LIKE AN EVIL EYE IN THE NIGHT THERE APPEARED AN ANSWERING LIGHT
“The war at sea is the subject of Captain Charles Gilson’s ‘Submarine U93, subtitled ’A Tale of the Great War, of German Spies, and Submarines, of Naval Warfare, and all manner of Adventures.’ As the author states, the story consists of ‘fact blended with fiction’ in dealing with the Battle of Dogger Bank, but its youthful protagonist has once again to contend with the machinations of a spy as well as the might of German naval power. The reader knows what poor Jimmy Burke is up against when he is confronted in New York with Rudolf Stork, ‘a strange-looking man, with an exceedingly wrinkled face, and a sinister cast of countenance’, who is instinctively distrusted by Jimmy’s girl-friend. Stork speaks German, French, English and Dutch, was formerly an actor and once played Iago, so his malignant role can hardly be doubted. Towards the end of the book his venality rather than heroism or courage is underlined when he is described as ‘the paid servant of the Wilhelmstrasse, the man who had served the Fatherland for gold’. The man from whom he has taken his orders, Baron von Essling, ends up in a prisoner of war camp at Wakefield reading the Prussian historian Treitschke. Stork’s distasteful motives contrast strongly around those of Captain Crouch, who is ‘cast in a most heroic mould.†-David Blamires, Telling Tales: The Impact of Germany on English Children's, Books 1780-1918
“In sinking one of the most famous of the U-boats within range of the great guns of four of the most powerful of the German battle-cruisers, Captain Crouch accomplished a feat which was as much to his own credit as it was of service to his country. Still, he could never have succeeded had he not been cast in a most heroic mould.â€
“In the following story fact is blended with fiction. The account of the Battle of the North Sea, in which the "Blücher" was sunk, is as historically accurate as is possible with the details at present available. On the other hand, it would be well for the reader to know that the description of the pursuit of the "Dresden" in mid-Atlantic is wholly fictitious. The incident is introduced "for my story's sake," as Robert Louis Stevenson used to say, and also because it is illustrative of the character of the "Sea Affair" in the earlier days of the war.†-CHARLES GILSON