THE MATE TAKES HER HOME

The author of Sea Mary surrounds another tale of sordid cruelty on the high seas in nautical verbiage which is as rough a voyage for the reader as for the ship. The background is undoubtedly authentic, but Pilat has a very choppy sense of dialogue and narrative, despite, or perhaps because of, all that happens. The story concerns the first mate, a Swede, who ships aboard a small boat captained by a syphilitic-dipsomaniac, whose wife and little boy are on board. A bullied and tortured crew, the captain's murder of his own child, finally ends in mutiny which the mate checks, bringing the boat into safe harbor. Romance, of a kind, between the mate and the wife. Perhaps a few of your marine-minded will like it, but it's all questionable.