"Boston Blackie" "Coastal Diary."

Blue Book tag line: “What it feels like to steer a ship through the submarines off our East Coast,” billed by Blue Book as a “Prize Story from Real Experience.” This semi-fictionalized account of an East Coast voyage (Newport News to New York City) aboard an unidentified freighter possesses a veracity and immediacy which makes for compelling reading today, just as it did back in 1942 when first published. The story’s seaman narrator captures the stress of sailing in U-boat infested waters, as ship after nearby ship is torpedoed and strikes out S.O.S. on the wireless before sinking. Of the four vessels which departed Newport News at the beginning of his saga, only one makes it to port. “Boston Blackie” is decidedly a pseudonym; the real “Boston Blackie” was a fictitious gentleman burglar introduced by the author Jack Boyle to American magazine readers in the early ‘teens. Boyle’s hero was later featured in a series of films (silent and sound), as well as in a radio series in the 1930s and even as a 1950s television series.