Royal Navy Raises Caine

H.M.S. ULYSSES (316 pp.)--Alistair MacLean--Doubleday ($3.95).

In a British film called Kind Hearts and Coronets, an admiral went down with his flagship, at full salute, unflinching as the waters closed over his beard. It was, of course, a British spoof of the proud Royal Navy, whose tradition of impenetrable reticence earned it the name "Silent Service." Now that the U.S. has become the world's greatest naval power, a certain relaxation of the stiff upper lip is in order. In overstated understatement, H.M.S. Ulysses is trying to show that the Royal Navy had a royal and rugged time of it in World War II--and that anything the U.S. Navy can do, the Royal Navy can do better. Specifically mutinies.

This is--novelistically--the British reply to The Caine Mutiny. It is a bloodier affair than just getting Queeg off his teetering bridge; some 50 sailors and Royal Marines are wounded, two die in a bloody free-for-all on the decks. The H.M.S. Ulysses is a 5,500-ton light cruiser, "the first completely equipped radar ship in the world," the seeing-eye watchdog of the Murmansk convoy run. Unlike that long-drawn-out, suspenseful business on the Caine, Ulysses' mutiny has already taken place, and this is the story of her glorious "redemption." This being the Royal Navy, the mutiny was a lower-deck affair, and the only officer-villain goes overside. It differs from the Caine mutiny in another merciful respect--the characters never get ashore into the arms of sea-fogged sex.

Ulysses ships up to 500 tons of ice topside; she is under constant threat of submarine wolf packs, is harried by Stukas, Condors and Heinkels snarling out of their Norwegian airfields. The crew is fed nothing but fear, lethal cold, and the slower death of the corned-beef sandwich. On this unhappy ship all is misery; she becomes a debating society, with the crew arguing their orders and the time and manner of their death. From stoker to captain, everyone is infected with what the British call "the Nelson touch," i.e., an inspired disregard for orders. There is heroism, and men die well in these brutal waters, but the admiral cracks up and wanders crazed in his pajamas.

If the Ulysses crew are wooden, they are admiralty specification teak. Author MacLean, a schoolteacher who served five years in the Royal Navy, has brought to his first novel an ear as sharp as sonar. The Liverpool stokers blaspheme authentically, and about the story lies the fascination of precise technical information and service jargon--the grim grammar of war. After 20 months of the terrible Murmansk run, Ulysses is brought to her death at the guns of a hit-and-run German cruiser. Many of those who volunteer to buy the book will wish it could be compulsory reading in Russia. It recalls a cost of Lend-Lease not in dollars or pounds but in unimaginable hardship.

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