The Distant Shore

Description for THE DISTANT SHORE by Jan de Hartog:

The Skipper knew and loved two women.  One he almost destroyed and the other he married.  The third and most dangerous love of his life was the sea, whose surface he sailed and whose depths he explored in fantastic diving expeditions.

It began during the war, when the Skipper, an easygoing young man with a broad sense of humor, took command of an ancient British seagoing tug and sailed off to battle U-boats and the storms of the North Atlantic.  He was in the famous rescue fleet which salvaged damaged vessels abandoned by their convoys.  "The average life of you boys is three month, " they told him, but he didn't mind---until he met Stella.  Then, he wanted desperately to live, in spite of all he sensed and knew about this strange creature whose very tenderness carried with it a warning of death.  His love and his fears came to a climax in a blaze of open battle at sea, which left him after the war with a keener thirst for new adventures...and new loves.

This quest took him below the sea, with a crew of fanatical divers whose happiest hours were passed in the strange lights of the underwater depths, in a realm of haunting peace and sudden violence.  In a series of thrilling dives, the Skipper cam to know this world of nature and, at last, to find his destiny above, in the world of men.