Wreckers Must Breathe by Hammond Innes

Wreckers Must Breathe Reviews

• 
  Rhys

  The second Hammond Innes book I have read and utterly different from The Strode Venturer (which I loved). I have recently been told that Innes' writing career falls into two distinct parts: his early work, which is all implausible rough and tumble adventure told in straightfoward language; and his later work, which is more thoughtful rough and tumble adventure in finely crafted prose. Wreckers Must Breathe clearly belongs to the former category.
  
  It is an incredibly farfetched tale, and although it served a propoaganda function (being written at the beginning of WWII), the stretching of credulity gives almost an inadvertent surreal shimmer to the happenings (but not quite). It is a type of pre-James Bond British good guys versus bad guys in an underground base exploit, but the good guys in this instance are ordinary men thrown into extreme situations, rather than secret service professionals. Hammond Innes made the 'little man rising to the challenge' trope his speciality. And he was very good at it.
  
  I enjoyed this book and I absolutely crave to read more by this author. But I think I will concentrate on his maturer works, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, for example.
• 
  Paul Cornelius

  When drama critic Walter Craig goes fishing off the coast of Cornwall, he hooks a Nazi submarine. This completely outlandish and silly premise leads to the discovery of a vast secret German submarine base built inside an old Cornish seaside tin mine. Equally outlandish and silly is Walter's solution to the problem. Without spoiling the story, it's enough to say that said solution involves a scheme Walter and his band of fighters come up with that would embarrass James Bond. Hint: in involves gas, explosions, and lots of fighting. All told so tediously that you can't wait for it to be over.
  
  This is a very early Innes novel. The author must have been around 27 years old at the time. Clearly, he hadn't quite figured out things yet. The middle section of the book, where Innes basically gives up on integrating the German conspiracy into a coherent plot, relies greatly upon his experience as a newspaper reporter. So, that is sort of interesting from a biographical angle. The book itself, however, just doesn't work. A piece of wartime propaganda, essentially, and seemingly written during the period of the Phony War in early 1940, Wreckers Must Breathe mostly depicts the Germans as a bunch of Simon Legrees, while maintaining the British will and must "fight fair." It's a childish perspective. Innes would go on to write much greater novels. And choose better titles. The "wreckers" of the title refers to Cornwall's supposed history as a place where its seaside inhabitants made a living off stripping and looting ships wrecked on its rocky coastline. In this case, however, the wreckers are the German submarines. The fact that the title needs that much of an explanation is testimony to its failure.
• 
  Val

  This, the earliest of
  Hammond Innes's sea stories is a fairly typical WWII adventure story, with a pair of fairly ordinary Englishmen thwarting the nefarious designs of Nazi spies. It was written, however, during the very earliest weeks of the war and is extraordinarily prescient; the threat to shipping from submarine warfare was known, but U-boat pens did not exist until some years later.
  Innes also scores extra points (from me) for including a plucky and intrepid female journalist investigate the mystery and for the Cornish setting. I would point out that Cornish wreckers only seem to have ever existed in fiction, but can't complain of him using the idea.
• 
  Abbi

  I think with this book it is simply down to preference. If you don't like lengthy descriptions of war machinery, U-boats and submarines, or World War II literature in general, you will not like this book. For me, the majority of the time I was bored and confused. The writing style I found quite stilted and awkward at times; there was no flow to it at all, just stark sentences that didn't convey any kind of suspense or emotion. There were points that did interest me, but I found myself avoiding reading this book and a lot of the time I desperately wanted to give up and read something else. Towards the end I was really just trying to finish it. I think this may be the longest time it has taken me to read a 200-page book.
• 
  Ewoud

  Read this book in 2020, and although the style is a bit outdated, it still is highly readable with a well-builtup plot and action.
  
  The hardest-to-believe part might even been the fact that Innes wrote this WWII thriller in 1940.
  
• 
  Jay Rothermel

  This 1940 Cornish coastal thriller is a fast-moving and evocative novel.
  
  my review:
  
  
  https://jayrothermel.blogspot.com/201...
• 
  Tim Pendry

  
  Innes' sixth thriller is, as are so many adventure thrillers, predicated on an absurdity - in this case, the existence of a multi-million pound secret U-Boat base located on the Cornish coast making use of old mine workings.
  
  Once you get past this block to rational thought, what you get is a reasonably well crafted early wartime thriller (published at the very beginning of 1940) which has the virtue of having an authentic feel as far as the psychology of the time is concerned.
  
  Late 1939 was a time of deep anxiety about both Nazi espionage networks and fifth columnists and the threat to British naval power of German submarine warfare. Britain was also a nation still reeling from the Depression, psychologically insecure even if still determined to take on the Nazis.
  
  Even at this early stage, we see the division (later to be expressed in the Rommel legend) of the honourable military enemy contrasted with the thuggish and cowardly boot-boys of the Nazi Party - another absurdity only to be uncovered when the history could finally be written.
  
  There is nothing truly remarkable about this book but Innes writes with verve. His action sequences would be easy to translate into a 'war film'. He has a good eye for character and scenery so it ends up an easy and likeable read once you have drifted backwards in time to late 1939.
  
  One interesting note though. The young narrator who becomes the hero of the hour is not afraid to express his fears about war or his doubts about the consequences of heroism. This vision of young male anxiety, with only WWI as a measure of what war may be like, feels thoroughly authentic.
  
  The book feels like an act of psychological catharsis, of the writer forcing himself into the line of duty through his hero. The latter's undoubted selfless heroism and that of his working class comrades is the transformation of a weedy intellectual (a drama critic) into a potential officer and leader of men.
  
  All thrillers are male power fantasies but this is one where you can taste the fear of and anxiety about death in a greater cause at a particular moment in history. The educated middle class prep school boy does what he did in 1914 - take his natural social place as leader of men by overcoming his fears.
• 
  David Evans

  Early Hammond Innes - I’ve bought a pile of his paperbacks and and am reading them in rough order of publication.
  Writing in 1940, Innes intelligently predicts the havoc that U-Boats were about to inflict in the Western Approaches.
  Walter Craig, newspaper columnist, is holidaying on The Lizard peninsula as Germany invades Poland and a chance meeting with a damp walker following a near drowning as his mackerel line gets snagged by a massive underwater “shark” leads to suspicion that enemy agents and submarines might be operating along the Cornish coast. What ensues seems highly improbable but bear with it and you are rewarded with a desperate attempt to prevent a pack of U-Boats inflicting terminal damage upon the Royal Navy.
  The first person account of Craig switches mid-story to the writings of the female reporter sent to investigate his disappearance. She has a nose for sleuthing and a relentlessness which helps uncover the enormity happening literally beneath her feet. An added bonus (for me at least) is the presence of two Welshmen in vital supporting roles.
• 
  Lee

  My husband has worked his way through all Innes's books on Audible and this one is his last. He thoroughly enjoyed it especially the description of the man made mines within the cliffs. Full of adventures and daring do...thoroughly enjoyed by him.
• 
  Leonie

  Written in three sections, I didn’t really get into it until section 2. I enjoyed it mostly, though I really did not believe our main hero’s change of bravery. Oh, and it just ended and it felt as if some story was missing.
• 
  Dan Seitz

  Has aged well, even if it's of its time, and is still a crisp thriller.
• 
  Jeff Cliff

  Exciting, short...and I'm not sure if it's fiction or not
  
• 
  Thimira

  The plot is good. However the details about the U-boat base is quite a mess.
• 
  Brettsinclair70

  Of its time WW2 submarine yarn. Not prime Innes.