Carse, Robert "The Bosun's Mite."

This short story’s tag line pretty much sums up Carse’s somewhat thin plot: “It was a bitter, implacable feud between Bosun Jake Ketcham and the little sailor, Bill Fox. Ketcham was big and dumb and Fox was undersized and smart – but there was more to it than size and brains.” Set in 1944 and 1945 aboard two American freighters, with the first of the ships (the fictitious PLANK) being torpedoed and sunk while in an Atlantic convoy.