The Ship That Died of Shame, Nicholas Monsarrat

The Ship That Died of Shame and Other Stories, Monsarrat, Nicholas. Published by Cassell and Company, London, 1959. First Edition. 8vo up to 9½” tall. 228 pages. Blue cloth boards with silver spine titles. Discreet book plate to free endpaper, otherwise volume in fine condition without marks, tears or folds. Unclipped jacket in has light edge rubbing and pencil marks to inside, otherwise fine.

The Ship That Died of Shame originally appeared in Lilliput magazine in 1952 and was published in this collection, 1959. The title story takes place on board a small gunboat with a distinguished WW II record; the shame is that it is being used as a smuggler. The Ship That Died of Shame was also made into a black-and-white film in 1955 starring George Baker, Richard Attenborough and Bill Owen.

The other 10 stories in this collection are: “Oh To Be In England,” “The Reconciliation,” “The List,” “The Thousand Islands Snatch,” “Up the Garden Path,” “The Man Who Wanted a Mark IX,” “I Was There,” “The Dinner Party,” “Licensed to Kill” and “Postscript.”  The Thousand Islands Snatch takes place along the St. Lawrence River, near Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Monsarrat lived and worked in Canada as a British information officer from 1953 to 1956, and intermittently after that date; some of his best-known fiction was written during this time and later fiction additionally used Canada as the setting.   002514    $35