Watkins, Richard Howells "Court Ship"

Comic Second World War short story about a young mariner’s coming of age. Set aboard the fictitious American freighter MARGARET BLACKENHAM during two successive eastbound convoys across the North Atlantic as well as at an “unknown British port” where the young man precipitously falls in love with beautiful shop girl “Rosemary ‘Arris.” Miss Harris is no innocent — indeed she’s a “Mrs.” who’s been around the matrimonial block a half dozen times or so in a bigamous con scheme to receive allotments from each of her various husbands! Our hero, happily, escapes her ensnarement (and indeed Rosemary is arrested for bigamy near the conclusion of Watkins’ tale). A related subplot, also comic, turns on the heated rivalry — in convoy and at port between the crews of the “MARGIE” and another freighter, the WHITE CRANE. For two other Watkins short stories set aboard the MARGIE BLACKENHAM see the author’s “Morale in the Margie” (1942) and “The Spy-Gazers” (1944).