Read "A List To Starboard" by Francis Hopkinson Smith online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A short, square chunk of a man walked into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a spike collar frames a dog's.
"You don't want to send this vessel to sea again," blurted out the chunk. "She ought to go to the dry-dock. Her boats haven't had a brushful of paint for a year; her boilers are caked clear to her top flues, and her pumps won't take care of her bilge water. Charter something else and lay her up."