Amphibious Jeep
HALF-SAFE. By Ben Carlin. (Andre Deutsch, 16s.) BEN CARLIN is an Australian and he writes in the way that Australians speak—out of the back of the mouth, without much emphasis and with most of the good lines thrown away. By train; ing he is a mining engineer. who became by the accident of ws, a sapper in the Indian Army. He is a competent fitter and would seem to be an eminently realistic man, except for his remarkablle ambition to travel round the globe in an amphibious Jeep. Thts obsession is shared, with some reservations, by his wife Elinore, who comes from Massachusetts. Readers of Half:Safe will soon be convinced that they must be the most courageous pair of mortals ever to set on paper experiences of physical hardship and danger' The book records their adventures on the journey from Isis! York to London, by way of the Azores, North Africa and Wester:" Europe. It is an extraordinary tale, in a way more remarkable even than Kon-Tiki. There was something romantic about ',e b raft with its equable drifting and archeological pedigree, while W Jeep, with its fumes of carbon monoxide and its sordid mechanical problems, is repulsive. But Carlin is fighting his problem in the modern way, with mechanical power, with skill in the handling °f tools and with the aid of some new synthetic materials having properties that were unimaginable until he tested them. it is hardly necessary to say that the amphibious Jeep, 05 developed by the American Army during the war, is not a Or worthy craft. I once took one down the Grand Canal in Venice' where it performed adequately though precariously until tied tiPt outside a hotel, where it very soon sank. It leaked and would 0° stay afloat unless the pumps were continually worked by th engine. Yet one of these vehicles is the foundation of Half-Sal` which, with Carlin's modifications incorporated, got safely across the Atlantic and survived a hurricane on the way to Made°. The description of the hurricane is very fine indeed and will be °f great value to seamen. Few men have had experience of a storm of this intensity in the intimate circumstances of a very small boat, and of those who have, none as far as I know, possessed eirlin's lucid mastery of engineering concepts. He has succeeded both in supplying a plausible theory of the mechanics of what happens when the surface of the sea disintegrates under an extreme force of wind and in conveying a vivid impression of these awe-inspiring conditions.
Adventures by land are equally fascinating. Often enough the Carlins were given a royal welcome (literally in the case of the exiles in Portugal), but on occasions the local population was shmly unable to comprehend. `The Dutch,' Carlin writes, 'may be wizards in traditional lines of business, but confronted by some- thing ng other than tulips, cheese or money, they are apt to exhibit the sizzling mental activity of a dyke. In two days they had not even begun to grasp what Half-Safe was all about.'
The author's severely practical although often humorous narra- tive is supplemented by extracts from his wife's diary, which shows a capacity for delighted observation that does not fail even on the •
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