Carse, Robert The Sea Waifs
This World War 2 novel was written by Carse under the pseudonym “John Vail” and published only in a paperback edition. Set in the Pacific theater of war in April 1945 aboard the fictitious Liberty ship SYLVANUS J. TYLER which is sailing from San Francisco to the Philippines out of convoy after an engine breakdown and manned – according to author Carse – by a crew of sex-starved merchant mariners and an equally sex-starved band of U.S. Navy gunners. The tale opens with two young women being plucked from a life raft (the C-47 in which they were passengers had ditched in the Pacific two weeks previous) and all hell proceeds to break loose aboard the freighter. As the book’s back cover blurb luridly promises:
“They shattered a ship’s morale, two women cast out of the sea. War and death were the business of the men. Life and love the business of the women. The captain scarred the officer’s face for love of the dark girl. The crew in the hold faced each other with knives for the love of the blonde. And mutiny growled in a hundred throats.”
In reality, this is a very solid World War 2 yarn, though one which has been obviously tarted up with lurid sex (heterosexual sex, nymphomania, broad suggestions of lesbianism and, surprisingly enough for the 1950s, an “out” and very sympathetic gay character) in order to make it more saleable to the drugstore paperback trade. Despite all the sex and mayhem, Carse cannot disguise his very real writing ability, particularly evident in passages describing earlier Murmansk Run experiences suffered by the ship’s skipper, Captain Peter Howe. Neither can Carse disguise his very real appreciation for other nautical writers, such as Joseph Conrad and William McFee, both of whom are cited by characters in the novel. Indeed, the novel concludes with a particularly moving scene when, with the TYLER sinking after having been attacked by “Jap” Zeroes, the ship’s Chief Engineer, Mr. McComb, mortally wounded himself and trapped in the vessel’s hospital with a number of dying men, recounts to them Conrad’s classic “Secret Sharer.” The meaning of the story being told by the dying Chief Engineer to others about to die is understood by all:
“One seafarer helping another, that was what it meant. A beautiful, a perfect story.”