'Rites Of Passage': Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a 'hell of self-degradation', where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself.
'Close Quarters': In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fjte-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is 'going to pieces'.
'Fire Down Below': A decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. Nothing but rope holds the disintegrating hull together. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast with red-hot metal, an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks.
