Chemang

Chemang is the armed merchant ship that carries Joe Williams and Glen Hardwick back into wartime life at sea, turning the promise of open water into a hazardous voyage ending in shipwreck and sale. Its passage links the practical demands of a merchant crew—licenses, cargo, pumps, and watches—to the uncertainty of submarine warfare: Chemang reaches Vigo, but only after a blast leaves it taking on water faster than its pumps can manage.

A ship and its crew

Chemang enters the narrative when Glen, detained in the United States, tells Joe that a British officer has taken him to Halifax and that he has signed on as second officer. He describes the ship’s immediate assignment: take mules to Bordeaux and a general cargo to Genoa, with a three-inch gun and Navy gunners aboard. Glen believes the vessel needs navigation officers badly enough that Joe could join even without a ticket. For Joe, the possibility of sailing makes Bordeaux—and the prospect of finding old acquaintances there—sound attractive.

The opportunity depends on paperwork as much as seamanship. Joe has been detained for failing to register for the draft, though he says he is an exempt merchant seaman recently returned from a voyage. Once Glen is released, the men arrange for Mrs. Olsen to bring Joe’s license from the cigarbox at the head of his bed. When the authorities agree to release Joe after the license arrives, they insist that both men register regardless of exemption. Mrs. Olsen delivers Joe’s papers; Joe goes to the office in East New York, where the ship takes him on as boatswain. Chemang thus becomes his way out of detention and back to sea, while the novel places that escape within the reach of state paperwork and wartime enforcement.

Chemang’s skipper is Ben Tarbell, formerly first mate on Higginbotham. Joe would like to go to Norfolk to see Del, but decides there is no time to remain ashore. He sends her fifty dollars borrowed from Glen, and Chemang sails the following day under sealed orders specifying where it is to meet the convoy. The departure is abrupt: Joe’s attempt to maintain a connection ashore is reduced to money sent ahead, while the ship’s destination and movements are governed by orders he does not know.

The convoy and the passage to Bordeaux

The first crossing takes place in convoy under the direction of Navy officers aboard destroyers and the Salem, the command ship. Merchant captains answer orders with signals and banter. The ships form long lines across the Atlantic, their gray-and-white camouflage streaking them like barber poles. This is the convoy’s spectacle, but also its vulnerability: the passage places working merchant ships inside a military system where protection and danger travel together.

Once the ships enter the submarine zone, the convoy steers a zigzag course. False submarine alarms recur every few hours; seaplanes drop depth charges, and gun crews fire at objects that turn out to be barrels or seaweed. Joe, already worn down by the demands of managing a crew he regards as a troublesome lot, finds himself cursing more than ever. The menace is not always visible or even real, but it dictates the ship’s course and keeps the crew alert to misreadings. When Chemang reaches the Gironde at night, searchlights cross, blinker signals flash, and patrol boats move through the water. The arrival brings relief after the tension of the crossing.

At Bordeaux, Chemang’s immediate cargo work is to unload the mules. Joe and Glen get only a few hours ashore and fail to find Marceline and Loulou. The riverfront’s new American-built steel and concrete piers make the Garonne seem familiar to Joe, like the Delaware. The stay is brief and practical: the ship must repair a leaking steam pipe before sailing, and the crew sees a patrol boat towing five crowded lifeboats. The sight suggests that ships outside are under pressure, even as Chemang prepares to return to sea.

The attack off Vigo

Chemang leaves without a convoy, slipping out on a foggy night. The ship’s atmosphere is immediately shaped by suspicion: when a deckhand comes up from the forecastle with a cigarette, the mate knocks him down and accuses him of being a German spy. As the vessel follows the coast of Spain toward Finisterre, the skipper changes course south. A periscope appears astern, and the skipper takes the wheel, orders full power from the engine room, and sends the gun crew into action. The periscope disappears, but the encounter offers no certainty that the ship is safe.

A few hours later, Chemang overtakes a small ketch heading toward shore, probably toward Vigo, in a rising gale. Soon after crossing the ketch’s wake, the ship is struck by a blast that shakes it and throws a column of water over the bridge. The crew responds with practiced efficiency. The first compartment is the only one initially flooded, and, by luck, the crew has already left the forecastle and is gathered on deck amidships wearing life preservers. Chemang settles slightly by the bow. The gunners believe the old black ketch dropped a mine and fire at it, but the heavy sea rolls the ship and their shots go wide; the ketch disappears behind the island at the entrance to Vigo’s roadstead. The suspected source of the blast remains an inference, not a confirmed identification.

Chemang continues toward the harbor, but the damage worsens. By the channel opposite the town of Vigo, water is gaining on the pumps in the second compartment, and the engine room has four feet of water in it. The crew has to beach the ship on hard sand to the right of town. The sequence turns a seemingly survivable strike into the end of the voyage: the vessel remains afloat long enough to reach shore, but it cannot be brought safely into port under its own power.

Sale and narrative significance

After the beaching, officers and crew stand outside the consul’s office with their bundles while the consul tries to find them lodging. He is Spanish and speaks limited English, but treats them well. The Liberal Party of Vigo invites the crew to a bullfight, and the ship’s officers later receive a cable ordering them to turn Chemang over to agents of Gomez and Ca. of Bilbao. The agents have bought it as it stands and are changing its registry. The ship’s fate is therefore not described as a sinking: it is disabled, beached, and transferred to new owners in its damaged condition.

Chemang’s role is more than transport between ports. Its changing fortunes expose the gap between the crew’s working routines and the forces that can abruptly undo them. Joe secures his berth through a license, sails on sealed orders, and navigates an Atlantic crossing where alarms can be false; on the return passage, a single blast, rising water, and failing pumps determine the ship’s course more decisively than the men do. The repeated movement between departure, brief arrival, and renewed danger gives Chemang a compact arc: a means of escape from shore becomes a vulnerable workplace, then a stranded vessel sold before its crew has even settled back into life on land.