Hardy, William M. The Ship They Called the Fat Lady.

Hardy's highly sympathetic World War 2 tale focuses on the key role a former cargo-liner turned submarine tender played in the defense of Manila, the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island in the Philippines against invading Japanese forces during the months from Dec. 1941 through April 1942. As the author himself notes in a foreword, the novel is a fictitious treatment of actual events centered around the role played by the U.S. Navy submarine tender U.S.S. CANOPUS during those crucial early months of American participation in the war. The real-life CANOPUS had originally been built for Grace Line and entered commercial service in 1919 as the SANTA LEONORA. She was taken over by the Navy in the early 1920s and converted as a submarine tender. By the time war broke out in Dec. 1941 the vessel was in Manila harbor, and she remained on duty through the difficult months of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Her crew scuttled the CANOPUS in early April 1942 to prevent the ship from coming under Japanese control; the gallant former liner was subsequently awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Area Service medal with one Battle star for the Philippine Island operation, Dec. 1941-April 1942. In his novel, Hardy changed the vessel's name to U.S.S. RIGEL and also changed the names of the ship's officers and crew. Many readers will come away from the novel with a very real affection for the ship herself, and a visceral understanding of why her officers and crew so loved their ungainly, old "Fat Lady."