Sabotage

Captain Peter Bentley and the men of H.M.A.S. Wind Rode have every reason to be proud. Their destroyer has sunk the Japanese battleship Satuki, and Bentley has been awarded the Victoria Cross for the action. Battle-hardened, tightly disciplined and utterly confident in one another, Wind Rode is a ship at the peak of her fighting power.

Then a new rating joins the crew.

Able-seaman Trevor Lumsden once knew Bentley at school. Now he serves under the man he has come to resent with a bitterness that has curdled into obsession. When small but disturbing acts of sabotage begin aboard Wind Rode, they appear almost senseless: ammunition disappears, equipment is tampered with, and vital weapons fail at the worst possible moment.

But the damage is not random. Someone is attacking the one thing on which a destroyer captain ultimately depends—the confidence of his men.

With Japanese aircraft hunting them, a damaged ship to keep fighting and enemy submarines somewhere ahead, Bentley must discover the saboteur before suspicion and fear destroy Wind Rode from within. And when the crew's hard-won efficiency begins to crack under fire, the enemy outside the hull may no longer be the greatest danger they face.

First published in Australia in 1964, SABOTAGE is a tense wartime naval adventure from master storyteller, J. E. Macdonnell, combining destroyer action, authentic lower-deck atmosphere and a psychological battle for the fighting spirit of a ship.