Brian CallisonRezensionen

Callison is an author I didn't know, his writing style is closely resembling that of Alistair McLean, an author I loved. Peter Ross, the I in the book, could be one of McLean's leads.
I liked it, never read something about the salvage business. It was exciting and had an ending that I didn't expect.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/a-ship-is-dying-by-brian-callison/

I had read this when I was 19 and living in Germany, and was moved to search it out again a few years ago – but then did not get around to reading it; it was the non-genre fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. It’s a vivid and succinct account of the sinking of a cargo ship in a storm on the North Sea, as the result of a collision with an uncrewed barge. The writer takes us inside the heads of many of the crew as catastrophe hits them hard and swiftly. I remembered several of the most striking images very clearly from thirty-five years ago. No women, of course, and a rather dodgy portrayal of the one Chinese crewman (though that is somewhat subverted at the end). But the big picture is very memorably done.

Peter Ross, Captain of the salvage tug, Tactician, currently in the Mediterranean Sea receives a plea for help from a freighter. As he approaches the ship, he sees it attempt to ram him then proceed to ground itself on rocks close to shore. He then sees the crew take to the lifeboats into a storm tossed sea where he sees boats overturn and the seamen drown before his eyes.

When he attempts to salvage the freighter from the rocks, he discovers some of the freighter's crew are still aboard and they seem to have a different agenda that appears to be they do not want the vessel saved. As some of his crew are killed and injured in suspicions accidents, he knows that there is some reason people do not want this ship saved. His challenge is to find out what before he loses his life and tug.

A very scarie book - well for those of us who have to take an overnight ferry to get anywhere.
The language is almost analytical in its detail and the countdown to the end is vry effective in building up some suspence - yet he also manages to have very personal vinigrets of both the passangers and the staff who are part of the story.
The characters that he creates are very effective, I can think of a few people who fit into the catagories that he descriobes.

I would reccomend thisd book for anyone who has worked at sea - but nopt for those of us who are poor passangers

Amazing story of a ship found on an uninhabited island 25 years after the incident, and the captain reading the story which had been written by the survivor. Taut, exciting, gripping. First read it about 35 years ago and always remembered it as an excellent read. Second time around it did not disappoint!

Lt. Brevet Cable, RN--hero of Callison's earlier A Plague of Sailors--returns here in a more conventional naval thriller in which he tries to defuse an international incident on the high seas. The plot is less compelling, and Cable less amusing, this time, but Callison tells the story in workmanlike fashion. For the record, I prefer the UK title (A Frenzy of Merchantmen) to the US title (An Act of War).

Funny lines are fairly common in thrillers, but novels that are both thrilling and comic are few and far between. This is one of the rare examples of that difficult balancing act. Miller, an amiable but conventional naval officer, finds himself assigned to the most disreputable tramp steamer in WWII Malta, as part of a Royal Navy scheme to confound the Germans. The crew, he quickly discovers, is of a piece with the ship: the bos'un is nearly blind, the mate is a borderline psychopath, and the captain seems to have stepped out of a pirate movie. Callison deploys these cartoonish characters to great comic effect, all the while keeping a respectable thriller plot chugging along.