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 Highly
successful novelist, who published 35 books. Innes wrote in the
tradition of Buchan and Haggard. His hobbies, travel and ocean racing,
reflected in his plots.
Hammond Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, of Scottish descent.
He was educated at Cranbrook School, Kent, and graduated in 1931.
From 1934 to 1940 he worked as a staff member of the Financial
News (later Financial Times), and then served in the
Royal Artillery (1940-46) before becoming a fulltime writer. In
1937 he married Dorothy Mary Lange. She died in 1989.
Innes's first novel, THE DOPPELGANGER, appeared in 1937. It was
followed by three other works - all these early books Innes later
rejected, not because of the leftist views he infiltrated between
the lines, but because he considered them more or less clumsy.
In 1940 appeared WRECKERS MUST BREATHE and THE TROJAN HORSE, published
by Collins. Innes began writing The Trojan Horse just after
the Russian invasion of Finland in 1939. A month after completing
the book he joined the army, and was sent overseas. In 1941 Innes
published a war novel, ATTACK ALARM, which was the only story of
the Battle of Britain written on a gunsight under fire. Innes then
edited army magazines in four countries. He did not return to England
for three years. Before World War II he had written DEAD AND ALIVE,
which appeared in 1946 and dealt with the black market in Rome and
Napoli. After the war Innes devoted himself entirely to writing,
becoming one of the most popular thriller writers. Until 1953 he
also published children's books under the pseudonym Ralph Hammond.
THE ANGRY MOUNTAIN (1950) was a story of an attempt to fly out
a Czech pilot who had fought in the Battle of Britain. Its depiction
of a volcanic eruption was based on Innes's own experiences on Vesuvius.
In 1944 Innes saw the centre of the mountain explode. "It was
Pompeii over again. We knew what was going to happen; yet we felt
no fear. It was all too vast." AIR BRIDGE (1951) set the pattern
for Innes's future work. It was written immediately after Innes
had flown the Berlin airlift in a York transport loaded with coal.
After witnessing the planes endlessly rolling into the Tempelhof,
day and night, Innes decided that he would never start on a book
until he had personally researched the background. The story begins
in England, where Bill Saeton is building a new aeroplane engine
and planning to make fortune. He blackmails Neil Fraser, an ex-RAF-pilot
to help him.
"The devil of it was the man's enthusiasm was infectious.
I can see him now, talking softly in the hubbub of the bar, his
eyes glittering with excitement, smoking cigarette after cigarette,
his voice vibrant as he reached out into my mind to give me the
sense of adventure that he felt himself. The essence of his personality
was that he could make others believe what he believed. In any
project, he gave himself to it so completely that it was impossible
not to follow him. He was a born leader. From being an unwilling
participant, I became a willing one."
(from Air Bridge)
 In
the 1960s Innes started to spend more time on the background work
for his novels and slowed down his publishing speed. Innes also
began to purchase land in Suffolk, Wales, and Australia, in order
to protect the environment and plant trees. In the 1980s he pondered
the ecological questions in some of his books. HIGH STAND (1985)
was set in the wilderness of the Klondike; THE BLACK TIDE (1982)
was a story about pollution. An earlier work, THE DOOMED OASIS (1960)
was about saving an oasis from extinction. In the late 1950s Innes
had been ashore with the first oil expedition on the Arabian coast
of the Indian Ocean. NORTH STAR (1975), a story of infiltration
and sabotage in the North Sea, also focused on oil. It was started
while Innes was on board the Shell rig Staflo in the autumn
of 1972, but finished two years later. "...World events caught
up with me - the Arab-Israeli war, the oil embargoes, the shortages,
the price rises... Suddenly North Sea oil was on everybody's lips,
the one bright spot in the prevailing gloom. In these circumstances,
I felt it essential to bring the book forward..."
Innes's other books, translated into over thirty languages, include
THE LONELY SKIER (1947), BLUE ICE (1948), CAMBELL'S KINGBOM (1952),
THE WRECK OF MARY DEARE (1956), ATLANTIC FURY (1962), and LEVKAS
MAN (1971). GOLDEN SOAK (1973) was set in the Australia when the
great mineral boom of 1969-70 began to collapse. For the novel,
Innes travelled the trail through the Ophthalmia Range from Mt Newman
to Mt Robinson.
The central theme in Innes's work is man against the forces of
nature. In several stories the main character is searching the past
in a remote location. Innes travelled to many parts of the world
to ensure the authenticity in his works. He sailed to Antarctica
for THE WHITE SOUTH (1949), to the islands of Greece for Levkas
Man, and to the Indian Ocean for THE STRODE VENTURER (1965).
As in the novels of Andrew Garve, Innes's knowledge of the sea and
ships, and his own experiences as a seaman, provided material for
his books. He was also vice-president of the Association of Sea
Training Organization.
 Innes
historical works include THE CONQUISTADORS (1969) and THE LAST VOYAGE
(1978), a fictionalised account of Captain Cook's voyage. His last
novel, DELTA CONNECTION, appeared in 1996, and included all the
familiar elements of a Hammond Innes book: daring escapes, cliffhanging
situations, and overpowering forces of nature. In the story an English
mining engineer escapes from Romania with a young mysterious woman.
Their adventures lead to Afghanistan and to struggle for survival
among the word's highest mountains.
Innes was awarded a C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire)
in 1978. He received the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement award in
1993.
Several of Innes's works have been adapted for screen. An interesting
but unrealised production was Alfred Hitchcock's version of the
novel The Wreck of Mary Deare. The book belonged to MGM,
and they got the director interested in the work. Hitchcock liked
the powerful opening image of a ship drifting, deserted, in the
English Channel. The rest was a courtroom drama in manifold flashbacks
explaining the mystery. Hitchcock continued to develop ideas with
his scriptwriter Ernest Lehman, but finally gave up the project.
Atlantic Fury (1962) - The story is set in the World War
II. Iain Ross had been disgraced, and then drowned at sea, or
so his family believed. A mission takes his brother Donald to
the Hebrides to meet a Major Braddock, who is running the evacuation
of the army base on the island of Laerg. Donald finds his brother
living a new life in a dead mans name. Winter is closing in, and
Braddock has his own reasons for wanting the army and Donald Ross
off Laerg as quickly as possible, even in the face of a furious
storm building out in the Atlantic.
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