Not Quite What I Expected ...

being heavily interested in submarine warfare, I came across this book in
the belief that it would give the reader a vivid, visceral and detailed
account of life aboard the HMS Unbeaten during its patrols in the second
world war. However, unfortunately, this is not quite what I got in this
read. The book itself is well researched and written but the mistake I made
by assigning this book a greater level of expectation was soon realized.
I had made the assumption that this book
would be largely made up of diary entries and memoirs from those that left
the boat before its demise and would provide a more immersive telling of the
exploits of this British submarine during its various war patrols.

To be fair, the book does make use of first hand accounts and very limited
diary entries but for the most part is put together more from a third
persons research than a first person set of accounts. We don't really find
anything of major interest until chapter 6 I believe but the author is
diligent about the history and construction and other peripheral aspects of
the story of HMS Unbeaten and to this end does a thorough job of providing
the casual reader with an overall view of this submarine and its part in the
war. There is a lot of information about who was in command pier side and
some of the politics of the command chain and sadly rather less of the more
gripping first hand accounts I had thought the book would comprise. This
misreading of the way the book would be presented was further compounded by
the captivating and evocative prose heard in the audio sample which was part
of the opening pages of the book that I found later to be purely fictional
in nature and the authors vivid imaginings as to what could have happened on
the fateful night of the loss of HMS Unbeaten. Had these visceral prose been
found elsewhere drawn from diaries and logs over the course of her career
then this would've been a more engrossing read. As it was, the book did
offer insight and some very interesting stories - especially in the later
chapters, and the best of which was the rescue of a German sailor from a
U-Boat sunk by HMS Unbeaten. Other than that the accounts are fairly dry and
focus rather too much on the general rather than the specific.

Again, I must stress that this is not a bad book as it gives the reader the
essential framework regarding the career of HMS Unbeaten but the more
personal and compelling narrative is in the minority here. This is not
something that should necessarily put someone off this book and the fault I
did not get what I had expected was mine now that I see this is not a work
based on rich personal sources of information on day to day life aboard a
Royal navy submarine during that time. In future I will be more careful to
focus my interest more on those accounts based on memoirs or more heavily
from first hand knowledge.

A good high level history of the submarine and some of its crew but not
quite enough gritty elements for my liking.

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