His First Ship

His First Ship
This book was first published in 1936. The illustrations were by D.L.Mays.
The principal character in the story is Alan Carr. The ship involved
in the voyage is the Mary Rumbold
Crew of Mary Rumbold
Captain Rendshall
Mate Jim Morrison
Deck hands – Mush Herring, Stone Ginger
Radio Officer Nevison

Alan Carr is too young to be accepted by the Golden Line but
the junior partner of Whatmough and Duvant, Mr. Dexter,
manages to get him a job on the small coastal vessel called
the Mary Rumbold.

Alan begins the voyage in Boston in
Lincolnshire and travels up to Dundee and then on to
Thurso. He experiences sea-sickness, the rescue of the
crew of a yacht off Berwick and the escape of a pig on
the River Tay. He gets arrested by the police in Aberdeen
and succeeds in rescuing his own parents who are on holiday
on the South Coast.

He learns the harsh lessons of life at
sea and Percy F. Westerman makes many adverse comments about
the way in which the British government treats its merchant
seaman. In particular the way in which British trade is taken
from British ships by the Dutch because the Dutch government
subsidises their seamen to undercut the British ones.

On her
last voyage to the breakers’ yard the Mary Rumbold founders
in a gale in the North Sea. Alan conducts himself well during
the time of crisis. The book ends with a letter from Whatmough
and Duvant offering him a cadetship on the Golden Effort.


In a later book in the series Alan Carr in Command the reader
learns that Mate Jim Morrison has been killed by the Germans
and that Captain Rendshall is a distressed mariner who has spent
two years in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp.