When the Aurora is torpedoed, all on board must abandon ship. Five men, including a frail old priest and a sailor named Curtain, escape into a lifeboat. Curtain assumes responsibility and attempts to navigate the small craft through the vast ocean. As the days pass with no sign of rescue, the water runs low and the health of the old priest begins to fade. The characters of the five men, their strengths and weaknesses, begin to reveal themselves. Their innermost thoughts and dreams and beliefs are unfolded as their own frailty in the face of the power of the sea is made clear. James Hanley is one of the most unjustly neglected of twentieth century novelists, a writer who described the sea with the knowledge gleaned from nine years spent in the Merchant Navy, and The Ocean is a grim and beautifully written masterpiece.