Author: James MacNell (J.E. Macdonell)
Publisher: The Children’s Press
Published: Unknown (around 1958?)

Captain Mettle V.C. was the first in a series of children’s adventure books written by Australian author J.E. Macdonnell under the pen name James MacNell.

Mettle isn’t exactly a spy, he is a Navy commander, but his adventures, and the type of assignments thrust upon him, go beyond the boundaries of a typical naval adventure. They certainly fall within the parameters of an espionage novel.

As the story opens, Captain Mettle is on the bridge of the destroyer, Scorpion, steaming towards Hong Kong for a very important meeting with the Admiral controlling the China station. Aside from Mettle, the opening chapter also introduces the reader to Mettle’s second-in-command, Cuthbert Crabbe de Courcy – known to all and sundry as Crabby. Crabby always appears tired, and bored – however despite this projection of lethargy, whenever there is a crisis, he is a man of swift and vigorous action.

The other character of note is Hooky Hogan, the chief bosun’s mate. Hooky, as his nickname suggests, has a hook where his right hand should be. The introduction to Hooky happens when one of the crew falls overboard. Hooky is the first into the lifeboat sent off to rescue the man. However, before they can drag in and rescue the the flailing and thrashing crewman, a giant shark spears its way through the water towards him. Hooky leaps into the water, drags the crewman out of harms way, and then with his hook, splits the shark along its belly as it speeds past.

Upon arrival in Hong Kong, and after a meeting with Admiral Sterne, Mettle is assigned to command a torpedo boat and track down a band or pirates who have been plundering the shipping lanes out of Hong Kong. Recently four merchant ships have simply vanished from the area. Mettle hand picks two crewmen to come with him on the mission – Crabby and Hooky – and they set off in their quest to stop the piracy.

It doesn’t take long for Mettle and his crew to encounter the pirates after they tuck in behind a merchant ship transporting a shipment of guns to Shanghai. Naturally the pirates attempt to steal the shipment, and send out a fake distress signal from a junk in front of the vessel. The cargo ship stops to offer assistance, and the pirates storm on board.

Mettle and his ship mates stop the assault, and with their torpedo boat, stop the junk and a flotilla of other small craft from making off with the cargo. But the men that Mettle captures are just the worker bees, and he is after ‘The Brain’ behind the operation. After interrogating one of the prisoners, Mettle is given directions to an old temple on mainland China.

As the story plays out, the events that led to Hooky losing his hand are retold, and it concerns a villain named Li Fang Fu; a man who specialises in torture – especially the fabled ‘death by a thousand cuts’. In one of those coincidences that can only occur in an adventure story like this, it so happens that Li Fang Fu is also the head of the pirate organisation, and as our trio close in, he has a reception committee waiting.

Captain Mettle in action!

I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by Captain Mettle VC. I have read a few of J.E. Macdonnell’s Mark Hood spy adventures, and while I have found them hugely enjoyable, it can generally be accepted that they are wafer thin slices of sixties spy pulp entertainment. So I expected the Mettle books – which are aimed at children – to be dumbed down and desexualised versions of the Hood books – or at least in style. While the story is quite simple – no more or less than some of the Hoods – I found it refreshing that Macdonnell didn’t tone down – or dumb down – his writing. The story doesn’t shy away from adult themes, like death, torture and drugs. However their is no sex. If these books were aimed at boys, I am guessing it is teenage readers rather than youngsters. That’s why I have enjoyed Charlie Higson’s Young Bond and Anthony Horrowitz’s Alex Rider books, because they didn’t dumb down their stories for their audience, and neither did Macdonnell when creating Captain Mettle.

As can be expected from a book of this vintage, the story and characters are frightfully racist. With the villains of the piece being Chinese pirates, over the course of the novel every derogatory term for the Chinese is used, and a few I have not heard before. The characters also chain smoke throughout the story. These attributes in a modern novel, aimed at the adult market, would be derided as being antiquated and xenophobic, but if they were presented in a contemporary novel aimed at children, and remember this is a novel aimed at teenage boys, then the author could find protesters on their front lawn. Times have certainly changed. But judging the content by today’s standards is not fair, and to be honest, I cannot see this book appealing to the current crop of young readers. It’s probably only of interest to readers like my self, who are interested in author, J.E. Macdonnell or vintage pulp and naval fiction.

All in all, Captain Mettle VC is a rollicking spy adventure which is thoroughly enjoyable, and on the strength of it, I would be happy to read more of Mettle’s adventures. Other books in the Captain Mettle series are, Mettle Dives Deep and Mettle at Woomera.

Author: James MacNell (J.E. Macdonnell)
Publisher: The Childrens Press
Published: Unknown (around 1958?)

Mettle Dives Deep is the second of the Captain Mettle children’s adventure books by J.E. Macdonnell, writing as James Macnell. As it is the second book, no time is wasted introducing the characters, so the action begins from the get-go.

It opens with Admiral Sterne briefing Mettle on his next mission. Mettle and his crew – including the perpetually bored Crabby, and bosun’s mate Hooky Hogan – on board the Naval destroyer, Scorpion are now a ‘Special Services’ unit, which I guess is the navy’s equivalent of being some kind of naval spy squad. Their assignment is to track down a cadre of gunrunners who have being smuggling weapons to groups of terrorists in the Mediterranean. Nobody knows how the gunrunners are doing it, because the coast is being watched day and night. The Scorpion sails off at speed to unravel the mystery and capture those responsible.

This second outing plays a bit more like a naval adventure, than the first Mettle book, but that is not such a bad thing. By accident, Mettle and his crew stumble on the path of a midget submarine – the asdic equipment was conveniently being tested at the time. The story then reverts to a good old submarine hunting story, with the bad guys lying silently on the sea bed, hoping that the destroyer will move on believing they have lost the signal. Meanwhile, Mettle believes that the lost signal might be a trick, with the sub lying doggo at the bottom, so he has the engines cut, and everybody on board remain dead silent. I know it’s the type of thing that we have seen in just about every submarine movie ever made – particularly The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum. But it still reads rather well, and creates a bit of tension.

The choice by Macdonnell, to have the villains of the piece use a Japanese midget submarine is an interesting one. Midget submarines were used on numerous occasions in World War II, but as an Australian, the submarine attack on Sydney Harbour was no doubt, indelibly burnt into Macdonnell’s mind. While the actual attack, on Sydney is generally regarded as a failure, the psychological aspect of the attack can not be underplayed. Even as a boy, I was told tales of the day that Japanese subs snuck into Sydney and bombed Australia. They didn’t actually ‘bomb’ Australia. They fired torpedoes at ships in the harbour, but the event almost became an an urban myth, with the story and facts being greatly distorted with each telling… but such was the psychological power of the attack. I am sure it is still an event that resonates extremely strongly with older Australians. By choosing midgets submarines, for Australian readers, Macdonnell’s story certainly evokes the memory of the Japaneses attack, and he uses it to his advantage.

After waiting on the bottom for half an hour, the villains decide to start their engines and high tail it out of there. But Mettle is waiting, and has the Scorpion crew deliver a string of depth charges. The villains, and their sub full of guns and dynamite, which just may blow, head to the surface and surrender. The gunrunners are taken into custody. Of course, the submariners are just evil minions, and Mettle is after the big Kahuna – a man known as the ‘Squeaker’ due to his high pitched voice.

Mettle undertakes his own little mission where he takes the place of the gunrunners in the sub – accompanied by Hooky, and an fiery red-headed engineer know quite simply as ‘Engines’. Ultimately, Mettle Dives Deep is an adventure story, so as you’d expect it should have some of the trappings of a ‘Boy’s Own Adventure’ book – and having laid the ground work, with having Mettle and his crew inside a midget sub, what do you think happens next? If you remember my review of the first Mettle book, you may recall that Hooky tangled with a shark – so sharks are out – so if you said a giant octopus, then give yourself top marks. You are absolutely correct.

Mettle and Hooky sail to Basra and meet the gunrunners, in the process getting into a gun fight and stealing a plane – just par for the course for the boys. As the links in the gunrunning chain are broken, Mettle and his team end up of the coast of Somaliland with the villains holed up on a boat in a coastal crater lake (had to get that volcano motif in there somehow!)

Mettle has twenty of his best men, all armed, don frogman outfits and storm the lake. While the climax to this book is pretty exciting, the actual final confrontation with the villainous ‘Squeaker’ is a bit of a let down. There’s not really a cathartic coup de gras, and as such the final pages flounder at little.

However, there is still a lot of fun to be found in this Captain Mettle adventure. As I mentioned above, it is more of a naval adventure than Captain Mettle V.C. with much of the action taking place either on the destroyer, Scorpion or on a captured miniature submarine. That’s not a bad thing, but I must admit, I would have liked to see Mettle carrying out more of his own brand of derring-do on land. But a small quibble. Next up, to close out the series is Captain Mettle at Woomera, which I predict, given the Australian based story, will be more land based.