The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester

I have just finished reading The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester.  It is the compelling fictional account of an American convoy escort commander in the North Atlantic in World War II.  

Forester is perhaps best known for his Napoleonic War Hornblower series which are also very good.  

From the blurb of The Good Shepherd.

The mission of Commander George Krause of the United States Navy is to protect a convoy of thirty-seven merchant ships making their way across the icy North Atlantic from America to England. There, they will deliver desperately needed supplies, but only if they can make it through the wolfpack of German submarines that awaits and outnumbers them in the perilous seas. For forty eight hours, Krause will play a desperate cat and mouse game against the submarines, combating exhaustion, hunger, and thirst to protect fifty million dollars' worth of cargo and the lives of three thousand men. Acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year upon publication in 1955, The Good Shepherd is a riveting classic of WWII and naval warfare from one of the 20th century's masters of sea stories.

I have read many autobiographical accounts by sailors and captains who participated in the Battle of the Atlantic from all three sides, the German submariners, the British and American Merchant Mariner, and the British and American Navies.  Forester's story is entirely consistent with all those accounts.

He does an especially good job of capturing the mental and physical duress associated with 24-72 hours and more without sleep while functioning at peak and sustained attention under dangerous (munitions) and tortuous (harsh weather) conditions.

Aside from enjoying this as an historical novel, there was another aspect to it which warrants drawing attention to.

Anyone in a high-intensity environment (combat, medical, certain types of business, aviation, etc.) would benefit from reading this story.  Forester is not editorializing but there is a point that comes through very clearly.  

In such high intensity environments, you have to maintain 360 degree awareness, situational awareness, process innumerable changing events, and constantly make rapid decisions based on incomplete and often unknowable information.  You cannot guarantee anything.  You are lucky if even half your decisions are good decisions.  As long as they are about the most important issues though, you can come out ahead despite the low success rate of any individual decision.  

Regulators and risk managers in particular would benefit/might enjoy this story.  Even the best people fail routinely and the task is never to achieve perfection but to achieve the best outcomes possible under the most difficult conditions conceivable.  

I enjoyed the story.