"Scrawled on the backs of envelopes and signal pads, (this) poem grew for two years while its author, aboard hundreds of merchant vessels, pursued his duties as Naval Boarding Officer. Some of the passages written in convoy were punctuated by the thump of underwater explosions. In this tale of a typical freighter Captain the reader meets the Merchant Navy seaman with a new intimacy - shares his dreams and the commonplace element s of his inarticulate heroism. The 'march of hearts that would not break', along the gray trails between the Old World and the New, gradually rises above its geographical bounds to reach a climax of spiritual significance in which the reader f i n d s himself a participant, not a spectator. (This) is primarily a story, written in simple narrative verse for the ordinary man afloat or ashore. At the same time it achieves its author's original objective: a tribute to the men who sail t h e Me rc ha nt Fleet from the men guard it."