Pelican was the oldest and slowest destroyer in the flotilla. Rust-streaked and narrow-gutted, lacking modern equipment, she would be no loss to the Royal Australian Navy, who would send it to the breakers long before she was called upon to fight for her life. Yet her tough, casual captain commanding an apparently ill-disciplined crew proudly scorned the order to Abandon and Destroy. And if that reads like a one-man war—well then, that, precisely, is what it was.
From the Author:
Few of the characters and none of the incidents in this story are imaginary. Only the names are changed; of men because many of them are married now, and they had enough conflict then without my making more for them in Civvy Street. Those nights in The Gut of Malta and Sister Street of Alexandria are best left locked within memory—unless as here, they are cloaked under assumed names.