Crebin, Edward Horace. "One Night in June."
Crebbin's World War 2 westbound convoy tale opens in the North Atlantic on a moonlit night aboard an unnamed English tramp freighter with a wonderfully patriotic passage that could have been penned by wartime Winston Churchill himself:
"These English merchant ships, in their proud, gallant, forward surge, were like forests of oak trees moving as one into battle. Some might be cut down in the conflict, but the main body would pass on. Nothing, it seemed, could stop that relentless, inexorable forward surge towards England." The night's calm is broken by an aerial attack (by a Focke-Wulfe Condor warplane, well-described by the author) in which Crebbin's freighter receives a direct hit by a huge bomb. Fortunately for the ship, the bomb does not explode though it does become entangled in the ship's deck works. After many tense minutes of difficult labor, the ship's crew, under the leadership of her 2nd Mate, succeed in pushing the giant monster overboard.
Perhaps the most noteworthy(and unexpected) aspect of Crebbin's short story is the presence of a female 2nd Engineer serving aboard the freighter. Though resented by some of the crew ("wimmen seems out of place on a ship" says one seaman), the 2nd Engineer ("Miss Ferguson" - naturally a Scots!) performs admirably during the aerial attack on the ship and receives accolades from the vessel's Chief Engineer, 1st Mate and 2nd Mate when that trio meet up later in a waterfront pub to celebrate their ship's safe passage.