to serve under a bad captain comparable to Herman Wouk's Captain Queeg - tyrannical, coward and drunkard. This episode ends much more brutally than in The Caine Mutiny - crew members cut the captain's throat while he lies drunk, and throw his body overboard to be chewed up by the ship's propeller and hide the manner of his death. This bad Captain is contrasted with two good Captains - very different from each other - that Teichmann meets later in his career. In the later part of his minesweeper career, he serves under an urbane and intellectual Captain, whom Teichmann clearly adopts as a father figure. This relationship ends with a harrowing shipwreck, Teichmann and the Captain - both severely wounded - adrift in a small boat, and scavenging gulls peck out the Captain's eyes. By sheer willpower and endurance, Teichmann manages to bring the boat to shore - all the time very conscious that he is saving the life of Edith's husband and bringing him back to her. Later on, he visits the Captain, now invalidated, living in a comfortable house, and composing a treatise critical of the conduct of the war at sea and the war in general. There develops a strong sexual tension between Teichmann and Edith, and the Captain's blindness offers a perfect chance for illicit dalliance. Guilt-ridden, Teichmann escapes from the house, and when he boards the train, Edith suddenly appears on the platform to plead with him: "Please, never come back! Never, never!". Nor does he. In the U-Boat Teichmann serves under a completely different kind of Captain - harsh and tyrannical, but highly courageous and an incomparable skillful seaman, so that even while hating him the crew are willing to trust him with their lives. The U-boat shifts from the heat of the Caribbean to the cold of the North Atlantic, scores some successes but experiences the turn of the tide as the British win at last the long-contested Battle of the Atlantic. The situation grows increasingly grim, and Teichmann loses his best friend - whose leg got amputated and who then just loses the will to live and fades away. In the cataclysmic final episode, the U-boat hits a mine and sinks to the bottom, never to rise again. The crew are resigned to death - but the indomitable Captain exhorts the 21 submariners to don the survival suits and make for