Jessup, Richard A Novel of the Sea

Twenty five years (1919-1943) in the life of an American mariner, Savannah native Howard Cadiz, as he moves from being a green boy of fourteen on his first voyage to service as captain of a World War 2 merchant vessel. Jessup’s writing is clean and interesting when he writes of a seafaring life in the 20th Century, less so when he tries to psychoanalyze the cold, entire self-absorbed Cadiz. The novel is particularly credible in describing the shipping depression of the 1930s when Cadiz returns to Savannah and spends many years “on the beach” rum running. Jessup’s own seafaring background is evident in the wealth of detail found in the sections of the novel taking place during the late 1930s and early War years. One long section, for example, set in 1939 describes a run in with arrogant Nazi seamen off a German liner in New York City reminiscent of Irwin Shaw’s “Sailor Off the BREMEN” and William Townend’s And Now England (see below). The novel’s real climax occurs during an Atlantic gale somewhere off Greenland when Cadiz’s ship, lost from her convoy, plays an ultimately unsuccessful game of cat-and-mouse with a German U-boat. Here Jessup’s taut, often brutal writing conjures up a desolate, terrifying vision of hell: the Second World War.