O'Reilly, Tom Purser's Progress: The Adventures of a Seagoing Office Boy
O'Reilly's delightfully humorous Purser's Progress may be a bit closer to "faction" than true fiction, based as it is upon O'Reilly's very real experiences as Purser aboard a Liberty ship that he has dubbed the "S.S. MULLIGAN STEW." Set in 1942, the novel follows the ship on a round-trip voyage from the East Coast of the United States to the Suez Canal by the most roundabout of routes: south through the Caribbean to the Panama Canal and then west out into the Pacific, south along the western coast of South America, round Cape Horn and then across the South Atlantic to South Africa, from whence the MULLIGAN STEW headed north up the Indian Ocean to Aden and into the Suez Canal. The ship's return trip pretty much retraced that route, though once safely back in South America the MULLIGAN STEW headed north up the Atlantic back home.
Our titular Purser had never been further out to sea than the Staten Island ferry, so he gets naturally himself into one comical scrape after another. His growing affection and respect for the professional seamen manning the MULLIGAN STEW is soon evident, with his descriptions of Liberty shipboard being both informative and humorous. Additionally, artist Hershfield's wickedly funny pen-and-ink drawings posted as chapter headings add greatly to the book's period feel.
And O'Reilly really does get down to the very psychology of merchant seamen and life at sea with particular reference to the Second World War, observing at one point:
"An American seaman will fight [the enemy], but he'll wear no man's collar [i.e., join the Navy]. He loves to shock people by saying that he's at sea to duck the draft. This attitude confuses landlubbers, who don't realize that seamen secretly feel that people who join the Marine Corps are dodging the draft, too - it's just a matter of choice. Seamen are loyal, courageous, boisterous, undisciplined, proud, defiant, and breath-taking. No man could do the magnificent things they have done for mere money. But don't let them kid you. They are as patriotic as George M. Cohan, but they are individuals who insist on facing the enemy with their own personal pitchfork. They not only know their business, but each one feels the ship couldn't move two feet without him. That's what is called morale."
Note that the novel was originally published serially in PM, a New York City daily newspaper for which author O'Reilly had been a sports writer before the War.