Hall, James B. "The Cruise of the Bundle."

Hall's ironic World War 2 tale begins with a look at East Coast society lady do-gooders who have set up a local "Bundles for Britain" program more as a means to advance their social careers than anything else. He then contrasts them with the merchant mariners who, in a chartered rustbucket of a freighter (the fictitious S.S. KARAMAR, dubbed by the local press the "S.S. BUNDLE"), must actually transport the cast-off goods across the hostile North Atlantic. The ship's overage captain, officers "either ... too young or too old" (as a once-famous Hollywood canteen song put it) and bottom-of-the-barrel mariners all must put up with a vessel that's just this side of being a jinx ship. So over the Atlantic the BUNDLE limps, ever so slowly at 7 knots that she must sail out of convoy. Nearing Britain, the ship is spotted by the Luftwaffe, bombed and strafed, and sunk. Only one of her crew survives, and none of the junk assembled by the society dames reaches its destination. Hall angrily concludes his story, by noting "Back in the States, the Ladies heard nothing of the BUNDLE, but the publicity had done wonders."