The Odyssey of a Torpedoed Transport (1914–1917)

As the months passed, the sea grew ever more dangerous, culminating in the Kaiser's decision of February 1917 to wage unrestricted submarine warfare. The direct, plain-spoken tone of the letters also reveals the mounting exasperation of merchant crews and their sense of having been abandoned to their fate — unarmed, and confronted with the naval high command's persistent downplaying of the submarine threat.

Yet the sea had become a battlefield every bit as deadly as Verdun or the Somme, though no one spoke of it, even as all supplies passed through maritime routes. The sweeping account of a forgotten war, awarded the Prix Femina 1917.

Biography:

Maurice Larrouy was born in 1882. After a distinguished academic career he entered the École navale, graduating top of his class in 1903 with the rank of aspirant. He spent the war in the Adriatic, then with the Army of the Orient, for which he established the seaplane flotilla, before serving on the coasts of France where he commanded a naval air base. Alongside this, he pursued a writing career under the pen name René Milan from 1909, then under his own name from 1923. At his death in July 1939, he left behind a body of work comprising some thirty novels, essays and travel accounts, among them Le Révolté, winner of the Grand Prix du Roman 1924.