O'Connor, Patrick Across the Western: A Novel

Well-written merchant convoy tale set aboard the decrepit tramp steamer S.S. FAIRWARP, a 4,000 ton vessel with engines given to breakdowns in mid-Atlantic. The narrator is a young Mess-Room Steward slyly named by author Patrick O’Connor as “Pat” O’Connor. The book reads as authentic, with O’Connor-the-author and O’Connor-the-Steward capturing the flavor of wartime convoy duty. Included in the novel are flashbacks to O’Connor’s earlier wartime sea service aboard a variety of other vessels. A curious book-within-the-book entitled “The Call of the Sea” imagined by “Pat” O’Connor (though supposedly authored by a “Jack” O’Connor!) occupies many pages midpoint in the narrative. The FAIRWARP meets her end on her return voyage to England while taking on a German pocket battleship. While “Pat” O’Connor survives the ordeal, he suffers from shock and amnesia and, after recuperation back in Canada, is repatriated back to England – aboard the United States Lines’ liner-converted-to-troopship GEORGE WASHINGTON – as a Distressed British Seaman.