First published in 1946, this atmospheric memoir of the Battle of the Atlantic offers one of the most original accounts of war at sea aboard a corvette, escorting convoys in both the North and South Atlantic. The author, an RNVR lieutenant, experienced the terrors of U-boat attacks and the hardships of icy gale-force winds contrasted with the relief of shore runs in ports as far apart as Halifax and Freetown.

The narrative begins with Harling’s voyage from the Clyde to New York on the Queen Mary (or QM, as she was known during her martial career), on route to join a newly-built corvette in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was to be her First Lieutenant, and his service at sea started in the spring of 1941, just as the Battle of the Atlantic was entering its most crucial stage. During the first east-bound convoy he was to experience attacks by U-boats, the loss of merchant vessels and a steep learning curve as the ship’s crew struggled to live in the harsh wartime conditions. Later that summer they made return voyages to Iceland where runs ashore offered some solace from dangerous days at sea. Time was also spent in the South Atlantic with voyages to Freetown and Lagos, before a short interlude when he experienced the excitement of fighting with Coastal Forces. The corvette subsequently returned to escorting convoys from Halifax to Europe.

Harling’s narrative is both serious and humorous, and his picture of wartime Britain, his descriptions of being buffeted by great storm-tossed seas in the ‘cockleshell corvettes’, and the recounting of grim losses are all too real and authentic. His story ends as he leaves his ship after a violent cold developed into pneumonia, and soon afterwards he hears the shattering news of her loss by torpedo, along with the captain and half the crew. He is left to ponder on the many tombless dead consigned by the war to the Steep Atlantick Stream.

Robert Harling was a key figure in twentieth-century graphic design, editor before the war of Typography and later House & Garden, which he edited between 1957 until his retirement in 1993, and typographic advisor to the Sunday Times for almost forty years. At the start of the war, and being a keen sailor, Harling joined the RNVR and took part in the Dunkirk evacuation, before serving on Atlantic convoy duty. His close friend Ian Fleming later recruited him to 30AU, known as ‘Fleming’s Commandos,’ where he spent the rest of the war operating in naval intelligence and on the front line. He is the author of eighteen books, including half a dozen novels, books on typography, architecture and artists such as Eric Ravilious and Eric Gill, and a memoir of his friendship with Ian Fleming. He died in 2008.