[Novelist Howard Fast spent World War II working with the United States Office of War Information, writing for Voice of America. These reports were written during those years. Your desktop publisher presumes that the ship and crew are a compilation of ships, crews and captains that Mr. Fast witnessed, and fictionalized, for purposes of government wartime reporting. A bit romanticized perhaps, but on the whole, a great description of life in the WWII merchant marine.]

The Gray Ship - by Howard Fast