Pease, Howard The Black Tanker: The Adventures of a Landlubber on the Ill-Fated Last Voyage of the Oil Tank Steamer “Zambora.”

The most political of Pease’s novels in the “young adult” Tod Moran series, The Black Tanker can be seen as the author’s wake-up call to America regarding the nation’s need to take an active stand against Japanese and German worldwide aggression. Published in early 1941, just months before Pearl Harbor, the book is set aboard the oil tanker ZAMBORA and features Pease regulars Tod Moran (now a Third Officer), Captain Jarvis, Toppy the Cockney and ‘Swede’ Jorgenson. Also onboard is Rance Warren, Stanford University student, working as a wiper (and later oiler) in the ship’s engine room. The tanker is engaged to deliver aviation fuel to a Japanese air base located just outside Hong Kong, and Pease examines the dilemma faced by the ZAMBORA’s crew: though certainly “lawful”to sell and deliver the fuel to the Japanese, was it, given the continuing Japanese wholesale destruction of China, morally right? Pease forcibly argues (through the voice of Captain Jarvis) that America must soon either take sides in the worldwide conflagration or face aggressor nations such as Japan and Germany alone. In an ironic aside, a minor Pease character (a San Francisco stevedore) tells Rance that 90% of Japan’s scrap metal needs are being met by the U.S., and indeed are being shipped from West Coast ports -- and that these scrap materials are being turned into Japanese armaments.