Ordeal

This Australian novel, published in 1924, describes the ordeal experienced by the crew and passengers of a schooner sailing from Japan across the Pacific. The ship, called the Spray, belongs to Paul Thorpe, an important scientist, and has a small multiethnic crew. Whereas much of the ordeal relates to cabin fever, a hurricane also has a major impact on the voyage. Among the crew there is a biblical fear of a Jonah figure jeopardising the safety of the ship. The novel was adapted by John Howard Lawson into the 1930 film A Ship from Shanghai.

The author, Dale Collins (born 9 April 1897), was, like James Morgan Walsh, the son of an Irishman. Significantly, his father, Dr Michael John Collins, served as ship surgeon for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. He died in 1898 and perhaps his son had a keen maritime interest from an early age as a means of connecting to the life of his father. It's unlikely that the author was fit for military service as he had many periods of illness as a child. He did, however, write a children's book about the Australian experience at Gallipoli (ANZAC Adventure, published in 1959).

The key event of the novel happens when Reid, the mate, attempts to settle a grudge against Ted, the steward, once and for all:
“In the blackness the two men of hatred and bitterness fought and each thought he grappled with the living embodiment of Fate. They closed in silence, as if this matter of theirs must be secret from all the world... They slid over upon their sides, straining every muscle in terrific effort and yet without movement as trained wrestlers do. There were no oaths, no threats — only locked and wracking effort. Blows and kicks were disdained. The knife was the thing. They did not fight; they played a game of murder under simple, but sacrosanct, rules.”
Ted kills Reid and takes control of the ship, chiefly because no one else has the necessary training in navigation. He becomes a much-feared tyrant. The author imagines that Ted sees himself to be turning the tables of his Armenian nation’s experience of oppression by the Turks within the Ottoman Empire (reaching its peak in the genocide that began in April 1915):
“He was the Sultan. The word danced through his mind, standing for power and lust and the right to take by force the good things of life. The Armenian blood in him found it sweet, enriching it with meaning. Influences older than himself were working in him. It was not merely the oppressed steward who had become a sultan — it was the oppressed Armenian... Powerful as a Sultan in his purple palace and serving out life and death.”
Similarly, the working classes had risen up to turn the tables in the name of socialism. So, too, had the people of smaller countries in Europe sought to take over in the name of nationalism as the empires weakened.