The Hemingway Patrols : Ernest Hemingway and His Hunt for U-Boats

From the summer of 1942 until the end of 1943, Ernest Hemingway spent much of his time patrolling the Gulf Stream and the waters off Cuba’s north shore in his fishing boat, Pilar. He was looking for German submarines. These patrols were sanctioned and managed by the US Navy and were a small but useful part of anti-submarine warfare at a time when U boat attacks against merchant shipping in the Gulf and the Caribbean were taking horrific tolls. While almost no attention has been paid to these patrols, other than casual mention in biographies, they were a useful military contribution as well as a central event (to Hemingway) around which important historical, literary, and biographical themes revolve. "From the summer of 1942 until the end of 1943, Ernest Hemingway actively patrolled the Gulf Stream and the waters off Cuba's north shore in his wooden fishing boat, Pilar, looking for German submarines. His patrols were supervised by the U.S. Navy and served as a part of antisubmarine warfare at a time when U-boat attacks were decimating Allied merchant shipping in the region. The huge, long-distance subs ultimately sank hundreds of ships in the Atlantic theater, killing thousands of seamen. They were deadly and efficient, and to confront them in a small wooden fishing vessel was to court instant annihilation. Yet Hemingway and his crew of friends were prepared to do just that. Armed with only grenades and submachine guns, they planned to attack any U-boat they encountered." "While almost no attention has been paid to these patrols, other than casual mentions in standard biographies, they became the foundation of some of Hemingway's future work, especially The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream." "Terry Mort's portrait of Hemingway is a combination of biography, military history, and literary commentary that draws not only from his work, letters, and wartime documents, but the unofficial yet highly revealing log of the Pilar, a calendar that Hemingway annotated with observations of tides, fishing successes, supply purchases, target practice, ship movements, and most crucially, his pursuit of what he suspected was a German U-boat secretly rendezvousing with a Spanish passenger ship."--Jacket