The Ship

By Paul B. Crimson

While still a teenager, Paul Crimson (1947 - 1973) was drafted by the U.S. Army and trained to kill in the Viet Nam war. When he returned home after three years, he employed his only other talent to write a novel about his war experiences. His effort, Velvet Nights, became a runaway bestseller. The royalties from the book sales allowed Crimson to sink deeper into the drug abuse he had acquired in Viet Nam. His editor eventually convinced him to write a follow-up to his success novel, and the book you now hold in your hands was the result. Shortly after Crimson finished The Ship, he was found dead from a drug overdose. On the surface “The Ship” is about three people stranded in a snowstorm who find shelter onboard a Spanish galleon. There they encounter seven psychopaths whose actions make you cringe with suspense as they force their wills upon their visitors. Yet, the story Crimson wrote is truly about his attempt to cleanse his troubled mind from the insanity his soldiering days had provoked. It’s worth noting that, although the setting is fictitious, he personally witnessed or committed the acts he describes. Due to complex legal issues in the wake of his death, Paul Crimson’s book The Ship was never published. Now, for the first in over forty years, this disturbing document by a talented, prematurely dead young man is finally available to the public.

"This novel is original, with the main character immersed in a psychotic, isolated world where animalistic behavior takes over. The plot comes across as solid and well structured. The author has a gift for writing beautiful and lyrical prose ... a well-done psychological study of humans." Amazon Editorial Evaluation

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Ekemar
• Release date: Jun 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781500447564

Paul B. Crimson

Paul B. Crimson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 15, 1947. In the late sixties, he was drafted to fight in the war that USA waged against Viet Nam. During the three years he stayed on, he learnt how to kill and how to abuse drugs. He also kept diaries of everything he experienced, and which he later concentrated into a manuscript he called VELVET NIGHTS.On his return to USA his manuscript was accepted by a publisher and had an astonishing reception. Living off the royalties, he slipped further into the habits acquired overseas. Eventually his editor convinced him to start writing a follow-up to his success and cleaning up his act by moving to a small town in Maine.Crimson started writing his second novel with no clear idea how it would end. By fusing keen observations of people in tranquil Harbor with notes from his editor and his soldiering past in Vietnam, he launched THE SHIP – a terrifying scenario of snowstorms, survival and soul searching. Then Crimson’s unstableness provoked events to spin out of control, while he let his work in progress mirror his perceptions of them.On July 3, 1973, Paul B. Crimson died from a drug overdose in Miami, Florida – shortly after he had finished THE SHIP.

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INTRODUCTION

A brief summary of Paul B. Crimson’s life

(1947 - 1973)

Paul B. Crimson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 15th of June 1947. His father had worked for Ford in Detroit, when a few years after the war he got the opportunity to buy a dealership in Ohio. He jumped at the chance and moved with his young pregnant wife three months before their only son was born.

Crimson’s mother was a nervous woman who always worried. She fussed over her child to the point of not allowing him to let go of her apron strings until he went to war. Her social isolation along with that of her son became more pronounced after a series of rows provoked by her husband’s repeated infidelities. When her husband tired of her completely, he gathered what he could and left for California without even saying goodbye to his son. This was to have a profound impact on Crimson, who was twelve at the time. They were never to have contact again, although his father did try to get in touch with him after his literary debut made Crimson famous.

Before that fateful event, Crimson’s childhood can – at least apparently – only be described as innocent and secure. He was spoiled by his mother, and financially comfortable through his father’s income during the boom years when a car purchase was within everybody’s reach. He grew up with increasing American affluence and newborn rock ’n’ roll music. Crimson’s twelve years of schooling showed nothing remarkable, with one splendid exception. He always received top marks in English language and literature. Crimson was a voracious reader and knew more about poetry than those who taught him in high school.

The single most important event during his teens was his call to serve in the US Army. Crimson finished high school in 1966 and on January 8, 1967, he was ordered to present himself for basic army training. He was nineteen years old.

The United States was escalating its war in Viet Nam and in a hurry to recruit more soldiers. Many avoided the draft by using family connections, hiding under a different name, or going to Canada or overseas while the war lasted. Crimson did nothing to escape his draft. On the contrary, judging by the diary he kept at the time, he seems to have welcomed the change.

He was trained at a US Army base for three months, and then shipped to Saigon with thousands of other troops. In Viet Nam he spent another three months in local training before he was finally considered fit for confrontation with the enemy. There is no doubt Viet Nam changed his character more profoundly than anything else in his short life. He partook in jungle combat, the burning of villages, the slaughtering of innocent civilians and bombing raids ordered by his superiors. A decisive factor on his later behavior was his presence at the infamous Mei Ngong slaughter. In his diaries he reveals that he killed more than eighty men and women during his time in the Viet Nam – several of them civilians.

Generally speaking, his diaries are surprisingly candid. The one he kept in December 1968, however, is not very explicit about why he chose to volunteer for an additional year of service beyond the two obligatory. The main reasons he gives are that he needed more time to collect material for the book he was planning, and that the extra money wouldn’t hurt. The latter argument doesn’t sound very convincing, while the first one is probably closer to the truth.

Veterans were in demand in this war that – although the White House was still years from admitting it – the USA was losing. Apart from minor shrapnel wounds Crimson had so far gone unscathed through the fighting. He was never commended for his conduct as a soldier, nor did he receive any reprimand. Apparently he was never considered for promotion, nor he did ever seek one. Paul B. Crimson was just another soldier who obeyed orders satisfactorily, didn’t care too much for heroic efforts but with time became appreciated by his superiors for his experience compared to the rookies replacing those who died or went home.

It is likely that Crimson was not introduced to drugs before he arrived in Viet Nam. There marihuana flourished, as did stronger drugs like opium derivates. He was never caught using them in the army – at least it was never reported that he did. Since the use of drugs was common enough also among officers, this is not as surprising as it may sound. Many of those in charge turned a blind eye, since drugs were considered to help the troops enter battle fearlessly and to push aside the knowledge that the next morning they might get killed.

Later, after having returned to the USA, Crimson was caught using marihuana in Los Angeles. In his statement to the police he confessed that he had picked up the habit in Viet Nam like most returning war veterans. He was let off lightly since it was a first offense, and because it could not be proven that what little marihuana was found on him had been for anything but personal use.

According to the autopsy report filed after his overdose, Crimson showed traces of a long-term addiction to marihuana, cocaine and other drugs. This is consistent with the amazing rate he spent the money earned on his first book, the life he led after its immediate success, and his later attempt to clean up his act by moving to the East coast to write his second book.

In September 1971 his manuscript Velvet Nights (a metaphor for Viet Nam) was published to instant success. The immediate reception was probably due to the growing anti-war sentiments of the times, because no matter how excellent a book is, it usually takes longer for the public to discover the work of a debutant. It was praised by critics and general public alike for its dramatic close-ups of a shameful war that at that point was America’s main topic. Yet it also pictured keen first-hand observations of the lives of comrades-in-war who could not avoid a gut feeling that their superior military power did not grant them a guarantee against early death. Charlie was everywhere, and Charlie was defending his territory from an army of invaders. In his book Crimson manages to convey the subtle degradation of the sense of invincibility in a conquering army as well as baring the raw power of bestiality needed to survive. It is telling of his capacity as an author how well he could modulate his words despite years of constant exposure to raw and vulgar soldiers’ jargon. Above all, there is a certain ‘nerve’ in his storytelling that makes his book stand out among other narratives about the Viet Nam war.

Crimson seemed to take pleasure in using varied language. Except for some verbatim dialogues in his war epic Velvet Nights, foul language is rarely found in his work. His style is fluid and he usually creates vivid visual images of what he describes. His prose is readily absorbed until one suddenly realizes there are many hidden implications behind the deceptive tower of words.

Inevitably his war experiences affected him emotionally and psychologically. The gradual corruption of his humane side is part of the fascination the manuscript holds. Velvet Nights made Crimson, yet it destroyed him. Crimson returned after his three-year stint of unspeakable horrors in Viet Nam, apparently stable and with his sense of decency and good judgment intact. Not until he finished The Ship did it become obvious how eroded and tarnished they were. The last traces of these qualities were lost in the wake of fame and fortune, drug abuse and war nightmares, distorted impressions of reality if not sheer insanity.

So much perceptive talent managed by a mind so muddled. The process of his destruction took one year and seven months. It started with his advance payment for expected sales and ended when he died – by intent or by accident - from an overdose of drugs.

Drugs, war memories, insanity – a dangerous cocktail on which he drew inspiration to produce his last work. Not until two years after his death was it discovered that Crimson in his last diary described how he had committed the so-called McPherson Fire Murders, as the newspapers baptized the crime. The person who had been wrongfully convicted for the murders had by then died in prison. The real events during the months that Crimson wrote The Ship, mixed with his experiences in Viet Nam, are mirrored in his novel, which makes the reading more chilling still. He used metaphors for his detached observations of reality, while he took the essence of people he was acquainted with and moulded them into frightening characters or innocent victims. The violence he describes, however, are always acts he personally either committed or witnessed.

Crimson’s death without a testament, only weeks after he had handed in the last chapter of The Ship to his editor, created legal complications that prevented the publishing of his last novel. Near and distant relatives appeared with claims to the royalties – Crimson was after all a successful writer. When the whole affair was finally settled, with his editor John Partridge buying the rights to the manuscript, the momentum of the public’s interest in Paul B. Crimson was gone. In any case, for personal reasons Partridge chose not to publish it. Twenty-five years later, shortly before his own death in 1999, he commissioned the research of the events during Crimson’s last six months. He handed over Crimson’s diaries, manuscript and other papers for the compilation (published as The Crimson Blueprints by Kim Ekemar). Now, however, is the first time that The Ship by Paul B. Crimson is published in its own right, more than four decades after it was written.

So what is The Ship about?

The Ship is a terrifying description of Crimson’s own soul-searching. The text builds the suspense juxtaposed to the destructive forces. While Velvet Nights was about survival, The Ship is about cleansing through ice and fire. It becomes especially intriguing when the narrator switches from first person to third person in the lengthy epilogue – until you realize that Crimson did so to mark that from a distance he was passing judgment of