Ross, David Allan "Ghost Ship"

This South Seas pulp novella is set during the period Dec. 7, through mid-January 1942. American skipper Bill Sudbury lands his auxiliary trading brig (the FLIGHT) at Maniti Island (“the nastiest, most isolated and undesirable sinkhole” in the Society Group) on Dec. 7, 1941 and promptly finds himself interned by Maniti’s pro-Vichy resident administrator. But there’s more than internment afoot: the isolated atoll has become a hotbed of Japanese and Nazi intrigue with enemy agents already in residence there. Indeed, shortly after the FLIGHT’s internment, a large, 20,000 ton cargo-liner filled with Germans arrives and is openly welcomed by the French resident. In a plot that trades on Axis duplicity versus American cunning and inventiveness, it turns out that the Nazi vessel is a sea raider, and one that has been fitted out to resemble a neutral Swedish vessel (the STAR OF NORWAY) which is currently somewhere in the South Pacific carrying British and American diplomats from Japan to Australia after their German and Japanese counterparts had been carried to Japan. The STAR OF NORWAY is scheduled to hook up shortly with an Allied convoy which includes several large troopships filled with American soldiers (this part of the story seems even more far-fetched than what has gone before it: surely a neutral “diplomat ship” would not travel in an armed belligerent’s convoy). The Huns’ fiendish (remember, this was written at the height of hostilities) plot: use the sea raider to track down the real STAR OF NORWAY before she makes her convoy rendezvous, sink the ship (an act against all the rules of diplomacy) and then have the “faux” STAR OF NORWAY infiltrate the convoy and, once in position, use torpedoes and concealed armament to destroy as many of the troopships in the convoy as possible. Whew! Needless to say, Captain Sudbury foils the plot and by tale’s end is preparing to enlist in the U.S. Navy. This being pulp fiction, there’s also a pretty, blonde damsel in distress (she’s a Canadian former showgirl (don’t ask!) being held hostage on Maniti by the pro-Vichy resident). And besides being duplicitous, the Nazis and Japanese are all depicted as brutal and blood-thirsty. Pro-Vichy French come in for pretty much the same criticism. And you thought the South Seas were peaceful and idyllic!