The First Mate, by Harry Collingwood.
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The hero of this story is Walter Leigh, who takes a job as second mate
aboard a gasoline-powered yacht owned by a Mrs Vansittart, whose
husband is an American industrialist. Julius Vansittart is a rather
nasty 12-year-old, who, despite his life being saved by Leigh, when he
had fallen overboard, hates the English, and never misses an opportunity
of being as unpleasant as possible, even to the point of stupidity.
There are numerous disasters in this story, with the First Mate's death
occurring soon after the start of the book, and Leigh's promotion to the
position. After that there are an attack by pirates, a shipwreck, an
attack by hostile natives, all of which Leigh does his best to cope
with. Eventually even the dreadful Julius becomes a bit more civilised,
and apologises for his bad behaviour hitherto.
They drop a large number of floating messages asking for help, into the
sea, and eventually they are rescued. This is not a very long book,
taking only 8.5 hours to read as an audiobook.
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THE FIRST MATE, BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD.