C. S. Forester (1899–1966)

This novel has a simple structure: the first chapter is the prologue, the second is the story, the third is the epilogue. In the story, Krause, about whom the one unusual thing is that he is an Olympic fencer, must command his own ship and a convoy escort of three smaller ships during a vital day in his life, when the convoy is attacked by several U-boats. The escort is multi-national; Krause is a US officer, but the other ships are English, Canadian, and Polish respectively. His day last for more than 48 hours, as the action continues, until finally, in the epilogue, he collapses into sleep. The book is all action; the humor in it arises from his slow progress in getting dressed once interrupted by a summons and his regular failures to actually manage to consume the food that is brought to him as he is always interrupted by a new emergency. He always makes it to the head, but each time he returns to a new crisis. The action as the Keeling and the Viktor cooperate to hunt a U-Boat reminds me of a nature film I saw in which two orcas hunt a penguin. The penguin is nimbler, but the orcas are faster and two orcas proves one too many for the penguin, eventually. Thus also for the U-Boat.

Vivid, confusing and simple, the novel does not have the depth of characterization of the Hornblower novels. Also, it seems to me that Forester was inclined to make all his US protagonists devoutly Christian, "The Captain from Connectictut"s eponymous protagonist is devout, although surely not Lutheran.… (more)