Grey Seas Under

If you enjoy the Jack Aubrey novels as much as I do, you'll doubless be taken by this more modern sea story.Mowat is a contemporary writer of fiction and non-fiction about Canada and the north, covering natural science, Eskimos, archeology and autobiography.He also writes authoritatively about the sea. This book has salt on every page. It is the story of the conversion of a rusty British WWI seagoing tug into the "Foundation Franklin," a seagoing salvage vessel, working out of Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. There was a real Franklin salvage company on which this very realistic novel is based.Those who have sailed on weather patrol or to Greenland, or to other stormy seas, will relish the salt spray and dangerous hawser-passing and towing. You will experience the bitter along with the triumphs as the crew is frustrated by losing the tow or arriving too late at the job, thus throwing the expense of the attempt into the foam.A splendid book!Incidentally, one of Mowat's autobiographical books, "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be," is about the funniest book I have ever read. ISBN 0-553-27928-9.

I've just finished this work and give it five stars because it is a tale well told, with skill and fire. The book first provides a sound and interesting introduction to salvage law and operations -- I had thought the title alluded to lifesaving missions as the primary mission of the salvage tug. Instead, saving sailors was strictly secondary to saving cargo and vessels, although the little tug actually saved more lives than government vessels whose primary mission was lifesaving. Mr Mowat then describes how a small rescue tug and its crew made dozens of successful and intensely difficult rescues of vessels in distress. These rescues were carried out using determination and cunning, and a synergy between a well-designed boat and its crew, rather than computers and satellite navigation, and they demanded an intense courage and fortitude which may seem unimaginable in our softer and more pleasant technological age. We are the richer for Mr Mowat's story, because it gives us an insight into another era, before technology had improved our abilities but lessened our involvement and committment. My only real problem with the book was that Mr Mowat never discussed the important role played by those who maintained this vessel, even though he describes how a lack of maintenance and care almost destroyed the vessel as it passed into obsolescence during its final voyage.

This book is an unexpectedly riveting episode-by-episode story of the Foundation Franklin, a marine salvage tug that sailed out of the ports of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the 1930s and '40s. This working ship, built in Scotland in 1916 to craftsman's standards, eventually found itself unused in a Hamburg shipyard in depression-strapped 1930 where it was identified as a possible vessel for the Canadian maritime salvage fleet. From that day to its final heart-stopping drama, the trials of this unprepossessing high seas coal-fired tugboat are recounted in all their adrenalin-filled reality in Mowat's gripping and evocative prose. Managed by callous profit-seekers, officered by experience-hardened seamen and crewed by men desperate for employment, Foundation Franklin's story is, as well, a slice of social and commercial history. The mood is workaday danger, fortitude, struggle and courage, marred by a single passing dismissive remark about "union mechanics".

This is probably my all-time favorite book. A wonderful tale (mostly true) of rugged individualism and team work, of skill learned the hard way, of loyalty. I especially enjoyed the incidents of the little tug vs officialdom! Last time I bought it, I ordered 10 copies to give to friends. I hope Bantam reprints it soon - I'm ready to by at least 10 more!

This is my favorite book. I felt as thought I had been there, spellbound. For the flavor of life and work on the sea, this book is unsurpassed.