Ricci, Lewis Anselm da Costa "Ocean Convoy"

Published under the pseudonym “Bartimeus.” Veteran British seaman Joe Bignell, having survived a mid-Atlantic torpedoing and three days in an open boat during a gale, returns home & decides that he’s “finished with the sea and ships.” However, he runs into Captain Blackburn, under whom he served before, and all-too-soon the captain, now commanding the freighter OCEAN RAMPART, recruits Bignell who reluctantly returns to sea. Bignell’s worst fears are soon realized when his new ship is torpedoed in the dead of night a week or so later while in a North Atlantic convoy. The vessel’s survivors take to the lifeboats, with Captain Blackburn keeping the survivors’ spirits lifted through a combination of his “indominable spirit” and by playing his “precious” cornet! After a long, cold night at sea, the survivors are picked up by an American destroyer. As a coda we find Seaman Bignell returning home for a brief stay, but already signed on with Blackburn for another wartime voyage. In real life, Ricci was a Royal Navy Paymaster Captain, and, according to The Saturday Evening Post, served as an official “Naval Eye Witness” during World War 2. The Post goes on to state, “Ocean Convoy, we suspect, is a rare combination of fact and fiction.”