Storm, Hans Otto Made in U.S.A.

Storm’s sardonic tale involves an old cargo-boat (the fictitious INDIA) which, after hurriedly being tarted up by her avaricious owners and converted into an ocean liner, goes aground on an uncharted South Seas mud-bank during an around-the-world cruise. After three days and nights stranded, morale breaks down and disenchanted members the crew – joined by many bored passengers – stage a rather ridiculous mutiny-cum-revolution which accomplishes nothing and indeed very nearly sinks the vessel. At the last minute a violent storm lifts the INDIA off her mid-ocean perch and her cruise resumes. There are really no real heroes in Storm’s tale, though in a bow to the general concerns of the 1930s he does issue scathing remarks about the INDIA’s owners (a New York bank). On the topic of the shipping industry in general his one semi-hero (the ship’s navigator) observed that “the shipping business [is] a sump of shoddiness, dishonesty and racketeering ... the traditions of the sea [do] not hold water” and that “every doorknob on a modern ship was formed to advertise the most screaming inequalities.” The INDIA’s passengers fare no better under Storm’s cynical eye, nor do the vessel’s officers and crew. Indeed, he has created a veritable ship of fools, puttering around in tedium and silliness while the rest of the world is erupting into violence (various characters allude to the ongoing Japanese hostilities in China as well as to the recently concluded Spanish Civil War). Later (1941) published in Great Britain under the Title Three Days Reckoning.