Wolfe, Reese "Coffin Ship"

This World War 2 story boasts a Maclean’s tag line worthy of the most lurid pulp fiction: “A killer ship battles the Coral Sea; aboard her, a drama of death and new life.” Wolfe’s “drama” revolves around Captain Hardiman of the old freighter SULU STAR, and it opens in Australia as the aged vessel prepares to sail in convoy across the Pacific. All’s not well with the SULU STAR, and indeed the ship’s corrupt Greek owner has arranged with Captain Hardiman to sink the ship while en route to San Francisco in order to collect insurance monies. (Wolfe is positively venomous about the Greek shipowner and about “murky little one-ship companies growing fat on the war”). Right on schedule, the ship suffers an engine room breakdown in the Coral Sea, loses her convoy. Captain Hardiman sees this as the perfect opportunity to dispose of his ship and is just about the open the SULU STAR’s seacocks when two Polish stowaways are discovered aboard, a man and his very pregnant wife. The latter gives birth to a child shortly thereafter, and then, having heard the Polish husband’s tale of flight from Nazi-occupied Poland, the shipmaster has a change of heart. He reverses his decision to scuttle the vessel, gets the SULU STAR repaired and then successfully takes his ship east to San Francisco, knowing full well that he’ll lose his license once back in the United States for his part in the insurance scam.