Maddon's Rock — Hammond Innes

The chilling story of desperate men on a doomed ship during World War II from “Great Britain's leading adventure novelist” (Financial Times).

For three weeks, Cpl. James Landon Vardy has waited in Murmansk, a frozen northern port of the Soviet Union, hoping a ship will come to take him home. He's British, in Russia to help with the war effort, and as he shivers in the icy port, he dreams of spring in England. Finally, a miracle -- a ship. But when Vardy boards the Trikkala, he has no idea he's stepping into hell.
 
From the first day, Vardy senses the Trikkala is doomed. Her officers are drunk, her lifeboats are leaky, and the mysterious crates supposedly carrying machine parts actually contain a fortune in silver bullion. In the early hours of a frigid morning on the North Sea, Vardy realizes the ship is peeling away from its convoy into dangerous waters -- a suicidal decision that takes the Trikkala directly into a minefield. The Trikkala might never reach port, but Vardy's adventure is just beginning.
 
In the tradition of The Caine Mutiny and Mutiny on the Bounty, Maddon's Rock is a marvelously realistic story of corruption, crime, and justice on the high seas.