"Heritage of the sea by W. R. Bethel" is a pulp short sea-adventure story written in the late 1920s. Set in the Prohibition era, it follows a rum-running captain on Long Island Sound whose seamanship and sense of honor are tested in a deadly fog after a collision at sea. On a blacked-out run through thick fog, a hard-nosed skipper guides his rum boat while his jittery backer, Joe Parento, urges retreat.
When a tramp steamer rams a dark-laying Coast Guard cutter and flees, the captain snaps on lights, lowers boats, and rescues the survivors, even as Parento pulls a gun and wounds him in a panic to protect the cargo. The captain knocks Parento out, disarms him, and, while guarding his shipment, treats the rescued sailors decently with dry clothes and a drink. Weak from his wound, he lets the Coast Guard commander take the bridge to steer the rum-runner back toward Rum Row so the guardsmen can signal for pickup—leaving the tale on the note that, in fog that blinds the eye, honor still charts the course. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
