Fighting Merchantmen of England

Southland Times, Issue 24593, 15 November 1941, Page 9

Fighting Merchantmen of England

THE BATTLE OF THE SEAS. The Fighting Merchantmen. By Sir Archibald Hurd. Hodder & Stoughton, London, through W. S. Smart. Price 4/3. Sir Archibald Hurd’s book is “a humble tribute to the skill, endurance and courage, even unto death, of the fighting merchantmen of stout hearts . . .” The war at sea, he declares, is more aptly to be described as the “Battle of the Seas” than the “Battle of the Atlantic,” for it is being waged not merely in the Atlantic but on all the oceans of the world. Wherever British merchant ships go in their quest for vital supplies, they are in danger—if not from enemy raiders, then from submarines and mines. In a chapter headed “The Seamen’s Ordeal,” he collects notable instances of heroism shown by the crews of unarmed or lightly armed merchantmen, and it makes stirring reading. The ships whose exploits he describes include the Athenia, the Empress of Britain, the City of Benares (“the children’s ship”), the Stonepool, the San Demetrio, the Sussex and the Imperial Transport. As the official historian of the merchant navy’s part in the last war, Sir Archibald h able to make many valuable comparisons. The stories he tells of the new terrors of the sea are used to point his text that the Germans are

“outside the pale” and should never be trusted again, as, he alleges, they were trusted to an astonishing extent in naval matters in the years before the present war. The book is extremely well illustrated.