Technically this is a novel, but since it is almost entirely in dialogue it has more the feel of a film soundtrack or playscript. The background is generically the Caribbean, and in one of those ports full of rotting fish, the reek of creosote, papayas and rum, nine men board an old schooner which has lost its masts and canvas and is now engine-powered. In the dangerous, inhospitable area of the Tortugas and the Cayman Islands, disaster - not unexpected - comes and they run on a reef. Matthiessen knows this region well, and the almost pidgin language that these sea-drifters talk, so there is an authenticity about both the characters and the setting which compensates for a certain narrative monotony. (I suspect also some reminiscences of Moby-Dick, and of the Pequod and its doomed crew sailing fatalistically to their destruction.)
B.F.