Brian Callison: A ship is dying

Within fourteen minutes the fatally-stricken cargo vessel ‘Lycomedes’ will plunge forever beneath the storm-shredded waters of the winter North Sea with fifty-four men, a limpid-eyed dog and a foul-beaked parrot aboard.

Into that agonizingly brief span is packed a lifetime of turbulence and tragedy, of cowardice and courage, of pathos and humour and the dawning acceptance of coming death: even, incredibly, of moments of boredom and moments of exultation. You meet her crew for only a tiny fragment of their mortal lives, yet under the remorselessly escalating stresses of disaster you grow to know them intimately: to understand, and to feel for them in their peril.

With experience and authority, Callison, himself a former Merchant Navy officer, vividly portrays the onset of catastrophe in such a way that you, the reader, will live though every instant while ‘Lycomedes’ tears herself apart beneath your feet. ‘A Ship is Dying’ is as stirring, as poignant, as overwhelming a sea story as has ever been recounted.