Havighurst, Walter "First Command"
Adventure Magazine tag line: “Away from the flaming tanker rowed what remained of the SELKIRK’s crew. With a kind of terrible, lonely pride Second Mate Byer took the helm. His first command – a boatload of wounded on a waste of sea.” Havighurst seems prescient in this dramatic short story which features a plot sounding very much like the real-life Nov. 1942 saga of the famous tanker SAN DEMETRIO (which occurred nine months after Havighurst’s story was published). Havighurst focuses on the leadership abilities demonstrated by 2nd Mate Byer when the young man (only 26 years old) is forced to take command of a lifeboat filled with wounded and seasick sailors after their tanker had been set on fire by a Nazi surface raider. After wallowing in the rough seas of the North Atlantic, Byer and his men come upon the hulk of their ship, still afloat but also still on fire. They retake the ship, fight hard to put out her fires and eventually get the SELKIRK under way again. Days later the SELKIRK is met by a British naval vessel. Her captain asks 2nd Mate-turned-Captain Byer how he’d “done it,” and the young man replies (in the rousing traditions of the sea and of World War 2 maritime literature):
“What kept you going, Captain?”
Captain –
Second Mate Byer stared out at the dark sea. H e was too tired to think.
“You see, sir – it was my command.”