Garner, Hugh Storm Below.

Told in gritty, realistic prose, Storm Below is an important look at the wartime North Atlantic convoy system told from the Canadian perspective. Garner’s engrossing novel is set aboard the fictitious Canadian Flower Class corvette RIVERFORD during six days at the tag end of a March 1943 westbound North Atlantic convoy escort run. While Garner offers telling descriptions of the convoy at sea as it approaches the relative safety of Newfoundland – with a particularly vivid account of a relentless German U-boat attack – his major focus is on the interpersonal relations between the RIVERFORD’s complement of officers and crew. The unexpected death of a young recruit who’d fallen and hit his head during stormy weather changes the tenor of life aboard the formerly “happy ship” after the RIVERFORD’s captain decides to take the boy’s body to St. Johns, Newfoundland rather than bury him at sea. Old sea superstitions about the carrying corpses shipboard are soon rife and morale is shattered during the final days of the corvette’s run to St. Johns when many of the crew believe the vessel to be hexed. While Garner offers a compassionate view of officers and crew alike, he spares nothing in his exposure of the very casual anti-Semitism and anti-French Canadian feelings prevalent among many of the RIVERFORD’s Anglo-Canadian characters.