Gentleman Overboard, first published in 1937, is a novella about a man (a Wall Street banker) who accidentally slips overboard while on a freighter-cruise ship bound from Honolulu to Panama City. The book moves back and forth between the thoughts of the man in the water as he comes to terms with his inevitable fate, and that of the ship's crew and fellow passengers, who search first the ship, then the sea. Gentleman Overboard was the first novel of author Herbert Clyde Lewis (1909-1950) who would go on to write three additional books. Lewis began his career as a journalist in China and New York City, followed by a time writing screenplays in Hollywood.