Watkins, Richard Howells "A Shift in Cargo"

The freighter ALICE CLISSOLD, with a deckload of “jeeps, peep and trucks” is caught in a fierce storm en route from Brooklyn to Puerto Rico and appears to be sinking after much of the cargo in her holds shifts. A last ditch effort by her crew to re-stow the cargo seems her only hope. At that precise moment one of her crew, knowing back in Brooklyn that the cargo was being improperly and hastily stowed by two “Hatch Foremen” (i.e., stevedores) more interested in making high dockside wages than ensuring the safety of the ships they worked on, reveals that he had imprisoned the two men aboard the ship. They are forced to put their own lives in the balance and re-stow the cargo correctly. Though Watkins’ plot is implausible at best, he does make an interesting point in showing that not all of the merchant navy’s World War 2 enemies were on the high seas.