Is a Ship Burning‪?‬

Is a Ship Burning?, first published in 1938, is Richard Sale’s novel of action, adventure and romance aboard an ill-fated cruise ship. Narrator John Banion, the ship’s communications officer, describes the passengers and disastrous fire and sinking, followed by days adrift at sea in a small lifeboat.

From the dustjacket:A few wisps of smoke drifting up from below, a muffled shout, the sound of running feet and that all-pervading, cloying smell—the one catastrophe that terrifies all men who follow the sea...The San Marino was afire! Later, when they pulled Banion on the raft, his sensation was one of sheer vacuity, as though the earth had dissolved leaving him there alone with the others; Faroni, the gangster, helpless and abject without his gun; the young man Kilgore, who breathed and spoke, but had died inside; G. Emery Harrington, whose stock certificates and directorships for once gave him no advantage over “Stokehold” McGilley, the other survivor... This is more than a swift exciting picture of a dramatic episode. It is a brilliant piece of writing. Mr. Sale has caught most effectively the overwhelming vastness of the sea, and against a background of sinister disaster he has spun the brief but vital thread of an intensely human love affair.

Author Richard Sale (1911-1993) was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, novels, and screenplays, and was also a film director.