“Early 1941: the Happy Time for the U-boats; the most savage, punishing time for North Atlantic convoys, in which antiquated merchant ships, mostly unarmed, invariably slow and with few escorts, doggedly sailed in fixed lines, like metal ducks in a fairground shooting gallery, across what the Allies called the ‘Air Gap’, and the U-boat men has christened das Todesloch — the ‘Death Hole’. There were no specialist rescue ships provided in those days; Naval Control could only nominate one ship in each column to attempt to save other seamen forced to abandon. The U-boat men had an apt name for such a steamer. They called her Knochensammler — The Bone Collector. This is the story of one of those Bone Collectors — the British steamship OLYMPIAN — and what happened to her whole the North Atlantic killing was at its peak. It is a novel of ordinary Merchant Navy convoy men, as seen through the eyes of OLYMPIAN’s Chief Officer during the early part of one night’s massacre — as the U-boat attack groups finally converged on Slow Convoy SC whatever-it-was, in the graveyard of das Todesloch.”