Joe Williams and Glen Hardwick

Joe Williams and Glen Hardwick’s friendship is made at sea and tested by its hazards: boxing lessons aboard the failing Higginbotham lead to a reunion after the ship is lost, and Glen’s invitation gives Joe a way back to work and life afloat. Their closeness is not presented as a grand declaration. It takes shape through training, conversation, shared decisions, and practical help, as each voyage puts the other within reach of danger again.

Meeting Aboard the Higginbotham

During the Higginbotham’s slow, dispiriting voyage, Joe is anxious about Del and about whether he can make good, while the deck crew is fractious and the engines keep breaking down. His one real pleasure is taking boxing lessons from Glen, the second engineer. Glen is wiry, a capable amateur, and, as Joe judges, about forty; Joe gradually improves enough to give him a serious workout. He has more weight and reach, while Glen identifies Joe’s straight right as a natural asset that could take him far as a lightweight. The lessons are both a measure of Joe’s physical ability and the beginning of a companionship formed in the limited routines of shipboard life.

The connection continues ashore in Bordeaux, where Joe and Glen spend their evenings together. Their time there is brief, only the four days needed to wait for a dock berth and unload, but they make a point of exploring the town and enjoying its food and wine. Their companionship sits alongside Joe’s independent involvement with a woman he meets there; it does not make the friendship exclusive or turn the men’s shared outings into a romance. Instead, the two are established as shipmates who seek one another’s company while the ship is in port, then return to the work and uncertainty of the voyage.

Separation and Reunion

On the return trip, the Higginbotham takes on water so badly that Captain Perry stops worrying about submarines and concentrates on whether the ship can reach Halifax. In fog south of Cape Race, a violent impact throws Joe onto the deck. The crew never learns whether a mine or torpedo hit them. The boats get away, but separate in the fog; Joe’s boat stays with the captain’s until both are picked up by a fishing schooner. The Higginbotham disappears with her maindeck awash. Glen’s exact place during Joe’s escape is not specified, but the loss breaks the shared voyage and leaves their next meeting to chance.

That meeting comes in New York City, in the basement rooms of the Custom House. Joe, stopped by a policeman for not having his draft-registration card, has been held all day among a hot, sweating crowd. He is still weak from dengue, telephones are forbidden, and the detainees must use a single toilet under guard. As he nears collapse, he recognizes Glen. The familiar face reconnects Joe not only with a former shipmate but with the seafaring life that the Higginbotham’s loss had interrupted.

Glen explains that he was picked up by a British ship and taken into Halifax, then signed on as second officer of the Chemang. The vessel is bound for Bordeaux with mules and onward to Genoa with general cargo; it is to carry a three-inch gun and navy gunners. Glen tells Joe that the ship needs navigation officers and would take him even without a license. The offer is characteristically practical: Glen has found a berth and immediately imagines a place for Joe beside him. Bordeaux, with its memories of their earlier shore leave, adds a personal attraction, but the invitation is first of all a route back to work.

Choosing Another Voyage Together

The men make a plan while still in custody. Once Glen is released, he will telephone Mrs. Olsen and have her bring Joe’s license, kept in a cigarbox at the head of his bed. The inspector releases Glen and says Joe can go when the license arrives, while warning them that even exempt seamen must register. Joe answers that they ought to know there is a war on. His papers arrive; he goes to the office in East New York and is hired as bosun. The skipper, Ben Tarbell, had been first mate on the Higginbotham, so the new berth also grows out of the network of seamen left by the lost ship.

Joe wants to go to Norfolk to see Del, but decides there is no time to remain ashore. He borrows fifty dollars from Glen and sends the money to Del, then sails the next day under sealed convoy orders. The loan is a concrete sign of trust within a relationship otherwise shown through work and shared company: Glen helps make Joe’s return to sea possible, even as Joe’s decision leaves his marriage waiting elsewhere. Neither man is shown debating the choice at length. Their actions place them together again aboard ship, with the unresolved obligations of shore life carried along rather than settled.

Shipmates in the War Zone

In convoy, the two smoke their pipes together in Glen’s cabin and talk at length. They conclude that everything ashore is worthless and that the only place for them is blue water. The judgment emerges amid the particular strains of their work: naval officers direct the convoy, merchant captains exchange signals, and the Atlantic fills with freighters painted in gray-and-white camouflage. One new wooden vessel built for the United States Shipping Board leaks so badly that it must be abandoned and scuttled halfway across. The men’s preference for the sea is therefore no claim that it is safe or comfortable; it is a shared choice of the life they know, even among badly built ships and wartime hazards.

Once they enter the danger zone, the convoy zigzags, false submarine alarms recur, seaplanes drop depth bombs, and gun crews fire at objects mistaken for threats. Joe is fed up with his crew and curses more than ever, while the men’s private conversations give their partnership a steadier setting within the noise and uncertainty. At night they steam into the Gironde amid searchlights, blinker signals, and patrol boats. On shore, they have only a few hours and cannot find Marceline or Loulou; they notice instead how American-built steel and concrete piers are changing the look of the Garonne. Even these brief observations belong to a voyage they experience together, as working seamen rather than tourists.

The return outward is more dangerous still. Without a convoy, the Chemang slips away on a foggy night. After sighting a periscope off Spain near Finisterre, the crew fires; later, a heavy sea and a sudden impact shake the ship after it passes a small ketch. The account identifies Joe and Glen as sharing the voyage up to this point, but does not establish the outcome of this encounter in the supplied evidence. Their relationship is defined less by a stated promise than by repeated acts of association: Glen teaches Joe, finds him a berth, lends him money, and shares the shipboard hours; Joe accepts the invitation and returns to sea beside him. The bond makes the ocean both their workplace and their chosen common ground, while the hazards of that ground keep its future uncertain.