Pierce, Frank Richardson "Cargo for Vladistock."

World War 2 short story with Argosy tag lines reading “A story of our Fighting Merchant Marine” and “Salt-water badmen make good Merchant Marine heroes.” Pierce’s hero is old Captain Abner Sprague, a retired “shellback” (a mariner with sailing ship experience) who comes out of Snug Harbor retirement to help the Navy in a merchant mariner recruitment campaign. The Navy intends to portray old Sprague as a stellar example of patriotism for his willingness to assist in the war effort by assuming – at his advanced age – command of a freighter. Sprague believes the Navy’s freighter command offer to be legitimate (it isn’t; the Navy had planned to “retire” him again as soon as its patriotic PR hoopla dies down). When Sprague disovers he’s been made a chump he immediately goes on the defensive. Before long he is actually given a real command, the tired old West Coast freighter DUCKABUSH. There’s one (major) catch the ship is crewed by troublemakers and misfits no one else wanted. How the seemingly feeble Capt. Sprague tames his crew (these being the “modern times” of 1943, union rules won’t allow him to use a belaying pin on recalcitrant crew!) and then successfully brings his ship, out of its North Pacific convoy after a mechanical breakdown, safely to port in Vladivostok forms the crux of Richardson’s rather nifty war yarn. Along the way, the old DUCKABUSH takes on both a Japanese submarine and destroyer, sinking both.