Book Review of The Wreck of the Mary Deare: Mystery Thriller by Ralph Hammond Innes

Hammond Innes became a recipient of:

• The Order of the British Empire commandership, C.B.E., in 1978;
• The World Mystery Convention’s Lifetime Achievement Award in October 1993.

The honors came as no surprise because of the storyteller’s reputation for:

• Accurate descriptions of real places, from six months of research and travel preceding six months of writing each book;
• Believable plots in extreme environments and limited resources;
• Character depictions of ordinary people in extraordinary but realistic situations;
• Dramatic dialogues in general audience style;
• Early interest in ecological themes.

The Innesian experience with and expertise in sea-set adventures indeed emerged as one of the most enduring appeals of the world-racing, world-traveling yachtsman’s six decades of fictional output, from 1937 onward.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare begins with first-person narrator Sands directing Sea Witch through Spain’s Bay of Biscay waters.  John falls behind Mary Deare out of Southampton, England. He subsequently enters the English Channel by way of Breton Peninsula. He finds the 40+-year-old, 6,000-ton freighter with:

• Nobody aboard;
• One lifeboat hanging vertically, not horizontally, from its davit (crane-like, ship-side storage).

Fellow witness Patch gets Mary Deare’s engines started sufficiently to head toward and rest upon the Minkies. John and Gideon go to:

• England’s official inquiries regarding Torre Annunciata’s owners reporting Mary Deare missing;
• Minkies by dinghy, Sea Witch, swimming.

They observe ebb tide-wracked reefs shattering Mary Deare, whose engines and hatches respectively are inoperative and sealed.

Ships and stories are as bad or good as:

• Creators;
• Critics;
• Custodians.

The respectively actual and imagined shipwrecks of Mary Celeste and Mary Deare articulate this deep truth. Builders and storytellers created the actual and imagined ships in newborn beauty. Mary Celeste and Mary Deare nevertheless developed reputations after:

• Respective collisions with ships and torpedoes;
• Respectively controversial and wartime shipwrecks.

Both ended up worth less as serviceable ships and more as sunken vessels. Both endured accusations of:

• Deliberate grounding;
• Insurance fraud;
• Wayward cargoes.

But thanks to the narrative integrity of journalists Brian Hicks and Hammond Innes, readers know who did what and why to the fictitious Mary Deare while sorting the real Mary Celeste’s sufferings in 1872.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

"Mary Deare" is beached near Les Minquiers (lower center), a group of islands and rocks about 9.3 miles (15 kilometers) south of Jersey (mid-center), largest of Channel Islands
image of Channel Islands obtained Thursday, May 19, 2011, during Expedition 27 (March 16-May 23, 2011), with Nikon D3S Electronic Still 70mm Camera, from International Space Station (ISS), at altitude of 183 nautical miles (339 kilometers)
NASA Photo ID ISS027-E-034504: NASA Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Channel_Islands_viewed_from_ISS_in_2012,_cropped.JPG

The Wreck of the Mary Deare was published in the United Kingdom as The Mary Deare.
Fontana Books No. 297; Fontana Books, paperback imprint of William Collins & Co., first issued The Mary Deare in February 1959.: Jeremy Crawshaw (jhcrawshaw), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/23112312@N08/14608786859/

The enigma of real-life ghost ship "Mary Celeste" rivals mystery of "Mary Deare" and affirms that truth is stranger than fiction.
Mary Celeste as derelict ghost ship sighted by Dei Gratia on December 4/5, 1872
black-and-white closeup of tricolor engraving by Rudolph Ruzicka (June 29, 1883 - July 20, 1978): Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Celeste_engraving.jpg

"Wreck of the Mary Deare" (3:25) ~ "3D model of the Mary Deare after the book and film the Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes. Video is made in Google Earth."
Uploaded December 18, 2011, by Jan Hendrik Fennema to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cix5voBaVBw

"Hammond Innes (1960-1969)" (4:55) ~ Hammond Innes and his wife, Dorothy Mary Lang Innes (Dec. 20, 1906-February 1989), at their home in Kersey, Suffolk, East Anglia, East of England
Uploaded April 13, 2014, by British Pathé to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXfBGlusj0I

Innes, Hammond. 1956. The Wreck of the Mary Deare. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.  

Innes, Hammond; and Ambler, Eric. 1959. The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Blaustein Baroda Production Company.  

Warner Brothers. 2006. Gary Cooper -- The Signature Collection: Sergeant York, The Fountainhead, Dallas, Springfield Rifle, The Wreck of the Mary Deare. Warner DVD.