O'Brien, Brian "Lagos Roads."

Two recurring World War 2 themes often found in tandem (the duplicity of Nazis versus the innate ingenuity of the Allies) come together with a third (that even “superannuated” old men could contribute to the war effort) in this satisfying yarn from the midpoint of the War. Set in the Atlantic off British Nigeria and also in the waters of colony’s Niger River delta, O’Brien’s story focuses on two old Welshmen who, with their Kru “boys,” run a battered, single-stacked freighter (the IBADAN) in the West African coasting trade. Dating to the late 19th Century, the old IBADAN had long been the pride of her master, Captain Hughes, though by 1939 she had been pretty much reduced to “1,500 tons of scrap and concrete held together by paint and rust.” But wartime exigencies made her valuable again, if only as a means to transport low-quality coal upriver to Port Harcourt. Returning to Lagos after one such run, the IBADAN is shelled by a German U-boat and then forced to serve as a decoy in order to let the Nazi sub get close in to an approaching Allied convoy consisting of many troopships loaded with American GIs. But old Hughes and his Chief (Mr. Morgan) had a trick or two up their sleeves as they first subtly lead the U-boat into relatively shallow waters and then run over the submarine with the IBADAN, breaking the back of the U-boat and also that of his beloved IBADAN in the process. By tale’s end Hughes and Morgan have been enthusiastically welcomed back in to the fraternity of shipping men and have even been offered a new, armed freighter. As the local Marine Services superintendent puts it, “ My God, if you two fire-eaters can sink a sub with a leaky old bucket like the IBADAN, you’ll sink the whole Nazi Navy with a gun.”