Excerpt

The romance of the sea! Damned rubbish, he called it. The trade of seafaring was one way to earn a living. This was about all you could say for it. He had been lured into the merchant service as the aftermath of an enlistment in the Naval Reserve for the duration of the war. There was a great hurrah, as you will recall, over the mighty fleet of new cargo ships which were to restore the Stars and Stripes to blue water—Columbia’s return to the ocean, and all that—a splendid revival of the days of Yankee ships and sailors of long ago—a career for ambitious, adventurous American youth.