Just Finished Reading: Thunder at Dawn by Alan Evans (FP: 1978) [254pp]

The Pacific West Coast, 1917. Sent as far away as possible to avoid embarrassment to the Admiralty after his report from Jutland, Commander David Cochrane Smith is made second-in-command of the obsolete cruiser HMS Thunder. As the only British naval force in the region it is her responsibility to keep allied shipping safe. Crewed by cadets, reservists and ex-merchant marine sailors nothing much is expected of the ship and everyone knows it including her captain who is barely civil to his new 2^nd officer. But when a freak accident puts Smith in command he begins the process of making Thunder into a fighting ship of war again – despite its many failings. On hearing the rumour that two German cruisers are expected in the region in the next few weeks he becomes immediately suspicious of a pair of ‘neutral’ coal ships conveniently incapacitated along the coast. Causing an international incident by sinking one of them in harbour he leaves port in pursuit of the other ship. Meanwhile the rumour has turned out to be true. Two modern German cruisers are on their way. Individually they outgun the Thunder and both are more heavily armoured and faster than the British ship. If they can sink HMS Thunder it will be months before a strong enough force can arrive to defeat them. In the interim all allied shipping in the zone will have been destroyed. Thunder cannot run and she cannot hide, nor can she fight and hope to win against such odds. There is only one thing left for Smith to do – to disable both enemy ships enough to neutralise their presence before relief arrives. But in order to do that he needs to engage vastly superior forces – no matter the cost to his ship or his crew.

I’ve been acquiring this authors books for a while now so it was good to finally read one of them. The 1970’s seems to have been the time when many of this type of book reached publication. Told in a racy style this was the tale of an officer who believes he has been side-lined because of his criticism of the way the war is being fought and who is determined to show what he is capable of. The British navy certainly had a significant number of obsolete craft in the early years of the First World War. HMS Thunder was, I think at least from the description in the book and the painting on the cover, a Crecy class armoured cruiser (pictured below). They were indeed obsolete in 1914 and would have been even more so 3 years later. As far as I know no Crecy class ships operated in the Pacific so HMS Thunder is completely fictional. Interestingly this class of ship was indeed manned by cadets and reservists and were even known within naval circles as ‘live bait’. It is unsurprising that around half of the class was lost in action during the opening months of the conflict.

All of this, naturally, makes the novel all that more interesting (to me anyway!) and the authors research all that more impressive. Whilst most of the book centred on Smith getting the ship into fighting trim and outwitting German agents (and getting to know the attractive British one!) by far the best part of the book was in the second half where the inevitable sea battle took place. As you might expect it wasn’t a standard slug fest of warships knocking seven bells out of each other. Not only was it a superb example of a fictionalised naval engagement which had me on the edge of my seat throughout, it was also both extremely realistic and extremely clever. I can still smell the burning oil, the cordite and the salt air and see the fall of shot as falling shells bracket the enemy ships! An excellent and exciting read. Definitely recommended for all fans of naval warfare and more to come both from Commander Smith and this author.