Naval Warfare Books

Book reviews

A Flock of Ships

Callison, Brian


1970, Collins, London
ISBN 0002212560
256 pages

Type. Novel
Rating.

This novel combines mystery with action and suspense. A quarter of a century after the end of World War II, on a deserted South Atlantic island supposedly unvisited for fifty years, a naval survey vessel finds the wrecks of a cargo liner that had been burned, a U-boat that had been rammed, and a British armed freighter in relatively good condition. How did they get there? How did they perish? The mystery is all the deeper because the freighter was recorded as having been sunk several hundred miles from that position.

Investigations on board the freighter turn up a diary. Through this log, which constitutes the bulk of the book and which was written by the last survivor of the incident, we learn the story of how the three vessels came together and how they met their end. This is a dramatically-told, often chilling wartime story of trickery from without and treachery from within.

Review written by Tonya Allen.

Published on 1 Dec 2000.

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