Captain Christopher Carl: Throw Me A Line

Reviewed by GUY CLAPSHAW

Autobiographies by our country's postwar military leaders are all too few, and this well-told account of a Navy officer's career from 1952 until his retirement in the late 80s is a highly entertaining read.

Captain Carl takes up the story from the family longdrop overlooking the waters of Lyttelton Harbour where, he informs his readers, "my interest in things nautical first developed".

His descriptions of postwar New Zealand in the 1950s, when no man would dream of going to the pictures without a jacket and tie or not standing to attention while the National Anthem was played before the start of the picture, are priceless cameos of that era.

Liberal doses of Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea and C.S. Forrester's Hornblower stories led to the teenage Carl's application to, and acceptance by, the Royal New Zealand Navy, which sent him to Dartmouth for training. Here he must have begun mentally storing away some of his experiences: lining the coronation route in 1953, James Robertson Justice dribbling gin down Diana Dors' abundant cleavage, specialised training aboard submarines, aircraft carriers and surface vessels and exposure to naval discipline, until four long years with the Royal Navy were completed.

On return to New Zealand the youthful second lieutenant's career began to achieve some significance at a time when our country's military enjoyed wider prestige and influence than it does today. Regular exercises with the Canadian and US Navies, as well as the Royal, Australian and Indian Navies and even the Japanese are described with considerable flair, as are descriptions of conditions in Pearl Harbour, Trincomalee, Malaya, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Subic Bay.

Unexpected meetings with celebrities lighten the pages. ("Can I get you a coffee, Sir?" somebody asks. He accepts and is surprised to be handed a cup by the Prince of Wales.) Other royals and VIPs litter the pages - the Queen Mother, Princess Anne, Sir Bernard Fergusson, the King and Queen of Tonga.

For this reviewer, the focus of the book was the 1982 Bows and Arrows incident when irresponsible and inaccurate reporting of the Rimpac exercises with the US, Canadian and Australian Navies attributed criticism of New Zealand's inadequate equipment to Captain Carl. Anticipated promotion to Flag Rank never happened and years later he discovered the reason in his personal file - a short, snide note from Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, suggesting: "This officer might be better suited to command of a small fisheries patrol launch."

For those of us who dream of C.S. Forrester writing in modern times, this is the closest we're going to get to that Utopia.

Holos Books $29.95

* Guy Clapshaw is an Auckland writer and pilot.