The Captain Author:Jan De Hartog "This is a novel of the sea and it is on a grand scale. Its setting is, chiefly,the Murmansk run during WWII, surely one of the cruelest tests to which ships and men have ever been put, and on the cruelest of seas. — It's major theme is the making of a captain, that process by which - in war as in peace - a man is measured by the sea, by ships, b... more »y his fellows and by himself until it is shown that he has what it takes to stand responsible, after God, for the little world of the ship and the souls it contains.« less