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Lot 832
A Gene Fowler manuscript of The Jervis Bay Goes Down
30 November 2016, 12:00 EST
New YorkUS$800 - US$1,200
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A Gene Fowler manuscript of The Jervis Bay Goes Down
Typed manuscript signed, 11 pp with additional title page, 4to, 1940, inscribed, "Merry X-mas / To Bessie / and / Mike / Gene Fowler, 1940." At the start of World War II, the liner H.M.S. Jervis Bay was shoddily impressed into service as a warship. In November, 1940, while escorting a convoy of merchant ships, the ship was attacked by a German battleship, retaliated, and sunk, but in so doing, almost all of the convoy survived. The ship's destruction came to represent England's bravery in the face of Germany's armed forces. This poem recounting the Jervis Bay disaster by journalist and author Gene Fowler was first published in 1941; all proceeds from it went to the Bundles for Britain Fund.




















