Command Decision

Brady looked up and saw men fallen-in atop the destroyer's gangway and then he realised that this officer in the boat was Pelican's captain. So-what? he thought in his sick anger: the ship fits the man. As it should be. In fact, it couldn't be better, so far as he himself was concerned. A scrap-heap of a ship for a man thrown on the scrap-heap. What better berth to land in than a rust-bucket with a ramshackle crew for a man if who'd just lost all his keenness and enthusiasm and ambition?

Thus Jim Brady joined the ship's company of H.M.A. Destroyer Pelican, and entered upon the experience of his life.