Marryat spent close to half his life at sea, and it shows in his writing. The "feel" of ship life, of the camaraderie and feuds among the tough men who make up the crews, the details of foreign trading posts, the political issues facing the merchant marine of the time, these are all clearly written from personal experience. Marryat's writing, similar to that of his contemporary Philip Meadows Taylor (Confessions of a Thug, 1839) almost completely avoids the convoluted and adjective-laden prose of the Gothic novel, opting instead for a simply written straightforward adventure narrative, which once it gets going doesn't let up. This isn't to say that The Phantom Ship reads like the latest Clive Cussler novel. Certainly the scenes of courtship between the hero, Philip Vanderdecken, and his soon-to-be wife Amine need to be taken in their historical context. Lines like

"Indeed, Amine! who could have expected such courage and such coolness in one so young and beautiful?" exclaimed Philip, with surprise.

The Phantom Ship tells of Philip Vanderdecken's promise to his mother, on her deathbed, to bring a piece of the "True Cross" to his father, captain of the Phantom Ship who is doomed to sail and torment sailors until the Judgment Day, after murdering his ship's pilot. He meets the lovely Amine, a girl of Middle Eastern origin and they are married. Philip's attempts to reach his father are unsuccessful and he is continually finding himself in the presence of the seemingly unkillable Schriften, an emaciated one-eyed gargoyle of a sailor. When Amine becomes a victim to the Inquisition, Philip breaks down, and it is only many years later that he finally meets his father and the role of Schriften is finally revealed.

What most impressed me in The Phantom Ship, particularly given the date it was written, was Marryat's strong message for religious tolerance. Given that Simon Ockley's 1708 work The History of the Saracens, a work which viciously denigrated the Moslem faith and its practitioners, would have remained the authoritative work on Islam in Marryat's time, it is pretty clear that Marryat's opinion of Moslems was one based on personal interaction and not religious or "historical" conventions. The religious persecution of his Huguenot ancestors by Roman Catholics may have contributed to his portrayal of Roman Catholics as intransigent sadists, and in particular the Inquisition as far worse than anything a follower of Islam or any ancient traditional "magic" could be. Amine's final indictment of the priest whose evidence sent her to the stake

"'Unhappy woman!' you say?" replied she, "say rather, 'unhappy priest:' for Amine's sufferings will soon be over, while you must still endure the torments of the damned. Unhappy was the day when my husband rescued you from death. Still more unhappy the compassion which prompted him to offer you an asylum and a refuge. Unhappy the knowledge of you from the first day to the last. I leave you with your conscience - if conscience you retain - nor would I change this cruel death for the pangs which you in your future life will suffer. Leave me -- I die in the faith of my forefathers, and scorn a creed that warrants such a scene as this."

All this is not to say that The Phantom Ship isn't action-packed, but it certainly is not a mere piece of escapist literature. It is also not a happy novel, indeed there is a feeling of ultimate doom which hovers throughout the novel, and when the hero does discover the key to his father's redemption, he doesn't get to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of toils, tribulations and heartbreak. If it hadn't been written 100 years before Cornell Woolrich's "Black" novels it might even have been termed a "noir" novel. Given the intercultural and inter-faith hatred of the current days it is good to think that there were men, even some 160 years ago, with sufficient life experience and independent thought to see through the religious/cultural prejudices of their time and be open to diversity.