Surely someone is trying to sabotage the Ocean Mammoth, a supertanker on its second voyage and already breaking down. First, a bearing has burst and ruined the rotor blades so badly that the ship can barely keep moving enough to avoid the Mozambique current. Then someone leaves messages that shatter the ties between the chief officer and the bland second officer (revealing that the chief is having at the second's dishy wife). And when the ship enters a profound fog bank, suddenly the radar quits and other safety devices fail. Off course, the loaded ship founders on the South African coast, breaks in two and sinks, killing three crewmen. Why? Why? Why? Well, the ship, we soon learn, is so big that it's already outmoded as a cargo carrier and can't pay its own way (the move is toward smaller ships). Has someone paid off the Old Man, Captain Crutchley, so that the underwriters will return the ""Cypriot"" owners (really a British-Swiss consortium) their $55M investment? Why didn't ambitious Chief Officer Jarrett request the Captain's presence in the wheelhouse when the ship endured the heaviest danger? Did Jarrett actually phone the Captain (who'd taken a pain-killer) or not? Perhaps the sex shenanigans are responsible for the ship going down. All is answered in a final Marine Court of Enquiry which has its own spruce pace and revelations. Not venturesome but easy oceanic reading.