Eight Bells and Top Masts

This is the story of life in one of the last British tramp ships as she sailed the world in search of cargoes during the early 1960s. Phosphate from Nauru, scrap from Galveston, salt from the Sudan, sugar from Havana, crates from Shanghai, lavatories from Osaka. This was an ocean going man with a van. The story is told through the eyes of a deck boy apprentice brought up in working circumstances to believe Britain owned the world, or at least twenty five per cent of it through its Empire. But the Empire was crumbling and so too the illusions of the lad, who was the author Christopher Lee.

What they said about
Eight Bells & Top Masts

"…Eight Bells & Top Masts is a funny, vivid, unsentimental, effortlessly informative book, highly recommended to seafarers both actual and imaginary…"
::: Times Literary Supplement

"....Molesque diary entries with an authoritative third person commentary...didactic clarity never overwhelms the entertaining story...."
::: Robbie Hudson, Sunday Times

"…Here the boy and the man are a double act…the latter viewing the times with wisdom and hindsight…"
::: Daily Telegraph

"…vividly evokes what life was like aboard a tramp steamer…a born writer…"
::: Peter Lewis, Daily Mail

"…Brilliant…"
::: Sir George Martin, BBC A Good Read