St. Nazaire is the French port where Joe Williams and the crew of the North Star reach shore after crossing a mine-threatened route, and where their brief liberty turns into a comic brush with the local police. The town is more than a point on the ship’s itinerary: its guarded harbor, crowded wharves, and streets full of sailors place ordinary pleasures beside the hazards of wartime shipping. Joe’s visit begins in anticipation, detours through delay and passport checks, and ends with the crew running back to the ship ahead of the police.

A Wartime Port of Arrival

The North Star approaches St. Nazaire in winter with a cargo described on its papers as canned goods, though the crew knows it is shell caps. The passage carries danger bonuses for the sailors because the ship must go through a zone threatened by mines. After a smooth crossing, the weather turns cold and the sea is calm as the French coast comes into view: low and sandy at the mouth of the Loire. The approach is not simply a matter of sighting land. The crew raises its flag and signal, while the wireless operator works overtime and the men worry about mines; a French patrol boat eventually comes out to guide the North Star through the winding channel and between the minefields.

The town first appears in the smoky dusk as spires, long rows of gray houses, and clustered chimney pots. The sailors respond with exuberance, slapping one another on the back and expecting a night ashore. That expectation is immediately checked by the practical limits of the port. The North Star anchors out in the stream, and Captain Perry and the first mate go ashore in the dinghy, but the ship cannot dock for two days because there is no room at the wharves. St. Nazaire thus arrives in the story as both a promised destination and a place where access is governed by congestion and procedure.

Shore Leave and Its Boundaries

When the crew finally goes ashore, each sailor must show a seaman’s passport to a red-faced official in a blue uniform trimmed with red. The checkpoint makes clear that a sailor’s liberty in this wartime port is conditional: the men are not simply free to wander, but must pass the authorities before leaving the wharf. The scene also carries the narrative’s rough comedy. One sailor crouches behind the official while another is about to shove him, until the chief warns them that the man is a police officer and that they risk being arrested on the wharf. Their joking impulse collides with the consequences of misreading the setting.

Joe and Blackie Flannagan become separated from the rest of the crew and explore on their own. They find narrow cobblestone streets, old women in tight white lace caps, and buildings that strike them as run-down; even the dogs seem unfamiliar to Joe. The details register St. Nazaire through the sailors’ limited, irreverent viewpoint rather than through a detached description of the town. Their comparisons are equally personal: Flannagan thinks it resembles Hoboken, while Joe finds something of Villefranche, which he had seen while in the navy. The different comparisons show the men using remembered places to make an unfamiliar town legible.

The American Bar and the Sailors’ Stories

Their wandering ends at a place labeled American Bar, though it does not look like a bar they know from the United States. They buy a bottle of cognac, and Joe observes that American dollars can go a long way if a visitor knows how not to be cheated. The scene gives the port a second kind of boundary: alongside the official passport check, the sailors must negotiate unfamiliar customs and prices. Their shore leave is improvised, shaped by what they can find and what they can understand.

Another American sailor joins them and tells them that he was aboard the Oswego when a submarine torpedoed it at the mouth of the Loire. He describes the ship being blown out of the water and breaking in two. Joe and Flannagan share their cognac with him, and the conversation turns their drinking stop into a meeting place for accounts of maritime violence. The men respond by opening another bottle, after which the newcomer takes them to a house where more sailors are drinking beer and dancing with women. The proximity of disaster and recreation is not resolved: the story of a ship destroyed nearby accompanies an evening that continues toward music and drink.

A Brief Escape and a Comic Return

Joe is enjoying himself talking with one of the women, pointing to things so she can teach him how to say them in French, when a fight breaks out. The French police arrive, and the group has to flee. The episode overturns the sailors’ expectation of an uncomplicated night ashore: a moment of conversation and language-learning gives way to disorder, then to a hurried attempt to avoid arrest. They all make it back aboard before the police can catch them.

The officials do not let the incident end at the gangway. They stand on the dock and shout for about half an hour, until Captain Perry returns from town in a horse cab and tells them off. St. Nazaire’s role in the episode is therefore compressed but consequential: the port enables the crew’s first encounter with France, exposes them to rules and unfamiliar surroundings, and briefly offers the pleasures of shore leave, while keeping danger close in the form of wartime cargo, mined approaches, and the nearby account of a torpedoed ship. Its mixture of strict harbor control and unruly recreation sets the tone for Joe’s life at sea, where moments of freedom remain provisional and the ship is always waiting offshore.