Halfhyde's Island

Halfhyde Adventure #2

by Philip McCutchan

Royal Navy Lieutenant St Vincent Halfhyde is assigned a second in command of the heavy cruiser Viceroy and ordered to a volcanic island that has recently surfaced in the north Pacific. The Admiralty hopes to claim the island for the Crown and establish an outpost there, but the hostile Russians have other ideas and the wily Japanese are prepared to carry out their own agenda.

Genres: Historical Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1985

About the author

aka Robert Conington Galway, Duncan MacNeil

Philip McCutchan (1920-1996) grew up in the naval atmosphere of Portsmouth Dockyard and developed a lifetime's interest in the sea. Military history was an early interest resulting in several fiction books, from amongst his large output, about the British Army and its campaigns, especially in the last 150 years.

Reviews

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

In most series of books featuring naval heroes (Hornblower, Ramage, Bolitho, Lewrie, Aubrey, etc.), the protagonist begins as a midshipman and progresses (almost book-by-book) through the promotion ladder. Occasionally, this upward progression is halted for a book or two due to some misunderstanding with the Admiralty or some superior officer (usually as a result of differences in social class), but one can readily see that our "hero" is going to be an admiral, someday. Having just finished the second book in the Halfhyde series and started the third, I have no such assurances with regard to this series.

We first met Halfhyde as a lieutenant coming off half-pay to undergo a secret mission in the Bight of Benin. Arguably successful in his mission, in spite of conflict with a martinet of a captain and questionable circumstances seemingly orchestrated by the Admiralty, Halfhyde's reward is--we find at the beginning of the second book--to have been placed on half-pay once again. Fortunately, for there should be no story otherwise, our hero is recalled to duty. Unfortunately, he is called to duty on an old barge of a ship that should have been retired long before.

Halfhyde and his new captain realize quite quickly that they have been selected for a peculiar mission (the claiming of a new volcanic island south of Japan) because both they and their ship is truly expendable. The risk-to-reward ratio for the Admiralty is low risk-to-extremely high reward while the same ratio for our protagonist and his commanding officer is high risk-to-extremely little reward. It is the familiar chorus of consigning too few resources to bear on a problem with the blame of potential failure resting squarely on those to whom too few resources have been allocated.

The plot soon thickens as we see, once again, that the Admiralty has not been extremely forthright with the two officers as to what they would face in the completion of their mission. They are badly outnumbered and badly outgunned. So, one simply knows that things are not going to go off as planned. Even when a desperate stratagem begins to unwind, one wonders how the hero can manage to overcome his difficulty without something of the stench of ignominy.

This seems to be the overriding virtue of this series. Not only does it fill the gap between the plethora of Napoleonic or American Revolutionary sailing novels and the excellent Alexander Fullerton series of World War I naval adventures, but it presents the human and political aspects of this unsettled time (circa Russo-Japanese War) in a clear and fascinating way. Rarely (at least to this point in my reading) do we have broadside-to-broadside engagements. Rather, we are treated to human ingenuity and a willingness to, at times, suspend the rules.

The pacing in these books is not as tight as one gets in the Alexander Kent novels about Bolitho or the Dewey Lambdin Lewrie novels, but the pacing fits the stories. There is no feeling that the endings are thrown hurriedly together or that the protagonist has a superior combat sense. Instead, we have a hero who, in desperate situations, does his best. And that best is good enough for most, though as in real life, certainly not good enough for "all."

[Ashish Dinesh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pirates of the Caribbean, but without the rum-infused humour, or the pirates, for that matter.

[Steve Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another story of the British Navy in the late 19th Century. Lt Halfhyde again faces his nemesis, Prince Gorinski this time on a volcanic island between Japan and Vladivostok. Good adventure.

[Mike Glaser · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book in the series. Some good things, nothing too bad. Recommended if you like naval adventures.