A German U-boat captain sinks ships by night and drowns a little more each day.
Who drives the story
Captain of U-253, a decent man doing butcher's work who wants to bring his forty-eight men home alive. He sinks ships, buries friends, and ends the patrol calling himself Kaptain of a steel coffin.
First Watch Officer, the young hunter who toasts kills until Ritter slaps him down. He dies on the bridge watch in the Bay of Biscay, his body falling into the control room as the hatch slams.
Chief Engineer, grease-smeared keeper of a leaking hull, who tells Ritter plainly how close they are to drowning. He holds the boat together with pumps and nerve.
Wolf pack commander west of Ireland, brisk and confident by lamp signal. His boat U-411 is lost with all hands in the same engagement where Ritter scores his tanker kill.
Also in the story
Radio operator who decodes the war and delivers its one piece of grace: news of Ritter's newborn daughter in Kiel.
Ritter's wife in Kiel, present only as the recipient of a letter he seals knowing it may never arrive. She and the daughter he has never seen are what he is trying to survive for.
Go deeper
War is not a sport · The sea takes the good ones first · Isolation and the lifeline that frays · Life against the machinery of death
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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