Shipwreck

THE TALE OF A SHIPWRECK--James Norman Hall--Nought on Mifflin ($2.50).

Mostly because he had decided that the Western World was too much with him, but partly because in 1916 he picked up a certain book in a Paris bookshop, James Norman Hall went to Tahiti at the age of 33 to spend the rest of his life. That was in 1920. He is still there, still interested in Sir John Barrow's The Mutiny of the Bounty. Thousands of U. S. readers who never heard of Sir John Barrow have pored over Nordhoff & Hall's rewriting of the story (Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea), are looking forward to their final instalment on the fate of the mutineers who settled Pitcairn Island.

In their 14 years in Tahiti, Nordhoff & Hall had been over all the ground and much of the sea once traveled by the Bounty's crew, had long intended to take a trip to lonely Pitcairn Island, the Bounty's last port of call. But when chance offered, something always turned up to prevent their going. Last summer, when he heard of a schooner which was to touch there, Hall decided to go even though Nordhoff could not accompany him. The Tale of a Shipwreck, a quiet, rambling narrative that tells not only of his voyage and shipwreck but of how and why he came to go to the South Seas in the first place, is a book that will be wanted by all amateurs of the sea and sea-narratives.

The little schooner Pro Patria made the long run to Pitcairn Island (1200 miles) without incident. Hall had two days on the island, talked to the descendants of the mutineers, prowled the storied spots to his heart's content. Though it was near hurricane season he looked forward to as peaceful a passage home, with plenty of leisure to read the MED-to-MUM volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica he had brought with him to while away the time. But about 3 a. m. one night of dirty weather they struck the reef of Timoe. Luckily the schooner wedged herself on the coral; they were able to launch a boat, get everyone safely ashore. Next day when the sea went down they salvaged most of their stores. Hall, tempted by Timoe's isolation to make a long-planned "experiment in solitude," thought of staying there six months, then thought better of it, went with the first boatload to Mangareva, thence home to Tahiti. His notes on Pitcairn Island, his shipwrecked volume of the Encyclopedia, went with him.

The Author. James Norman Hall, native of Iowa, enlisted in Kitchener's First Hundred Thousand at the outbreak of the War, went to France in 1915 as a machine-gunner. Transferred to the Lafayette Escadrille in 1917. Hall met there Charles Nordhoff of Philadelphia, Mexico and California, discovered a mutual enthusiasm for the history of H. M. S. Bounty. Shot down behind the German lines in the spring of 1918, Hall spent the last months of the War as a prisoner. After the Armistice he collaborated with Nordhoff on a history of the Lafayette Escadrille. Both were tired of the U. S., went to look for peace & quiet in the South Seas, spent a year visiting various islands, finally decided on Tahiti, where they settled permanently, married native women. Since then they have had between them six children, a dozen books, four of them collaborations.

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