The summary on the back cover reads:

One vital convoy can break Mussolini's stranglehold on Malta - but it is intercepted in the Mediterranean by enemy warships...

Five British light cruisers are left to beat back the armed might of the Italian battle fleet, and C.S.Forester - creator of Horatio Hornblower - takes us aboard HMS Artemis as she steams into battle against overwhelming odds. We get inside the heads of Artemis's men, from the captain on his bridge down to the lowest engine-room rating, as they struggle over one long and terrifying afternoon to do their duty.

I've read the Hornblower series several times and always been gripped by Forester's writing, so when I saw this I just couldn't resist. The Ship was written in 1943, at the height of the Second World War, when Forester was working for the Ministry of Information, and the book is clearly part of the wartime propaganda machine. It describes how the chain of command in the ship works during a battle at sea, and it is interesting from that point of view, but it lacks the excitement of Hornblower.

RELEASE NOTES:

I saw it picked up immediately by the next customer. I hope he makes an entry...

Picked it up while waiting for a haircut. It was left by someone else who was ahead of me. You said to "enjoy the book." And I did. Read it on a business trip to Madrid. I'd never heard of the author, but it was a quite good evocation of modern sea battle. Since I'd been in the US Navy, it was a great find for me; as an American living in Leiden, I'm always happy to stumble across cheap books in English. Since I work on spacecraft, it was good to see someone try to describe for a general audience how any modern, complicated thing is made to work. Leaving the propoganda aside, I liked it. I'll try to leave it at a nearby hotel or someplace similar.

RELEASE NOTES:

Taken with me from Hotel the Doelen for my husband but he has other priorities. To be released at OBCZ Schlemmer at The Hague.

RELEASE NOTES:

OBCZ boekenplankjes

So it's there now, waiting for a reader...

Meegenomen ivm opheffing van OBCZ Schlemmer.

Zag dit boek staan in de Little Free Library Theresiastraat/De Moucheronstraat. Niet meegenomen want ik heb nog genoeg te lezen, maar wil hem wel even loggen ;)