The Real Poseidon Adventure: Debut Book is a Sprawling Sea Tale

Unlike most of his peers in their literar y debuts, author Steven Schwankert is interested in a heartier catch – a British submarine that sank in Chinese waters.

Poseidon: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine’s opening paragraphs focus on the HMS Poseidon’s unsuspecting hero, Irish petty officer Patrick Henry Willis. Schwankert writes that Willis was born on Saint Patrick’s Day and recited the Our Father before duty – all of which would be heavyhanded, if not cripplingly clichéd, had they not occurred in real life.

“This is a story about searches: underwater, on islands, in cemeteries…online and in libraries and archives,” he writes. But then Schwankert quickly grows audacious, dismissing the classic 1969 Paul Gallico novel The Poseidon Adventure in favor of his own pages, which apparently amount to a “true tale of heroism… (that) surpasses any fictional tale and resonates into the present.”

That ambition may be grandiose, but it’s still commendable.

And while the book probably won’t inspire blockbuster film adaptations like Gallico’s (although a companion documentary has already been made), it is still brimming with compelling twists and globetrotting intrigue – featuring eclectic locales like London, the Greek Isles, and Shandong province.

But the book’s biggest joys come from the quirky details that he researched so painstakingly. Examples include the fact that Herbert Hoover had once lived in the Chinese port city of Tianjin; the description of an early, hand-cranked submarine prototype, that looked “like an upturned coconut,”; and the author’s fast-food hierarchy of Chinese cities, on which ranks Weihai as a “KFC town.”

Schwankert also turns phrases with ease during the book’s grander moments, detailing how he gave a “few more fin kicks” alongside the wreckage of one of Poseidon’s sister subs in the depths of the Ionian Sea. The chapter’s wonder deepens when he describes (among other things) how the once menacing vessel, from its bottom, looks like a sleeping whale.

The author attempts (somewhat unsuccessfully) to infuse equal drama into a latter scene at a more generic locale – Beijing’s Union Bar & Grille, where he first learns of the grander political thread tangled up in Poseidon’s knotted history. The segment is a bit anti-climactic after the preceding, passionately-detailed Mediterranean diving scene. Yet, the surrealism of that moment delivers a decent amount of closure to a truly sprawling adventure.

Never theless readers will likely be more captivated by Poseidon’s earlier pages. Schwankert peppers those initial chapters with commendable real life characters like Bernard Galpin, the vessel’s sports-obsessed captain. However Willis, the pious Irish Petty Officer, is this story’s true star, and the writer makes him shine, again and again.

Case in point, the author’s uncanny research that unearthed the hero’s chilling rendition of being trapped in a sinking sub: “According to Willis’s account, there was no time to be scared: ‘I told [the other men] not to get in any panic, as it was all right… The lights during this time had gone out. I then got them all together when I had my DSEA gear on, and then said prayers for all hands. I told them they all had a good opportunity of being saved…”

Disclosure: Steven Schwankert is Managing Editor of the Beijinger.

Poseidon: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine is now available on the Hong Kong University Press website, and available at The Bookworm, Amazon.com, and fine bookstores everywhere.

Read it on your Kindle here or get it on the Google Play Store.