Wetjen, Albert Richard The Pleasure Is All Yours

The fictitious Portugese-registry passenger ship ALCAZAR is in reality the German sea raider KRANDORFF, heavily armed and capable of a sustained speed of 24 knots. Wetjen’s story opens with the ALCAZAR/KRANDORFF capturing the British freighter FAIRFAX and forcing her crew to take to the ship’s stripped lifeboats (the sea raider’s inhumane boarding party had tossed all oars, navigation equipment, sails, etc. overboard). Before sinking the FAIRFAX, though, the Nazis loot the FAIRFAX of her cargo and stores. And then, while her former crew watches helplessly, the FAIRFAX is shelled and sunk. That done, the raider steams off, leaving the FAIRFAX survivors alone to what the Germans plan will be eventual death on the high seas. But Wetjen has a surprise ending up his sleeve: no sooner than the KRANDORFF sets sail that the raider explodes into thousands of pieces and sinks rapidly into the sea with no survivors. Witnessing the firestorm, the FAIRFAX’s captain tartly observes: “I’d never have believed that time bombs in cased goods would have done the trick so neatly.” It is soon revealed that the FAIRFAX was really a decoy vessel, and one whose cargo was booby trapped especially for the German raider that Allied naval authorities had been tracking. Utilizing a wireless hidden in one of the lifeboats, the FAIRFAX survivors communicate their position to waiting naval vessels, and the story concludes with rescue in the offing. For another World War 2 short story utilizing this very same plot twist (i.e., timed bombs in cased goods) see Allan R. Bosworth’s “You Always Remember,” which had appeared in the Mar. 21, 1942 issue of Liberty Magazine.