42] The following year, research in Spanish and English archival sources became the 2018 book by Gough and Charles Borras, The War Against the Pirates: British and American Suppression of Caribbean Piracy in the Early Nineteenth Century, which examines the roots of piracy in those seas and how its suppression laid the foundation for the decline of the Spanish empire in the Americas.
The judges noted that the book links "early maritime history, Indigenous land rights, and modern environmental advocacy in the Clayoquot Sound region" and "connects 18th-century Indigenous-colonial trade relations to more recent historical upheavals and bridges the gap between centuries….
[51] Dave Obee, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Times Colonist, described the Meares Island book as "a superb examination of a rather small location that is highly significant to British Columbia as a whole."
[52] Aimee Greenaway of British Columbia History interviewed the author about the initial legal research and how the "complicated story" evolved, one of "multi-layered, multi-disciplinary situations" with roots back hundreds of years that affect present-day developments.
Later reporting in London to an 1857 Select Standing Committee, Blanshard answered their 260 questions about Vancouver Island having been made an unwelcome place for settlers and "took his revenge on Douglas and the company, testifying to the corruption under their rule.