REVIEW: THE MAN IN THE YELLOW RAFT

By C.S. Forester

Better known for his Horatio Hornblower tales, Forester also wrote this series of short stories about the US destroyer Boon set in the Pacific during WWII. Forester is an odd sort of adventure writer, he always seems more at home with the unassuming fellow who does his duty quietly in a very decent, English sort of way. I am particularly fascinated by Forester’s attention to the role of supply and the men who get supplies where they need to be. It’s a subject close to me, for my mother served as a supply clerk in the WAVES in 1944-45 and later worked as a civilian employee of the navy in the supply department.

Quite frankly supply departments are not terribly dramatic. Supply issues get rather more interesting when they involve unloading thousands of gallons of gasoline while being bombed by the Japanese. But that is really Forester’s drawback. While he’s excellent at depicting the quiet, unassuming fellows, who keep the machine running even in the midst of disaster, one seeks in vain for a sense that sometimes things just won’t work. I occasionally found myself yearning for a character to snap under pressure. Or a hint that landing the gasoline is not enough. That war is about pointless death and waste. But that is antithetical to the style of heroism Forester strives to depict, the quiet, unassuming execution of the plan, until the job is done. It’s not a bad sort of heroism, I think a lot of people got through the war that way. God bless ‘em.

-Dave Hardy

THE SKY AND THE FOREST
By C.S. Forester

Once everything was right with the world, everyone knew their place, and there was broad agreement about how things should be. People had their problems for sure, but they were nothing unusual, they just come with the territory. Then some outsiders show up and turn it all upside down. White is black and black is white. The secure is filled with danger and only the unknown offers hope. Some days are like that.

The Sky and the Forest is about one of those days and the events that follow it. Loa is the chief of a remote village in central Africa. He is a god to his people, he has the power of life and death over them. Any woman he pleases may be his bride, though Musini has the privilege of being the mother of Loa’s son, Lanu. His people are cheerful cannibals who eat anyone unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. Then one day his village is attacked by Arab slave raiders. Loa is forcefully thrust into a new world full of pain and degradation. His escape and trek home provide him with insight into the world at large. The new life he builds for his people is living on borrowed time. The era of European colonization has begun and Loa’s people will see the world change yet again.

Forester makes a scathing indictment of colonialism and a defense, of sorts, of tribal, pre-modern life. As brutal as Loa’s people can be, they are pretty much angels compared to the Arabs and the Europeans. It is their fate to learn one stage of human conflict only to confront people who have mastered the subsequent levels of ruthless warfare.

The problem, and it is a big one, is that as a reader I just don’t buy Forester’s depiction of the African savages. Maybe I’m not versed enough in African anthropology, but the records of explorers I’ve read suggest that African natives weren’t unduly hostile to travelers. Maybe the Central African jungle really does impose isolation, but I find it hard to swallow that a village near a river had no concept of boats or even fishes. Or that they had no contact with any of their neighbors, except to eat them. Forester is at some pains to point out that Loa is a man unaccustomed to logical thinking, one who never had to use his imagination, and his language is clumsy and lacks the vocabulary to express abstract thought. Nonetheless, this big, deified tard becomes a great leader of men. My guess is that primitive people in remote places use their environment to the fullest. They may not have words for compound interest, jihad, genocide, post-modern inter-textual discourse, or fair and balanced news, but just the same I would bet African languages can express many complex moral and spiritual ideas.

While I am a fan of Forester, The Sky and the Forest was a disappointment. The story line of survival and rescue is a strong one, but undermined by a picture of native Africans I can’t help but see as distorted and untrue. For straight up naïve jungle-adventure I’d recommend Tarzan, for a story of how the world changed overnight in a vast region of the world, read The White Headhunter.

-Dave Hardy

DEATH TO THE FRENCH
By C.S. Forester

No, it’s not about a U.S. Congressman’s heroic stand to liberate the Middle East with Freedom Fries. Instead it’s a wholesome tale of how a foreign fighter joins a group of religious zealots opposing international forces that have come to liberate their country from a backward and repressive regime. It is of course about the high-tide of Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.

If the title seems a bit over the top, don’t blame Walter Jones. In fact this is the British title (big surprise), in America it was called Rifleman Dodd. The titular Dodd is a member of the elite British Rifle Brigade. These men were specialists, trained to be expert marksmen with a rifle. Their skills made them useful as skirmishers and scouts. When Dodd is cut off by an entire French army he joins a band of Portuguese guerillas looking to get revenge against he French for the rapes and murders of innocent civilians. The intimate knowledge of the land coupled with Dodd’s fighting skills make the band a devastating threat to the French.

The story also follows the fortunes of a band of French recruits pitched into the meat-grinder of guerilla war. The increasingly brutalized men find themselves in an almost personal duel with Dodd. The Portuguese countryside becomes a land of terror where men can even credit the supernatural with taking a hand in the bloody warfare.

This is a violent, dark story. It is warfare at its starkest and most merciless. Dodd is something of an unstoppable force, though the price he extracts from his Portuguese comrades is a steep one. It’s a very short novel (a quality I heartily commend) that builds to a climax where the grotesque absurdity of war stands revealed. As a classic tale of Napoleonic warfare originally penned in 1933, it stands up well today. It’s the kind of story we ignore at our peril.

-Dave Hardy

SHIP OF THE LINE
By C.S. Forester

Before there was an Aubrey and Maturin swanning about the seven seas, we had to rely on Horatio Hornblower to keep old Boney at bay across the Channel. It was a tough job, but someone had to do. Lucky for us, we had C.S. Forester to tell us all about it.

Ship of the Line is the sixth of the Hornblower books. Hornblower is a mature man, a post captain of some seniority and considerable experience of war. Hornblower has just received command of the Sutherland, a 74-gun ship of the line. It is the cutting edge of naval warfare technology. With over 30 guns on a side firing shot at 18 pounds and up, it can blast nearly a ton of metal through an enemy vessel. Hornblower is at the helm of a snarling tiger of the sea, ready to rip the frog-eaters a new one.

All he has to do is get a crew, supplies, permission from his superiors to cruise independently, and to find some Frenchies. In many respects Forester was less interested in Hornblower’s battles than his reaction to him. There are plenty of battles in Ship of the Line, but this is foremost a character study. While Hornblower works out his responses to a variety of naval warfare situations: training a crew of landsmen mostly recruited from jails or pressed off the street, protecting a convoy from fast sailing privateers, capturing prizes, collaborating with Spanish guerillas, or using naval gunfire to attack ground troops. All of these eventually build to a climactic ending and an unusual resolution that leads to the seventh Hornblower novel: Flying Colors. While that action is moving briskly along, the reader is inside Hornblower’s head.

In some ways this is the weakness of the story. The reader has such an intimate view of Hornblower (the only point of view character) that we lose sight of how others see him. The lack of any other point of view tends to vitiate the dichotomy of the outside and inside Hornblowers. While Hornblower is to the outside world a taciturn, unflappable sea-god, inside he’s pretty neurotic. Admittedly, it’s a 19th century, British sort of neurotic, but still a little weird. What is one to make of Hornblower’s resolve to never speak a single word more than is absolutely necessary? Or his almost obsessive fear of appearing foolish? It’s as if Forester were playing with the idea that inside the skin of a stone-killer war-hero (and Hornblower is a devil in battle) is a man filled with fears and unresolved contradictions.

While the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian may have eclipsed the Hornblower series to some degree, this is the real stuff. For seventy years, Hornblower has been the gold standard of naval warfare series. May his heart of oak keep beating.

-Dave Hardy

THE DAUGHTER OF THE HAWK

By C.S. Forester

Nowadays the “mash-up” is very fashionable. You take two recognizable things: characters, singers, design elements, songs, what have you; and then you mix them together. The more incongruous the better (a Hello Kitty Darth Vader? Christopher Walken reads Goodnight Moon?). What is less known is that serious artists have pursued the mash-up, witness The Daughter of the Hawk, by C.S. Forester.

The protagonist is an Englishman named Henry Dawkins who is imprisoned in a particularly brutal South American prison. Forester details Dawkins’ background as a lieutenant of “The Hawk”, a rebel leader. The Hawk dies in battle, but first extracts a promise that Dawkins will seek out his daughter in far-away London. All Dawkins has to do is survive a savage prison camp and escape from a remote Pacific island.

Then it gets weird: Dawkins is pretty much a classic pulp action hero, strong, iron willed, speaking little, and acting with ruthless determination when necessary. Be assured this is the story of the Daughter of the Hawk. She happens to be a girl of singular determination herself. Honestly, I thought the possibilities of dropping a pulp hero into London society amid church socials and parent-teacher conferences could make for a very unique story. But Forester was aiming for a more naturalistic effect. The novel faithfully follows the gentle adjustments of a wild adventurer settling into ordinary life. After strangling a man with your bare hands in a battle for your life, picking a governess is a trifle anti-climatic. Still, many readers surfeited with pulp conventions (as many no doubt were when Hawk was first published in 1928) will find the latter part of Hawk to be a gentle diversion.

It’s not entirely without conflict, but it comes from the distaff side. The Hawk’s daughter may not be a killer, but she doesn’t let much get in her way. The novel ends with a jarring coda, which may or may not creep the bejeezuz out of you dear reader. Me I take it all with a grain of salt.

-Dave Hardy

TO THE INDIES

By C.S. Forester

Though he is better known for his tales of Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forester was capable of evoking eras other than the Napoleonic and attitudes other than upper-class England’s. In To the Indies Forester tells the tale of Columbus’ next-to-last voyage to the Indies.

The tale is not told from the point of view of the globe-crossing Admiral of the Ocean Sea, or by one of the nascent conquistadors who accompanied him. Rather Forester follows the fortunes of Narciso Rich, a senior lawyer from Barcelona, who is way too old to be out conquering unknown lands.

Forester lets his story unfold as the wind and tide carry the adventurous Spaniards through their new empire. Rich is the outsider, he’s a gentleman, but not the right sort for the sword swinging lunk-heads who are Spain’s iron fist in the Indies. Columbus explores new lands and Rich experiences the joy and the brutality of contact with unknown cultures.

Forester segues into events on Hispaniola, where revolt by both the Indians and disaffected Spaniards is brewing. As the king’s eyes and ears in the Indies Rich has to make sense of the flood of new experiences while trying to decide who is to blame for the colony’s mismanagement.

Forester evokes the era beautifully. He reminds the reader that 15th century belief was not our own, but does not cram it down the reader’s throat. Forester also shows just why Columbus was the greatest navigator of his age by depicting the discomfort, danger, and uncertainty of 15th century sea-travel. He plays with the scientific notions of the time and neatly depicts the social divisions of Medieval Europe just as it was becoming Modern Europe. While never soft-pedaling the ferocity of the conquistadors, Forester also shows what made those heavily-armed, over-privileged frat boys the men who had the power to re-shape the world: an indomitable belief in their own ability to dare absolutely anything.

To the Indies is a rare work of fiction that tells a story and brings to life vivid characters while being fully engaged in a world radically different than our own. A world in fact, that gave birth to our own.

-Dave Hardy