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| By Natalie Maynor [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
During World War II, German U-boats roamed the Gulf of Mexico looking for Allied shipping from southern ports. Once in a while, a Nazi sub would intercept a civilian pleasure craft and then let it go after pillaging it for food and water. Ernest Hemingway, who resided in Cuba at the time, convinced the US Navy to loan him a Thompson submachine gun and grenades so that he could go hunting for subs in the Pilar, his 38-foot cabin cruiser/fishing boat (pictured above). Hemingway's plan was to entice a surfaced sub to approach his boat for boarding. He would then kill any of the crew on the deck of the U-boat with his Thompson and then drop grenades and a homemade explosive device down the conning tower to take care of the remaining enemy.
Hemingway saw only one sub, and that one refused to take the bait and instead sailed off into the sunset. This was very fortunate for Hemingway's two young children, who often accompanied him on these missions. Notwithstanding the element of surprise, it was very naive and unrealistically optimistic of Hemingway to believe that a cabin cruiser, even one with a light machine gun and grenades, would not have been instantly annihilated by a trained German Kriegsmarine crew and the sub's deck gun.
Some cynics have even suggested that the scheme was primarily a ruse so that Hemingway could endear himself to the Cuban authorities and obtain extra gas rations as well as avoid arrest while driving around drunk in his boat.
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