Morrill, George P. Dark Sea Running

An outstanding World War 2 novel which reads initially like a seagoing version of “Our Town” before descending, in its latter chapters, into a nautical version of the lower levels of Dante’s “Inferno.” The work is set aboard the fictitious T2 tanker AUBURN RIDGE, initially focusing on her trans-Atlantic convoy work when she was engaged in “the great oil armadas to England.” This is followed by Mediterranean convoy duty and, as the War winds down, service in the Pacific. Morrill tells his story in a n engrossing documentary style through a series of short, first-person narratives from the perspectives of nearly all of the tanker’s 75+ contingent of merchant seamen and Navy gunners. His focus throughout, though, remains on the AUBURN RIDGE’s decent, humane Captain Clyde Falk, whose innate goodness of heart makes the vessel a “happy ship” despite her fearful wartime activities. Falk’s break with his own true character– brought on by the grisly news that his only son had been executed in a particularly gruesome manner by Japanese troops – charges and changes the ship and her company. The AUBURN RIDGE and her men, under Captain Falk, soon find themselves in a terrible moral crisis which results in a terrible act of vengeance wrought upon a recently-surrendered Japanese submarine and her crew. The novel’s powerful climax is unsettling, yet psychologically understandable. Morrill’s examination of the power – for good or ill – of command makes his novel as thought-provoking today as in 1959 when it was first published.