Wolfe, Reese "Slow Bell"

Adventure’s gung-ho World War 2 tag line neatly sums up this gem of a yarn: “It wasn’t Captain Hardiman’s fault that the SEA THRUSH got caught at Bergen in the Spring of ‘40, just as the Nazis decided to stab Norway in the back. All he wanted to do was unload his ship and get out of there – but if he could gum the works for the Germans in the getting , that was all right, too. He had his own ideas about how ‘neutrals’ ought to behave.” Wolfe’s tale is told epistolary style in a series of telegrams, letters, and notes penned/sent by a cast of characters including the SEA THRUSH’s stubborn Yankee captain, the U.S. consul in Bergen, U.S. State Dept. officials back in Washington, D.C., Norwegian military officers, various Nazis and even a quisling Norwegian ship’s agent in Bergen who tries (unsuccessfully, thanks to the afore described stubborn Yankee ship master) to gain control of the THRUSH’s valuable cargo for the Nazi war machine. As noted in a profile of author Wolfe which accompanied the Adventure short story, “Reese Wolfe’s ‘Slow Bell’ is no figment of a fictioneer’s imagination.” The profile goes on to describe how Wolfe was approached in real life by the president of the McCormick Steamship Company who gave him access to company files documenting the true experiences of the freighter CHARLES R. McCORMICK and her captain in Bergen during the 1940 invasion of Norway by Nazi Germany. The McCORMICK was one of three U.S-flagged ships trapped in Norway during the Spring of 1940, all subsequently escaping by virtue of American neutrality, though in real life the McCORMICK’s cargo was commandeered by Nazi forces (unlike that of her fictitious counterpart, the SEA THRUSH).