A Monsarrat Melodrama There have always been superstitions among sailors. Mr. Nicholas Monsarrat made skilfull use of one of them in a story that was broad-' cast last night in the B.B.C. Light Programme as the first of a new series of radio adaptations. In this case the superstition is that a ship may have a soul, or at any jrate a conscience. The captain and first lieutenant of a gunboat that survived many daring exploits in the Channel during the war use the same vessel in peacetime for smuggling. t'he sometime lieutenant is now the prime mover. Not con- tent with the profits on running brandy and, nylons across from France, he goes on to machine-guns, to dangerous drugs, stolen bullion, and, finally, to taking a wealthy child- mnurderer out of the country on what is planned to be the last voyage. This is to be the end, but it is the end in a way he did not foresee. The little ship that had seemed to lose heart more than once as it was used for more and more infarnous purposes gives up in the storm and the only survivor is the former captain, wbo has been its navigator. He, rather improbably, swims ashore to spend the next 10 years in prison pondering on the reasons tshy the gunboat's engines stopped as though the heart of the ship itself had failed. This melodramatic story made no great demands on such experienced actors as Mr. Norrnan Wooland and Mr. Trevor Howard, as the rather spineless skipper and the lieutenant who became an adventurer in the worst sense of the word. These thoroughly capable per- formances were assisted by the general authen- ticity of atmosphere in the dramatization- bv Captain Kenneth Langmaid, R.N., and a good production'by Mr. Raymond Raikes. A MONSARRAT MELODRAMA ' "THE SIIP THAT DIED OF SHAM[LE "