Hammond Innes · 1956 · sea

Hammond Innes's 1956 sea thriller. Running the Channel in a gale, the salvage yacht Sea Witch finds a freighter under way with nobody aboard but one exhausted man, who refuses to be saved. John Sands is drawn into the Mary Deare's secret - a ship deliberately lost - and into a court of inquiry that will not believe a word of it.

1. 1
   The English Channel

   Beating across the Channel in filthy weather, the yacht Sea Witch nearly runs down a darkened freighter with no one at the wheel - and John Sands boards the Mary Deare to find her abandoned but for her master, Patch.

2. 2
   The Minquiers

   Patch drives the crippled ship onto the Minquiers, the wilderness of rock and reef south of Jersey, and beaches her there deliberately - a wreck that hides whatever it is he cannot prove and will not explain.

3. 3
   Southampton

   At the court of inquiry in Southampton, the owners' lawyers make Patch out a liar and Sands a fool - and the truth of what the Mary Deare was carrying, and who wanted her on the bottom, stays locked in the wreck.

4. 4
   Saint-Malo

   From Saint-Malo they slip out to dive the wreck before the sea and the salvage men destroy the evidence - a last desperate descent onto the Minquiers with a gale coming and men aboard who would rather they never surfaced.