Sara Allerton’s debut novel is an impressive and affecting war story – based around and inspired by the real experiences of young merchant seaman Brian Clarke during the Second World War, but with Allerton putting those events in to an original fictional framework which place this firmly in the domain of the novel. The story is that Clarke wrote his memoirs but, as must often be the way, was unable to make the distinction between the remarkable and the mundane; by allowing a novelist to tell his story, freed from the strictures of reportage, the entire story is considerably elevated to the realms of the truly memorable.

The hero of Making Shore, Brian ‘Cubby’ Clarke, is a young wireless operator assigned to the aging tramp steamer SS Sithonia for a voyage to South America. Wireless operators were employees of the Marconi Company, not permanent crew members, and were thus assigned to many different vessels – and on this one, his fellow operator Joe Green, larger than life, is to become his dearest friend, as close as a brother.

When the Sithonia is torpedoed, somewhere off the African coast, the survivors find themselves in a rickety lifeboat with insufficient water and provisions. The effects of the sweltering sun, the inadvisable decision by some crew members to experiment with drinking seawater and the passage of time at sea take their toll on the crew, and Joe and Cub’s survival skills are tested to the limit. It is only a flash of inspiration from Cubby that enables the survivors to last long enough to make landfall – but they are emaciated, malnourished, shadows of their former selves, and not all of their shipmates make it to the shore. Once there, their travails are not over: survival, even aided by the natives, is a challenge, and then they pass in to the captivity of the Vichy French regime, technically an ally of the Nazis.

The bookending of Cubby Clarke’s wartime experiences with his reluctant encounters with the fiancée of Joe Green is both effective and affecting as a means of giving significance to the narrative, compelling though that story may be in its own right: it gives Clarke a reason to rake over painful memories and justifies the tale, as well as imparting considerable extra emotional punch to the story. Written with poetry and lyricism, but with the feeling of authenticity added by the real-life Brian Clarke’s involvement, this is an impressive and enjoyable debut novel, and a reminder, if one were needed, that behind the bald statistics of Allied shipping losses during the Second World War lie the stories of many, many thousands of brave merchant seamen. This novel is a fitting testament to their sacrifice.

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