THE PITILESS SEA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 26, 22 December 1939, Page 23

THE PITILESS SEA

ENDLESS VOYAGE. By Nils Fredriow son. Harrap. London. 275 pages. 8/6 net. While in his ‘teens, Nils Fredricson left his "clean little homeland," Sweden, to embark on what was to prove an "endless voyage." When he left Malmo, his young head did not think of hardship or peril, but of happy home-coming with a fortune made. Disililusionment came later, gradually and sickeningly; then, one day, he knew that he could never be other than a sailor. His book, fascinating to any lover of adventure and action, but sordid and drab as the author mirrors the misery of fo’c’sle life, is the story of a man who feels and can think for himself, and who realises therefore the full tragedy of being fated to remain forever a sailor. He has filled his narratives with pore traits of the men among whom he has worked; the sailors who are almost a separate race among the rest of mankind, living out their lives in smelly, foul quarters on ocean-battered ships; drenched by flying spray, in danger from crashing waves, or sweating at work in tropical waters. The sailor's world is a small one, as Fredricson draws it; it is a world of salt water and bad meals, and occasional terrific drinking bouts and visits to dives when the vessel reaches a port. Sailors are always "going home"; but somehow, they never do. As for Fredricson’s personal experiences, they are vivid and varied enough, He was beaten up and nearly murdered by a drunken fireman at a Spanish port, attempted suicide in the Bay of Biscay, escaped from cut-throats at Ostend, and from a bull in a Spanish arena, was shipwrecked off the Dutch coast, went through a Brazilian revolution, fought with Italian gangsters in New York, was nearly gassed in the hold of an oiltanker, and lived through countless storms and gales in the dangerous waters of the North Sea and Atlantic. He is, however, a man of perception and some literary skill, and_his_ brief moments of happiness, such as the interlude ashore in Brazil, stand out brilliantly. "Endless Voyage" was written in English by Fredricson himself, who has an excellent command of the language, He has always wanted to be an artist, and the book has, as frontispiece, a selfportrait