Weidman, Jerome The Hand of the Hunter

At first glance author Jerome Weidman's choice of a protagonist for this World War 2 North Atlantic convoy novel seems an unusual one: a somewhat dull - though prosperous - 42 year old New York City accountant named Vincent Sloate, one of several passengers aboard a decrepit freighter (the fictitious SIRITH) which has been stuck in ice-bound Halifax harbor for 11 days waiting for an eastbound convoy. The novel is set in the early days of America's participation in the War and finds Sloate being sent by sea on an official mission to London (his mission isn't important enough to warrant air passage, which clearly irks the businessman). Though a take-charge kind of businessman at home, Sloate becomes disoriented, listless and out of his element at sea, and is easily buffeted from one shipboard acquaintance (and shipboard drama) to another.
As the ship's day's in harbor lengthen Sloate becomes intrigued with a female fellow passenger who proves to be fatally ill, gets involved with a rather gruesome pair of Liverpool stewards, learns to man one of the SIRITH's anti-submarine guns (the ship is undermanned, so male passengers are dragooned into artillery service), becomes part of a scheme to "lose" a DBS" ("Distressed British Seaman") assigned passage on the SIRITH and eventually (but futilely) attempts to quit the freighter rather than risk the dangerous North Atlantic passage. In the end, Sloate chooses to remain onboard having discovered that, for the first time ever, he was really experiencing a life he'd never lived, one of emotions and human needs.
Weidman's descriptions of the ramshackle freighter SIRITH are particularly well drawn, as are passages detailing wartime winter life in snowy maritime Halifax. Though the novel starts off a slow read, it picks up as Sloate's picaresque adventures unfurl during the SIRITH's penultimate 24 hours in port.