Glen Hardwick

Glen Hardwick is a roughly forty-year-old amateur boxer and experienced merchant seaman whose friendship gives Joe Williams both companionship and a route back to work at sea. First introduced as the second engineer aboard the Higginbotham, he teaches Joe to box; later, after their paths cross again in wartime detention, he helps draw Joe onto the Chemang. His importance lies less in a separate personal storyline than in the practical loyalty and shared seafaring life he offers Joe.

Identity and First Voyage

Glen is described as wiry and a capable amateur boxer, despite being about forty. Aboard the Higginbotham he serves as second engineer, and Joe takes boxing lessons from him during a miserable voyage. The ship’s engines repeatedly break down, its slow progress against head winds frustrates the crew, and Joe is preoccupied with Del and with whether he will succeed. Training provides one of the few pleasures of the trip. By the time they reach Bordeaux, Joe can give Glen a serious workout; Glen judges that Joe’s heavier build, longer reach, and natural right hand could carry him far as a lightweight.

That assessment makes their lessons more than a passing diversion: Glen sees a specific ability in Joe and gives it an encouraging name. Their connection also takes shape beyond the ship. In Bordeaux they spend their evenings off together, moving around town during the brief four-day stop. They meet two young women in a public garden and spend an evening eating, drinking wine and champagne, and celebrating wartime hospitality. The episode belongs principally to Joe’s account of his time with Marceline, but Glen is his companion throughout the outing. When Joe later remembers the Bordeaux women, the city is also a shared point of reference between the two sailors.

Reunited in Detention

Glen re-enters Joe’s life under very different circumstances. After being picked up by a British vessel and taken to Halifax, he signs on as second aboard the Chemang, which is to carry mules to Bordeaux and general cargo to Genoa. The ship is to be armed with a three-inch gun and navy gunners. Before he can join it, however, Glen is among the men held during a draft-registration roundup in New York. Joe, also detained, recognizes him in the crowded basement rooms of the Custom House.

The recognition immediately turns into a working plan. Glen tells Joe about the Chemang and says that it needs navigation officers, even ones without a ticket. Joe, remembering Bordeaux, asks whether he might get aboard. Glen thinks he can. The men work out how to retrieve Joe’s license, which is kept in a cigarbox at the head of his bed at Mrs. Olsen’s. The inspector releases Glen first and tells Joe he can leave once the license arrives, while insisting that both men register even if exempt from the draft. Glen’s knowledge of an available berth thus gives Joe a concrete way forward at the moment when official scrutiny has left him detained and uncertain.

Work and Life at Sea

Once released, Joe gets his papers and is taken on as bosun aboard the Chemang. Glen is already connected to the ship as its second; the two are again working together, this time on a vessel carrying mules and other cargo through wartime waters. Joe wants to go to Norfolk to see Del, but chooses the voyage instead. He borrows fifty dollars from Glen and sends it to her before the ship sails under sealed orders to meet a convoy. Glen’s assistance is practical, not abstract: their friendship operates through jobs, shared plans, and money lent when Joe needs it.

The convoy gives their work a new scale and danger. Merchant ships cross the Atlantic in long lines, their gray-and-white camouflage making them look streaked, while naval vessels direct them. Once in the danger zone, the ships zigzag; false submarine alarms, depth charges, and gunfire at objects mistaken for threats make the crossing tense and disorienting. The Chemang reaches the Gironde at night amid searchlights, signals, and patrol boats. Glen and Joe then get only a few hours ashore while the mules are unloaded. They cannot find Marceline or Loulou, and their return to sea is delayed by a leaking steam pipe.

Companionship and Narrative Role

The intimacy of Glen and Joe’s friendship is clearest in the quieter intervals between alarms. They smoke their pipes together in Glen’s cabin and talk at length, reaching the shared conclusion that life ashore is no good and that blue water is where they belong. That declaration contrasts with Joe’s earlier wish to leave the sea for a steady job and his continuing concern about Del. It marks a temporary alignment between the men, not proof that Joe’s ties ashore have disappeared.

Glen also provides a grounded counterpoint to the strains of shipboard life. Joe is fed up with the crew he has to manage, but can speak freely with Glen; their companionship persists amid the confusion of convoy travel and the exhausting routine of cargo work. On the return journey the Chemang slips out without a convoy in fog. After a deckhand’s cigarette provokes an accusation of spying, the ship coasts Spain and then sees a periscope astern. The skipper takes the wheel, the engines are pushed as hard as they can go, and the gun crew opens fire. Glen’s presence aboard places him within this unresolved danger, but the account supplied here does not say what happens to him afterward. Through Joe’s eyes, he remains the capable shipmate whose friendship joins boxing, work, and survival into a single seafaring bond.