Many Cargoes

A weather‑beaten night‑watchman spins a tale of the John Elliott, a creaking barque that once carried a narrator through fog‑laden seas and uneasy camaraderie. The ship’s skipper, obsessed with medical curiosities, turns routine voyages into uneasy experiments—offering strange pills at breakfast and insisting on post‑mortems for the slightest mishap. When an old sailor named Dan discovers a tattered book brimming with disease descriptions, the crew’s superstitions flare, and the captain’s intrusive “diagnoses” begin to disturb the fragile order below deck.

As the skipper probes Dan’s lingering ailments with a brass stethoscope, the atmosphere grows tense, especially when the hulking Cornish Harry forcefully claims the mysterious volume. Their clashing personalities and the looming threat of a mysterious “prognotice” set the stage for a voyage where the sea’s dangers are matched by the unsettling quirks of those who command it. Listeners will be drawn into the gritty life of 19th‑century seafarers, where superstition, medicine, and authority collide on the rolling deck.