Highly recommended, especially to history lovers. Non-fiction account of the Amethyst that was fired in a Chinese river in 1949. The Chinese were strong-arming the British to take responsibility.

A lot of heroes on board; an amazing crew that pulled together to overcome adversity.

I really haven’t read a story like this one in a long time. I’ve been noticing that I read a higher percentage of books written by women and have been trying to incorporate more stories written by men. There is definitely a difference.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author C.E. Lucas Phillips and Sapere Books the publisher for the opportunity to read the advance read copy of Escape of the Amethyst in exchange for an honest review.

This is the second of Lucas-Phillips’s books on military actions of the twentieth century that I have had the pleasure to read, the first being the excellent account of the defence of Kohima at a crucial point in the high water mark of the Japanese advance into India. This book captures many of the same themes, but suffers from a few of the same slightly jarring notes, capturing as it does the author’s attitudes and perceptions of other nationalities from the middle twentieth century. In saying this, no implication is made that these were dramatically different from those held by many British citizens at the time. As with the Kohima defence, the stand out features, captured so very well by the author, are the steadiness of young servicemen, mainly from the Royal Navy in this account, under fire and whilst ‘held’ by the Communist Chinese during the closing stages of the Civil War in China for an extended period in harsh conditions.

The author’s writing style is, perhaps, old-fashioned even for his day, but in some ways this serves to reinforce how different the world is now as the first quarter of the twenty first century draws nearly to a close, compared with the period in the years immediately after the Second World War. The sights, sounds and cultural differences of life along the Yangtze River are evoked, although the then reasonably current references to the Chinese population are patronising to a modern ear. This reader’s advice in looking at this book, as with the same author’s account of the defence of Kohima, is to regard this as part of the overall experience of reading the book: not only are you transported to a tense stand off in the middle of the Yangtze River during the heat of a Chinese summer, your ‘guide’ is also revealing much about the unspoken chauvinism of the times and the prejudices and perspectives typical of many Britons with respect to the local Chinese. This is reflected, too, in the, understandably, significant difference between how he sees the personnel from the two armies. This is by no means a criticism; the author does the twenty first century reader a great service by both explicitly and implicitly conveying the then current impressions and judgements over the behaviour of the parties involved.

This review intentionally says little about the ‘Yangtze Incident’. It is well described on our old friend Wikipedia. What this book does, based on the author’s weaving together of the accounts of those who were there, is to bring to a living - and occasionally violent - reality the experiences of a much reduced ship’s company in resisting the intimidation of the Chinese ‘captors’ and their eventual escape to ‘rejoin the Fleet’ as the Captain’s signal so traditionally expressed the result of their safe passage. Strongly recommended.

A enjoyable read, I had known about the story of the HMS Amethyst already but I did not know the details. This book fills in the gaps especially abut how bad the conditions were onboard the ship and how the actual escape was made.
I think the book has been reissued as some of the language is a bit dated but that does not take away from the enjoyment of the book.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC of this book.

A truly great book about an incident I had never heard about. What the sailors had to endure and go through was eye-opening and that they never lost faith or gave up was truly inspirational. A great read.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.