Shadow Voyage: The Extraordinary Wartime Escape of the Legendary SS Bremen - Hardcover

Huchthausen, Peter A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471457582 ISBN 13: 9780471457589

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2008

Synopsis

A fast-paced, little-known story of danger at sea on the eve of World War II

On the sweltering evening of August 30, 1939, the German luxury liner S.S. Bremen slipped her moorings on Manhattan's west side, abandoned all caution (including foghorns, radar, and running lights), and sailed out of New York Harbor, commencing a dramatic escape run that would challenge the rules for unrestricted warfare at sea. Written by naval historian Peter Huchthausen, Shadow Voyage tells the epic adventure of the Bremen's extraordinary flight to Germany, which became a life-and-death race with British warships and submarines intent on intercepting her. Revealing new details from naval archives, Huchthausen's riveting narrative captures the great courage and magnanimity of the Royal Navy, the cunning and intricate planning of the Germans, and the tension and ambiguity that preceded the outbreak of World War II.

Captain Peter Huchthausen, U.S. Navy, Retired (Hiram, ME), has had a distinguished career, serving at sea and on land as a Soviet naval analyst and as a naval attach? in Yugoslavia, Romania, and the Soviet Union. He is now a consultant and writer, author of the bestselling Hostile Waters and October Fury (0-471-41534-0).

About this title

Review

* On August 30, 1939, the 52,000-ton Nazi passenger ship Bremen stole out of New York harbor, cleared Sandy Hook, shut out its lights, and veered north toward Greenland, using bad weather as a shield against what would become many pursuers. For the British to gain the Bremen would be a propaganda victory, but, more important, its seizure would also provide the Royal Navy with a much-needed troop transport ship, the eventual use the Kriegsmarine put it to. The Bremen therefore steered an elaborate evasive course that took it far into arctic waters and to Murmansk, Russia, a friendly port by virtue of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. From there it steamed to Germany, evading a British vessel that did not fire upon her, it appears, for humanitarian reasons, inasmuch as warships were not then supposed to sink passenger ships. By the time the Salmon found the Bremen, Germany was no longer observing such niceties, a fact by which Britain scored propaganda points and claimed moral victory in the engagement. Huchthausen's recounting of the Bremen's tortuous, 14-week journey has its Hunt for Red October moments, but the drama is sometimes blunted by too much detail, swallowing the highlights. Huchthausen also shares Tom Clancy's fascination with technical arcana; along the way, for instance, he explains why the shape of the Bremen, both long and broad, and its use of the ""bulbous forefoot"" (""This protrusion makes a hole in the water as the ship plows ahead, forcing seawater away to both sides and downward, thereby reducing drag on the skin of the shop, increasing the mass of the water at the stern, and strengthening the bite against which the propellers can thrust"") were factors in its escape.
A solid bit of maritime history, ably recounting a mere footnote—but an interesting one—to the larger Battle of the Atlantic. (Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2005)

From Publishers Weekly

The retired naval captain who wrote K-19 and Hostile Waters now offers another fine sea story. One of the crack German liners of the interwar period, Bremen was in New York as war loomed, and American Customs was unable to find a legal case for holding her until the British could block her path. Escaping to sea, she took refuge in Murmansk, a Russian Arctic port then friendly thanks to the Russo-German treaty. Three months later, with a skeleton crew, she steamed for home. On the way, the British submarine Salmon intercepted her, but the submarine's captain refused to fire on a liner that was apparently unarmed and not escorted. Her triumph was short-lived, however, because an arsonist destroyed her at pierside in 1941. One suspects Huchthausen of some reconstructed dialogue, but the thoroughness of his research is above reproach; it even includes many German sources not commonly studied and interviews with surviving Bremen crew and their descendants. A combination of espionage and sea story that reads like a thriller, the book will also throw new light on a good many aspects of WW II, such as the day-to-day operations of the German merchant marine (and Nazi efforts to infiltrate it) and the workings of the Russo-German rapprochement in 1939-40. This is the kind of book the author's readers have come to expect-and receive again.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0471457582
• ISBN 13: 9780471457589
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272