Recently graduated from Annapolis, young ensign Ruhe sailed in a navy preparing for the war they felt to be inevitable. He served on a "tin can", the destroyer "Roe", under a tyrannical skipper reminiscent of the paranoid captains of the "Caine Mutiny" and "Mister Roberts". From the author of "War in the Boats", this detailed diary enabled William Ruhe to write a social history of America just before World War II, a period in which civilian society refused to admit the dangers of the future.