The Captain (novel)

The Captain is a 1967 novel by Dutch writer Jan de Hartog. It is a sequel of a sort to his 1940 book Captain Jan, though not having the same characters as the earlier book. Both books deal with the life of sailors in ocean-going tugboats - a field in which the Netherlands has great prominence. The earlier book dealt with the peacetime sailor protagonists' conflict with the exploiting, authoritarian Kwel Shipping Company which demands feudal-like fealty from its employees. In the present book this goes on under the extreme wartime conditions of WWII, with the Kwel company having escaped the occupied Netherlands and moved operations to London, its vessels contracted to take part in various Allied operations - particularly, the highly dangerous Arctic convoys. Even under these extreme conditions, the conflict between tyrannical bosses and rebellious sailors is still there, interweaving with the vast war against Nazi Germany.