Mowat is a contemporary writer of fiction and non-fiction about Canada and the north, covering natural science, Eskimos, archeology and autobiography.

He also writes authoritatively about the sea. This book has salt on every page. It is the story of the conversion of a rusty British WWI seagoing tug into the "Foundation Franklin," a seagoing salvage vessel, working out of Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. There was a real Franklin salvage company on which this very realistic novel is based.

Those who have sailed on weather patrol or to Greenland, or to other stormy seas, will relish the salt spray and dangerous hawser-passing and towing. You will experience the bitter along with the triumphs as the crew is frustrated by losing the tow or arriving too late at the job, thus throwing the expense of the attempt into the foam.

A splendid book!

Incidentally, one of Mowat's autobiographical books, "The Dog Who Wouldn't Be," is about the funniest book I have ever read. ISBN 0-553-27928-9.


The unsinkable Foundation Franklin   December 22, 2001
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

The ocean-going salvage tug, yFoundation Frankliny was more than a match for the worst the North Atlantic could throw at her, including Force 10 gales and Nazi U-Boats. Perfect Storm, eat your heart out! Here is the real book about the great-hearted men and their staunch little ships that survived blow after blow from the Atlantic and bobbed up for more.

If the author, Farley Mowat is sometimes guilty of over-the-top prose---well, he lived and worked on the Franklin, and he loved her sturdy lines, her jaunty roll, and every rivet that held her together while she rescued ships that were Goliaths to her chubby, little Baby Huey. No work could have been more dangerous; none required a higher degree of seamanship and courage than dropping a line on a berserk, lunging, steel-hulled freighter, and then towing her through the maw of a mid-December gale, or the shoals and ysunkersy of the Newfoundland coast---something the Franklin did so many times that her crew lost memory of all but their most freakish or man-killing expeditions.

yGrey Seas Undery will give you an interesting perspective on the true maritime heroes of World War II. Farley Mowat doesnyt pull any punches when he describes the tension that existed between the expert seamen on the ocean-going salvage and rescue tugs, and their relatively yamateury counterparts on Canadian and American naval warships. Some of the funniest scenes in the book involve convoys of merchant ships under the yprotectiony of corvettes and destroyers. Once a U-Boat had been sighted and the merchants steamed for cover, it was up to the Franklin to rescue the ones that ran into each other or shoaled themselves. Usually, the tug had to perform her duties without any cover from the warships.

yThe days the salvors (tugboat seamen) spent tethered to fat and crippled merchantmen, crawling along on a straight course at a speed of two or three knots like mechanical targets in a shooting gallery, were the kind of days that would drain the courage from the most heroic man aliveyThe Germans knew, that for every rescue vessel sunk there would be a score of crippled merchantmen who would never make safe port.y

This is a great book about men against the sea, even though the language gets very nautical at times. Read it and you will learn all about Lloydys Open Form, and the tricks that wrecked merchant masters play to cheat tugs out of their salvage fees. Youyll learn to tell the difference between yMonkey Islandy and the poop deck---and the difference between ybrass monkeysy and true seamen. Youyll thrill to the dangers of sunkers, beam seas, and Arctic white-outs. Youyll bite through your pipe-stem, just like the Franklinys captain did during those tows when his sturdy little tug steamed back into port with barely enough coal in her bunkers to ycook a pot of beans.y

Someone ought to make a movie out of yGrey Seas Under.y Itys got everything---romance (between man and ship, at least); life-and-death adventures; heroism; humor; and the treacherous ice, wind, and sea of what the author respectfully refers to as ythe Great Western Ocean.y