Early Reviewers

It’s early 1939, and Britain enters deeper into a period of momentous political upheaval with the growing threat of a second World War. Daily life continued, as it did for a nineteen-year-old Perthshire lad, son of the local schoolmaster.

Recently graduated from Dundee’s Wireless College, he signed-on at the offices of Christian Salvesen, Leith, to become a participant on their 1939/40 Whaling Expedition to the Antarctic. Hardships abound, but captivating sights and experiences together with a fascination for far-off places, provide the backdrop to this young man’s baptism of fire and ice. Schoolboy heroes are brought closer to home when seeing first-hand Shackleton’s memorial on South Georgia and dodging the crippling effects of icebergs and pack-ice. Dangers were a constant, whether from simply negotiating the decks to scraping ice from the aerials atop the radio room shack on his ‘Catcher’.

The world moved on, and despite being far from the growing European theatre of conflict, his return voyage brought sharp focus on a new threat. The North Atlantic Convoys became the new hunting-ground for Hitler’s U-boat Wolf Packs and Luftwaffe. No less than four of the seven vessels he served on were to be lost to enemy action. ‘Hunter to Hunted’ is an honest and compelling first-hand account of the war at sea, seen through the eyes of a young Scot, as he undertakes his own rite of passage.

From the Antarctic to the North Atlantic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and finally northern Europe, he hoped against the odds to survive these turbulent years, from Hunter to Hunted!