THE "CAINE" MUTINY. HERMAN WOUK. IN SOUTH AFRICA

 Jonathan Cape, 1952, 6th impression. Pages yellowing, owner name on ffep. DJ has 4 small clippings, but original price still shown as 15s. net.  If only books cost that today! The classic book of war at sea and the impact on the ordinary people caught up in it. 494 pp.   This is a work of fiction in the historical setting of World War II. It contains errors of fact. Times and places of specific circumstances in actual military operations, names and missions of ships, and naval communication procedures have been distorted either to suit the story or to avoid inadvertent recounting of still-secret information. All the persons and events aboard the Caine are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. No ship named U.S.S. Caine exists or existed. The records of thirty years show no instance of a court martial resulting from the relief of a captain at see under Articles 184, 185 and 186 of the U.S. Naval Regulations. The fictitious figure of the deposed captain was contrived from a study of psychoneurotic case histories to motivate the central situation and is not a portrait of a real military person or a type. This statement is made in view of an existing tendency to seek lampoons of living people in fiction. The author served under two captains of the regular Navy in three years aboard destroyer-minesweepers, both of whom were decorated for valour. One comment on style: The general obscenity and blasphemy of shipboard talk have gone almost wholly unrecorded. This good-humoured Billingsgate is largely monotonous and not significant, mere verbal punctuation of a sort and its appearance in print annoys some readers. The traces that remain are necessary where occurring.