Owanda

Owanda is the Seattle-built wooden boat that carried Joe Williams between New York and St. Nazaire throughout the year after he earned his second mate’s license. Its recurring voyages establish the practical setting for Joe’s seafaring life, while a port call in St. Nazaire on Armistice night places the vessel at the edge of one of his most consequential encounters there.

Construction and Service

After returning to Brooklyn, Joe attended the Shipping Board shore school at Platt Institute and obtained his second mate’s license. He then made trips back and forth between New York and St. Nazaire aboard Owanda. The narrative identifies it as a new wooden boat built in Seattle and notes that the crew had a great deal of trouble with it, without specifying the nature of those difficulties.

Port Calls and Armistice Night

Owanda’s time in St. Nazaire gave Joe repeated opportunities to see Jeanette, a woman he had taken up with when he was in port. On the visit associated with Armistice night, Jeanette had promised to spend the night with him; she also told him that she had not been with anyone else while Owanda was in port and recalled that he treated her well and brought her presents from America, including sugar and coffee.

The boat itself is not part of the celebration scene, but its presence in port supplies the circumstances behind Joe and Jeanette’s connection. During the town’s tumultuous festivities, Joe went looking for her, found her dancing with a Senegalese French officer, and attacked him. The encounter escalated into a brawl in which Jeanette was struck and Joe was knocked unconscious with a bottle.

Narrative Significance

Owanda links Joe’s professional advancement to a repeated transatlantic routine: he moves between New York and a French port, and personal attachments accumulate around those visits. The ship’s unspecified troubles keep its material presence from becoming a polished emblem of easy mobility; the text presents it instead as a working vessel that carried Joe through a demanding year. Its port call also provides the immediate background to the contrast between the public celebration of the Armistice and the private jealousy and violence that overtake Joe’s night.