Havighurst, Walter No Homeward Course
File this one under “It seemed like a good idea at the time” — “it” being Havighurst’s incredibly sympathetic tale of a World War 2 Nazi merchant raider! Even sixty years later it’s hard to not disagree with the incredulous reaction voiced by British book reviewer Richard Denis Charques voiced in his July 12, 1941 Times Literary Supplement review of the novel:
“The first dozen pages are sufficient to send the reader back to the title page to look for the previously unnoticed “translated from the German by so-and-so.” But no, this story of a gallant German raider manned by a gallant German crew is apparently not German, only German or German-American. Why it should have been published here there is no knowing, but a wonderful people we are to give these sentimental Germanic heroes an airing just now!
At the start, it is true, there are points of interest in the description, which seems to be done with a degree of knowledge, of the Nazi raider’s style. The WESTPHALIA, which looked an honest cargo-boat, had been built as a raider, with engines as powerful as a battle-cruiser’s, and in the Atlantic she sported the Dutch flag. She had a battery of six-inch guns hidden in dummy ventilators below, she carried torpedo-tubes and anti-aircraft guns, and her wireless could blanket the air for fifty miles around. Having made all this plain, however, Mr. Havighurst goes on to man the raider with as devoted and chivalrous a crew of German idealists as ever put to sea. The captain is Siegfried-Lohengrin, the chief engineer is a more elderly version of Siegfried-Lohengrin, the ship’s doctor is service to humanity incarnate, and only the first officer, alas! is a Nazi black sheep. And, having made all this plain, too, Mr. Havighurst unfolds the chivalry of the WESTPHALIA towards the prize crews quartered in the ‘tween decks and explores the diversely subtle yearnings of the captain, a British intelligence officer, and an American scientist waging humanity’s war — against disease — for the brave and lustrous daughter of an American copper king. Very proper, no doubt, the American scientist, whose name is Langstreth and who holds the captain’s hand in a grip of eternal comradeship, is the only one of the three to be spared and therefore wins.
Some of the details of the raider’s methods are ingeniously imagined. The rest is vapid and lush and hard to put up with. Mr. Havighurst has odd notions of the geography of this country, and of London in particular.”
For the record, a quick glance through Havighurst’s World War 2 oeuvre reveals as patriotic an American as can be found anywhere in this listing. The merchant marine short stories that he wrote after America’s entry into the War confirm this. Unfortunately No Homeward Course -- along with his short story “Last Voyage” (see above) — have somewhat tarnished his reputation). “For another take on the “Gee, the Germans are just guys like us” genre, see Paul Schubert’s 1940 short story, “Lover’s Touch” (listed below).”