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Brown on Resolution is a nautical novel written by CS Forester. It is set during World War I. The hero of the novel, seaman Brown, is the sole survivor of British warship, picked up by one of the German warships of the German Asiatic Squadron, after German victory at the Battle of Coronel.
The Germans had a small squadron of modern vessels in the Far East. When war was declared the SMS Emden was detached, to serve as a commerce raider. The larger vessels of the squadron set out to return to Europe. The German squadron encountered an inferior British squadron off the coast of Chile, and defeated it at the Battle of Coronel. The Germans rounded Cape Horn, and encountered and was defeated by a superior British squadron at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. All the German ships were sunk in this battle, with the exception of the SMS Dresden. Dresden escaped back in to the Pacific Ocean.
In the novel the German vessel where Brown is a prisoner was damaged in the 2nd battle. Her captain plans to pull into an isolated, Pacific anchorage to try to repair his vessel. In the novel, he chooses Resolution Island, one of the Galapagos.
Resourceful Brown escapes, steals a rifle, some ammunition, and a small amount of ammunition, and makes his way ashore.
Her captain had already careened his vessel, so her main battery could not be brought to bear on Brown, and he was able to pick off exposed crew-members who are trying to repair her punctured hull plates. In Forester's description Resolution is a fairly inpenetrable tangle of scrub and thorn bushes.
Brown never learns that his actions delayed the repairs long enough that the German vessel fails to escape her British pursuers.
This novel has some parallels to Forester's similar novel Death to the French. In both novels the hero is an enlisted man, cut off, and acting alone. In both novels the enlisted man's dogged and surprisingly effective actions are attributed to a kind of instinctive shrewdness than to conscious planning.
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