Maule, Hamilton Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Novel

Though touted on its dust jacket as “an outrageously comic novel,” Maule’s maiden voyage as a sea writer is labored at best. Set aboard the fictitious Liberty ship ANDREW CRICHTON – supposedly a Waterman Steamship Company vessel – during a ninety day round-trip voyage from New Orleans to New York and across the North Atlantic in convoy to Liverpool. Of the CRICHTON Maule notes: “Like all Liberties she was named after a merchant seaman who had been killed in action. Later Nick [Maule’s alter ego / hero] found out that Andrew Crichton , for whom this Liberty was named, had sold his papers to his brother-in-law and spent the war on a chicken farm in South Texas.” Maule’s heroes are a group of ordinary merchant seamen, and in a sense, his broader theme is the comradeship between them. Of chief interest today are his descriptions of shore leave in wartime New Orleans, New York and Liverpool – with emphasis on the various “B-girls” the group encounters. Maule’s convoy descriptions are also of interest, particularly the CRICHTON’s westbound trip when her convoy was pursued all the way across the Atlantic by a Nazi wolf pack of 15-30 U-boats.