The skipper knows best — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Ship in Disgrace

The Kingston is described with deliberate ugliness: rust-streaked funnel awry, unpainted boats unkempt, hull a fungoid red from rust with peeling strips of paint. Once delivered to Abu Nakhl, she becomes worse than disreputable—a disgrace even to the Persian Gulf—with the red-scimitar flag flying, becloaked and unwashed men crowding her decks, and villainous small brass cannon lashed fore and aft. The ship's physical decay mirrors the captain's bitterness and the crew's captivity. Leinster lingers on these details, making the vessel a character in its own right, a symbol of lost pride and forced submission.

The Shamal and the Attack

The climax unfolds during a shamal, a violent windstorm. The sea rises to new heights, waves break and bounce the Kingston outrageously. The ship wallows, rolling until side-rails go under, and men cling to rails and weapons. A howl of joy goes up when a pearling boat is sighted. The Kingston comes around in a fashion to turn a seaman's hair gray, and McGovern watches, pale, as she plunges into troughs and races her screw in midair. The attack is a chaotic melee: the pearler's gunwale crashes against the Kingston's side, and yelling men swarm down, stabbing and battling in flooded decks. Firearms pop futilely in the roar of the wind, swords glitter and are dulled with red. The steamer draws off only when staying close becomes suicide.

Voice and Tension

Leinster uses a dry, ironic voice, especially through McGovern's Scots-accented dialogue. His quips about the smell and his later shaky exclamation, "M-my God! ... Allah is watching!" undercut the violence. The captain's silence and venomous expressions contrast with McGovern's verbal complaints. The story's central tension is between the captain's apparent submission and his hidden plan—the title hints that he knows best how to make a new use of an old anchor. The excerpts do not reveal the trick, but the buildup of humiliation and danger suggests a payoff rooted in the captain's seamanship and stubborn pride.

Readers should note how Leinster balances technical maritime detail with broad comedy and sudden brutality. The Kingston's degradation and the crew's captivity set up a reversal that depends on the captain's knowledge of his ship and the sea. Pay attention to the anchor—it is mentioned in the subtitle and may be the key to the escape.

Reading about the bitter captain and that clever anchor trick took me back to evenings in my father’s study, the smell of old paper thick around us. That same feeling of a world held together by stubborn men and rickety machines came from The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story — Story, Setting & Ideas. Both feel like distant, quiet harbors where the tide of human stubbornness still turns.