Description: A first novel of extraordinary depth, high drama and tragedy, Stowaway is both an exciting sea story and a moral fable in the Melville tradition. The cargo ship Liberty Belle, one of the oldest of the Liberty ships, has made a gallant record during the war. This thin and flaking hulk, so outrageously right for all the wrong reasons, has been left by the Armistice disabled and without a mission.Under an ailing and remote captain and a chief mate of heroic will and driving perfectionism, the orphan ship wanders through the Mediterranean with only half a cargo. Unused and unwanted, she beats from port to port - from Alexandria to Said - while her crew degenerates.On board are such disparate men as Sayles, the second mate, a dry, leathery Alabaman to whom luck invariably means adversity; Armitt, the unspeakable steward who makes a shrewd business of human appetites; and Costello, the chief engineer, running his out-dated engine room like an elegant overlord, a king ruling a tight little empire. With the seven seas to cruise, these men have no port of call, no point of reference. Instead of the joy that might be expected in such illimitable freedom, they feel they are drowning in it, experiencing an increasing premonition of looseness. Losing their sense of common cause and condition, the crew is stealthily cut adrift from coherence.Finally the Liberty Belle is ordered to the Indian Ocean. With the captain sick and confined to his cabin and the chief mate drinking heavily, galled that he has the load of master without the authority, the crew is demoralized and completely without restraint. Wallowing in the Indian Ocean, total anarchy takes over the ship.In Stowaway, Lawrence Sargent Hall poses the deepest problems of collective fate and individual will - men in acts of heroism and men in the pit of despair and degeneration. Hall knows the sea in all its moods, from the terrible midnight storms of West Africa to the deadly calm of the Indian Ocean. The momentum of his story never slackens as he writes magnificently of men united against the sea and divided against each other. Free shipping with USPS Media Mail in USA.
Price: 50 USD
Location: New York, New York
End Time: 2025-01-05T12:19:37.000Z
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Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Author: Lawrence Sargent Hall
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Year Printed: 1961
