This weeks artwork by Hans Helweg is for Nicholas Monsarrat’s ‘The Ship That Died of Shame’ As has been told before the ship in the title was actually PAN’s boat the ‘Laloun. This was sold in 1949 to a consortium and was used to carry duty frees from North Africa to the South of France/Northern Italy (in other words ‘smuggling’ ) and was eventually caught. Picture above ‘Laloun’ and below one of the boats used in the film. “S-10, was converted to a private motor yacht, ‘mv Taifun’, at Falmouth Boat Construction, and In the film, she was MGB 1087 ‘after the war’. Three different boats were in fact used n the filming, S-10, MTB 528 and MTB ‘Gay Dragoon’. Sometime after the film was made ‘mv Taifun’ was sold and skippered by Hugh Edwards, the brother of the comedian Jimmy Edwards, motored to Tangiers and was ‘lost’ in ‘suspicious circumstances’ in the Mediterranean” (thanks to ‘British Military Powrboat Team’ website for this information) The story of what happened to the Taifun is told in the book ‘Midnight Trader’
Still going through Hans Helweg’s sketches and I found three that go with ‘Lonely Road’ by Nevil Shute 1968 edition. Looking at the later 1962 edition and the 1971 , these both feature the element of the burning truck as seen in the first edition with a cover by David Tayler. I think the later 1962 edition might be by Pat Owen as he did several which appeared in this ‘bands’ style. I could make a few guesses as to the 1971 but would love to know for certain.
Three James Bond related snippets this week. The first is one you probably already know about but I hadn’t noticed in until it was mentioned on a Facebook page that Rex Archer’s cover for ‘Diamonds are Forever’ bears an uncanny resemblance to James Meese’s ‘Widow’s Pique’ from Perma. The second is a photograph of ‘Moonraker’ covers coming off the presses while the third is a screen capture of ‘Jason King’ looking at a copy of ‘Goldfinger’ PAN published two ‘Jason King’ books written by John Burke under the name Robert Miall.