Up the Hawse Pipe from Galley Boy to Third Mate on a Legendary Liberty Ship in the Biggest Convoy Battle of World War II
Paul Gill, Sr., a native of South Boston, Massachusetts, was the twenty-two-year-old Third Mate on the Liberty Ship SS Nathanael Greene (one of just nine merchant ships to be recognized as a Gallant Ship of World War II), which sailed to Archangel, Russia, with Convoy PQ18 in September 1942.
Armageddon in the Arctic Ocean is Gill’s memoir chronicling his life from the Great Depression through his service in the US Navy during WWII and his later graduation from Harvard Business School.
Along the way, readers will learn of his enrollment in the Civilian Conservation Corp at age fifteen; how he joined the Merchant Marine and made eight passages to European ports as a sixteen-year-old; his riding the rails across the United States in search of work in 1938; his return to the Merchant Marine and ascension "up the hawse pipe" to become a licensed Merchant Marine officer; his participation in the biggest convoy battle of World War II; the destruction of the Nathanael Greene off the coast of North Africa by U-565; and more.