J. E. (James Edward) MacDonnell is the author of:
Fleet Destroyer (1945; a non-fictional naval account)
FLEET DESTROYER

"In this enthralling book, FLEET DESTROYER,
J.E. MacDonnell sustains the realism
and stark drama of war at sea."

"Throughout the book there is no
dearth of description...
it is at its best in its extremely
lively pictures of naval action
and of ships of all classes."
Sydney Bulletin

"FLEET DESTROYER is filled with interest
from first page to last."
Australian Journal
J.E. MacDonnell At Sea

BILGEWATER
There is a good deal of "I" in these lessons, but I'm afraid the personal touch is unavoidable - the incidents happened to me or my friends, and blushing deprecations like "your author," "present writer," or "one remembers that... seem reflections on the reader's intelligence.
Secondly, any resemblance of the characters in this book to actual naval personnel is quite intentional - names like Commodore Morrow, Jazzer Jackson, Ponker Kerr, Pritcher Hillsdon and Thunderguts Cleary are well-known in watery circles, and their exploits so well-established that it would be futile to try and disguise their owners.

The Snake Boats

To The Death

5? Alias Carton c1961
ALIAS CARTON
Commander Carton...
tough, enterprising skipper of "Nemesis" prepared for the unexpected in any assignment, is hired for a millionaires' pleasure cruise aboard "Lolita" Travelling as the foppish 'Mr Jamiesong' he takes...
Gunga Reilly...
his rockfisted helmsman and helpmate, to act as Jamieson's 'servant'...
and together they uncover a treacherous scheme to hijack the ship in mid-ocean.

54 Battle Line (c1962; repr. 1972, repr. 1981)
BATTLE LINE
The Japanese Fleet, and the Australian destroyer Wind Rode astern, moved on into the eye of the wind.
And then Bentley could see, as the sky lightened, that the mass ahead of him was not an indeterminate bulk, but a Jap battleship.
He lowered his glasses and he breathed in lowly and deeply to steady himself. Then he said, deliberately;
"Increase to two-five-oh revolutions, Starb'd twenty, steer 180.
"Stand-by torpedo attack."
COMMANDER Peter Bentley

55 The Long Haul (c1962; repr. 1965, repr. 1973)
THE LONG HAUL
HE WAS NOT UNDER COMMAND NOW
Under tow, you were expected to sheer off from danger, not stick your nose smack into it, Bentley reflected bitterly.
And yet he had sent in an unarmed cutter against this enemy base - because his men needed the fillip of success.
Could the foolhardy gamble pay off?

64 Flotilla Leader (c1962; repr. 1966, repr. 1974, repr. 1982)
FLOTILLA LEADER
Bentley had taken appalling risks...
fighting his destroyer against a battleship and a flotilla of destroyers and a swarm of Jap aircraft. He had proved his courage beyond doubt - yet now he had hauled off from a pack of scared Japs! With five ships under his command instead of one, was he unsure of himself as the flotilla leader?

78 The Pawn (c1964; repr. 1975, repr. 1982)
THE PAWN
Windrode's mission was to seek out and signal the position of the Japanese battleship ...
Bentley knew he was the pawn in this lethal game of naval chess and that his ship's survival depended on several factors.
The same set of factors could enable him to engage and cripple the battleship - and Bentley saw this pattern was forming too quickly ...
CAPTAIN Peter Bentley

79 The Betrayal (1964)
THE BETRAYAL
SUICIDE MISSION IN BURMA
After a few beers in Colombo Petty-officer Hooky Walker was ready to volunteer for duty anywhere with Lieutenant Peter Bentley, R.A.N. But he didn't know he was heading for Chitagong, to join a cut-throat raffish bunch of commandos setting out on a suicide mission in the Burma jungle.
...At sea it's fifteen miles to the horizon. A man's used to long distances when he's on look-out. Here you could see about five feet. And the japs had strong patrols out...

80 Sabotage! (c1964; repr. 1975, repr. 1982)
SABOTAGE
Bentley saw the Jap destroyer's stem driving from his stern.
The Jap was doing close to thirty knots. Seven hundred tons of steel striking at 30 knots could carve the stern off Wind Rode. Even if she did not sink, Wind Rode would be left as useless and immobile as if she were stranded on a reef.
Only one order could save Wind Rode, and the gun-captain gave voice to his snap decision.
"Local control!
Point of aim waterline below the funnel!
Rapid broadsides.
Fire!"
COMMANDER Peter Bentley

129 Petty Officer Brady (c1968; repr. 1977, repr. 1983)
PETTY OFFICER BRADY
Continuing...
the great series
of sea stories
featuring
JIM BRADY
by
that master naval story-teller
J.E. MACDONNELL

147 The Invincibles (1970)
THE INVISIBLES
They are as ancient as ?????????elf-
(words where scrached off could not read them)
but armed with the nuclar power of tomorrow
Intertrust Agent Mark Hood faces the shadowy terrors of the supernatural when he is sent to the interior of a remote Caribbean island to break up a black market in atom bombs.
The sellers? No one knows. The buyers? THE INVISIBLES - Voodoo priests with a fiendish plan to make a human sacrifice of the entire world. Hood's only ally - a beautiful, sultry believer who leads him into an orgy of lust, terror, and sudden death!
Intertrust Agent Mark Hood

156 First Command (c1971; repr. 1975, repr. 1979, repr. 1985)
FIRST COMMAND
"J.E. Macdonnell's brilliant sequel to
Damn the Torpedoes!"
Dutchy Holland was on his own. The explosion on the bridge had wiped out all his senior officers, including the captain. All Dutchy had to do was get the destroyer HMS Reaper safely through almost two hundred miles of unfriendly sea back to Alexandria, thus obeying his own inclinations and his captain's dying wish.
Lieutenant John Benedict "Dutchy" Holland R.A.N.

159 Standing in to Danger (c1971; repr. 1979, repr. 1985)
STANDING INTO DANGER
The Letter U...
Two dots and dash...
The warning is always heeded by any captain of sense.
Occasioinally it is ignored, but only by the very brave. "Dutchy" Holland was in that category...
Lieutenant-Commander John Benedict "Dutchy" Holland
First command of Pelican

162 Guns for God (c1971; repr. 1979, repr. 1985)
GUNS FOR GOD
Randall came on the bridge
"Happy New Year," he smiled generally, and then, suddenly sober, to Bentley: "I wonder what the New Year holds for us."
The director told them.
"Alarm aircraft," said Lasenby the Gunner. "Bearing Red three-oh, torpedo bombers approaching fast. All guns follow director."
So Wind Rode and her flotilla shot their way into a most unhappy beginning of the New Year.

172 The Trap (1972; repr. 1979, repr. 1986)
THE TRAP
Destruction of Wind Rode seemed inevitable...

Hard with his thumb, Pilot pressed the alarm gong. From ahead came a sparkle of yellow light. He had hold of himself now, knew that they were running to meet a large Jap force, just as he knew that apart from those broadsides just loosed there would be one more, possibly two, already in the air.
The men in Wind Rode knew that they must be heading into a broadside that could plunge upon her forepart and bludgeon it off - a direct hit anywhere would destroy their ship.

173 The Verge of Hell (1972; repr. 1979)
THE VERGE OF HELL
Sainsbury could not believe it...
he searched again, thoroughly and with care, ignoring the sound of shells exploding to port and what it indicated, that the Japs had corrected for range. He would bet his life on Dalziel, that cold, humourless and highly efficient captain. But Dalziel was not there. What in God's name had happened? Contact with another enemy force? But if he couldn't make the rendezvous, and was sighted by the enemy, he would have signalled. Unless he'd been torpedoed or bombed to death suddenly. But there were four ships. They couldn't all have gone like that, one would have got off a message.
CAPTAIN Bruce Thornton (Aunty) Sainsbury & Captain Peter Bentley

176 Fire Storm (1973; repr. 1979, repr. 1986)
FIRE STORM
She was designated Sommergibili Oceanici, which translated from the Italian means "ocean-going submarine." In any language, or Navy, that means big.

On her conning tower she carried two tall painted letters, CA. This placed her in the Admiral Cagni-class, and gave her hundreds of tons more displacement then old Pelican, as well as two 3.9-inch quick-firing guns, fourteen torpedo tubes, and a high surface speed of 18 knots. She was commanded by a capitano di fregata, or three-ringed commander, and therefore much senior to Lieutenant-Commander Holland.
The captain's name was Domenico Albergo. Now thirty-three he had been in the Navy for almost twenty years, with more than half that time spent in submarines. There had been no patronage, either aristocratic or wealthy, behind Albergo's present appointment. He had been given command of Spiride for purely professional reasons.
A pity Dutchy could not have known all this; it would have made his decision easier.

183 The Dark of the Night (1975; repr. 1980)
THE DARK OF THE NIGHT
"Enemy challenging, Sir."
"Engage," he said, and tasted the word.
"Open fire," said the director phone-number into his instrument, and "Shoot," said Mr. Bates into his.
Jackal was silent for a moment; long enough for Dutchy's hope to surface. The prime object of his plan was to escape, not to sink enemy ships. If he could burst through the Jap division without crippling damage, even without damaging them, then the way was open. While they wasted time and distance on the turn after him, Jackal would be rushing fast away, and showing only her narrow-gutted stern to their guns. And if he and Verril couldn't slip a few broadsides under those conditions...
CAPTAIN "Dutchy" Holland

189 The Liberty Men (c1977; repr. 1980, repr. 1987)
THE LIBERTY MEN
Well now, every man likes to dream, and one suspects that much of the groaning, moaning, screaming, clawing, panting and otherwise volcanic sexual activity in fiction these days is enjoyed beneath the hugely built paragon, Mr. Wishful Thinking.
But of all the incidents here presented for your inspection actually happened naturally, to friends of mine. However, you must not be misled into thinking that this is simply a sexual manual: I am not qualified to produce one. This is really a book about sailors, and if they like now and then to dip the old wick - well then, don't you?

CAPTAIN "Dutchy" Holland

196 Weapon Raid (1979)
WEAPON RAID
Sabotage? Design failure? Britain's top intelligence and Security are baffled... So Mettle V.C. is assigned to locate the vanishing secret missles.
Preparations are nearly complete for the firing of Britain's latest and most secret weapon. Incredibly, rockets fired from Woomera begin to disappear in the course of their flight. Is it due to some failure in design? Or to sabotage? These questions must be solved before Britain's new weapon can be launched. Intelligence and Security have failed to find a solution, so Captain Mettle, V.C., of the Royal Navy's Special Service is called in.
CAPTAIN Mettle V.C.

198 The Killers (1982)
THE KILLERS
What is the very worst that can happen to the captain of a warship at sea?
Grounding his ship? Mutiny on board? His ship sunk? All these are cruel enough - but there is one disaster so awesome it is simply unthinkable. Yet it happened to Dutchy Holland, captain of the new Battle-class destroyer Jackal, and it caused him a searing anguish he was never to forget.
"Torpedo!" he shouted through the reverberating resonance of the control room, "they've torpedoed the merchantman. Full-astern both motors! Tell Chief I want everything he's got!"
CAPTAIN "Dutchy" Holland

199 Killers II (1984)
KILLERS II
Hell bent on revenge, Admiral Oshima, Chief of Naval Operations in the Imperial Japanese Navy gives Dutchy Holland, captain of the new Battleclass destroyer Jackal, escorting the wounded submarine Teredo, a few sleepless days and nights as the hunter becomes the hunted.
"We will fight", Dutchy said, in a voice of iron.
"Standby to fire torpedoes".
CAPTAIN "Dutchy" Holland

201 James Brady Able Seaman (1985)
JIM BRADY ABLE SEAMAN
Having passed sentence, the captain went quickly aft to his cabin. The officers dispersed. Only Lieutenant Gordon stayed, numbly watching Mallard collect his papers, shaking his head in disbelief.
"My God, Master-at-Arms," he said at last, his voice thick, "You know what this means?"
"I know sir," Mallard answered, and had to wet his lips. "I saw it happen once, to the chief bosun's mate of a cruiser. I'll never forget it, I can see him now - sitting in the foc's'le messdeck in sailor's uniform, alone on the outboard end of the mess stool, his face turned to the ship's side so no one passing through could see it. Jesus...!"