Books: Tramp Thoreau

PIPE ALL HANDS—H. M. Tomlinson—Harper ($2.50).

To her jittery crew the small, shabby-British freighter Hestia was unlucky because she was named after a goddess (of the hearth). She had run aground, collided with a Russian ship, caught fire. Now they were waiting off Celebes to replace a captain who had just died full of ominous mutterings. Into this Conrad-like setting Author Tomlinson introduces as main character of Pipe All Hands lean, elderly.

Thoreau-like Captain Doughty. Quietly, competently written, the result is a sea story consisting of gently anarchistic philosophizing, exact descriptions, a travelog plot, the flavor but not the vitality of Tomlinson’s best books, Gallions Reach and The Sea and the Jungle.

Captain Doughty knew enough not to blame the gods for the Hestia’s bad luck.

That originated in the Dowland Line offices in London, “in chancelleries, exchanges and banks of a few great capital cities.” In London the decrepit condition of the Hestia was counted on to delay her cargo of sugar until the market was suitably rigged. When Captain Doughty arrived a week early. Sir John Dowland cursed and sent the Hestia off for a risky North Atlantic crossing.

What Sir John had not anticipated was that his old friend, famed archeologist Professor Tennant, and his beautiful young daughter Lyn would take a fancy to the Hestia and go along as passengers. The professor and the captain liked each other’s philosophizing. In mid-Atlantic the Hestia hit a hurricane, sent out an SOS intercepted by a Cunard liner with Sir John aboard. During the black hours before the liner reached the battered Hestia, the bosun went overboard, the chief engineer died, the professor’s daughter found out the sullen first mate was not a gentleman, he was merely insane. Lyn was transferred to the liner. The Hestia disappeared in the darkness, was reported lost.

But a few days later she limped miraculously into Queensland, where Sir John, awake for once to the human factor of shipping, shook hands mightily with the captain.