Unseen Harbour

“The Famous Novel of the Sea” Frank Laskier was born 1912 and lived his early years in the suburbs of Liverpool. As a teenager, Frank was an avid reader of Conrad and Masefield and had a romantic view of the “call of the sea”. One day he decided to lie about his age and run away from home aboard a ship destined for Australia. Laskier worked on many ships in the merchant navy and it was his experiences during the Second World War that brought him to the attention of the BBC. Frank was asked to broadcast a number of talks on his life at sea during that dangerous time. These talks were a great success. The positive feedback from his radio talks lead to Laskier turning to writing. This book, first published in 1947, was his final work. This novel that is a fictional account of the merchant ship MV Francis Hall as it sails from England across the Atlantic. The story is set just after the horrors of the Second World War, when the traumatic memories of the perils of the sea during that time are still fresh in the memories of the crew. Stronach, the bosun, was expecting the voyage to be a smooth passage, bit it soon becomes a test of his mettle as a man and sailor. Frank Laskier’s earlier books, ‘My Name is Frank’, which was based on the BBC radio talks, and ‘Log Book’, an autobiographical novel, have both been republished and are available from Solis Press.