Two in a Boat

LAST VOYAGE (310 pp.)--Ann Davison --Sloane ($4).

Many a fair dream has been crushed by a foreclosed mortgage. In 1949, the dream of Ann and Frank Davison was so close to reality that they resolved to defy the sheriff and achieve it. Theirs was not a new dream, but it was one that never loses its shine: they would sail around the world together in a small boat, and support themselves by writing about their adventures. They put all their money into buying and refitting the Reliance, a tough but rundown old 70-ft. fishing ketch, but they didn't have quite enough and they ran into debt. Before the Reliance was ready to sail, the mortgage holders began to close in. It was then, with the foreclosure notice already nailed to their dream-boat's mast, that the Davisons defied the sheriff and set off on their journey.

Last Voyage is a true story, and about two-thirds of it has the uninspired air that everyday truth imposes on any commonplace telling. Before the war, Frank Davison had run a small airport in Cheshire, England. He married Ann, a licensed pilot, soon after she went to work for him. The war put the Davisons' airport out of business, and they had to start from scratch at something new. As Ann tells it, the Davison saga was a succession of failures strung on a theme of hard luck. They tried gravel quarrying, farming, raising purebred goats. When Ann said, "You know, Frank, I could do with some real gut stirring," her husband said, "So could I." That led to the Reliance -- and an ordeal that lifts the final 100 pages or so of Last Voyage far above the commonplace.

From a little port on England's west coast, they struck out for Havana, and almost at once ran into a late spring storm. Afraid to put into an Irish port for fear of being picked up, they tried to make the open sea. Everything went wrong: the engine failed, the ship caught fire when a stove turned over, an anchor was lost, the sailing gear fouled. To save themselves and the boat, Ann and Frank worked themselves to exhaustion. For a while, Frank went out of his mind and his wife had to handle him and the ship through a smashing gale. Even after the Reliance was battered into helplessness, the Davisons refused help from passing ships, hoped to make a small port from which they could slip out when the weather cleared.

They never made it. Caught in the turbulent waters off Portland Bill in the south of England, Reliance was sent crashing on the rocks. For a whole night the Davisons clung to a tiny cork float in the freezing seas. Through pure luck, Ann was flung ashore, climbed away from the sea's reach with her last strength. Frank's adventure had ended sooner; his drowned body was found among the rocks.

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