Life At Sea
Log Book. By Frank Laskier. (George Allen and Unwin. ss.) IT is a national habit to take the Royal Navy for granted, and to praise the fine work of the Merchant Navy is the admirable fashion of the day. These two sailor-writers, one from each service, run true to form. They have both had their share of nautical adventure : Sub-Lieut. Kennedy took part in the battle of Norway and several of the subsequent expeditions across the North Sea, as well as in the hunting of the ' Bismarck,' while Seaman-Gunner Laskier (if we may take his publishers' hint that Log Book is autobiographical) has sailed the trade-routes of the world, finally losing a leg when his ship was bombed and sunk in an Atlantic convoy. Their accounts of sea-life present a contrast between the White Ensign and the Red—the orderly disciplined life of the fighting service and the less restricted merchant life which Mr. Laskier sums up at its best :
" There was always enough food, there was always work to do ; and if that work was done quietly and well, no one ever bothered him."
The Sub-Lieutenant is too much the naval man (and, as he would doubtless claim himself, too little experienced as a writer) to attempt more than a modest matter-of-fact account of one officer's war. The Navy has its own epithet—" pusser "—to describe this slightly inhibited formal outlook, which can be a source of strength, but which in excess means rigidity of mind—the Naval officer's chief weakness.
Mr. Kennedy is not unduly " pusser," however, and his book will be valued as an accurate record of naval life. Such records are all too rare. The Navy has another word (which would defile the pages of The Spectator) for the heroics sometimes printed about the service ; but that word will not be applied to this book, which has been read with approval in the critical lower deck of a destroyer. Its honesty is particularly appreciated. Some people apparently expect sailors to enjoy going into action. Our real feelings are rather different :
Fear comes during the lulls ; it is when I hear the cry ' Aircraft
approaching' that I feel weak inside. It is the same feeling I had at school, waiting outside the headmaster's study to be beaten—a sickly sinking sensation in the stomach. Only it is not as bad as that, because at school I wasn't allowed to alter course and increase speed to avoid what was coming to me."
Mr. Kennedy would never tell us, as the author of Log Book does, that he " felt his soul singing inside him " ; nor would he describe even the " crabbiest " of ships as " a sailors' Gethsemane." Mr. Laskier, a merchant seaman who had a great success with his broadcast talks, has turned less successfully to the more demanding task of writing. His book is autobiographical, but is cast in fictional form as the experiences of " Jack," a somewhat over emotional sailor in whom neither the reader nor, I suspect, Mr. Laskier himself can fully believe. Also, Log Book smells slightly of propaganda. It is another of those thoroughly well-deserved tributes to the gallant men of the merchant service (and, let there be no mistake, they are magnificently deserved), which provoke sometimes a slight feeling of wistfulness in Naval ratings who are doing much the same work for rather less pay, and are taken for granted. Nevertheless, Mr. Laskier has a tale to tell, and when he forgets his soul he can bring his experiences vividly to life—the touching anxiety of the seamen in charge of a shipload of emigrant children, or the sudden realisation by a party of survivors, a second before their ship submerges, that their raft is still made fast to her by a rope.
We still await a great book about modern sea warfare, but until the new Conrad shall appear—another Pole, perhaps ?—it is well that such sailors should write such books, for their deeds are worthy to be recorded.
COLIN MANN.
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