A feckless moron is appointed to the captaincy of a ship, despite having no nautical experience. The Captain has a propensity to grope women and brag about not paying his taxes, and in his younger days he ‘had hidden in the bowels of the ship looking at pornographic magazines’ while his peers went to war. Once in post he fires the entire navigational staff and has the ship’s manuals jettisoned. A mysterious voice in a vent urges him to take ever more drastic measures against the ship’s population, whereupon a number of ‘swarthy’ passengers are thrown overboard to drown. Utilities and basic freedoms are privatized as the Glory descends into despotism. The Captain becomes a patsy of the ship’s most fearsome foreign enemies, with disastrous consequences.
