Shipyear 32
Tripday 151
First Shift
1.30 hours

In which we meet the second mate, who is a rounder.

A “rounder”, according to the dictionary I consulted, is a “person who makes the rounds of bars, saloons, and similar establishments; figuratively, a debaucher or roué”, which seems like a pretty apt description of Dagmar Collier. (Who, incidentally, also wears too many rings.)

Second Mate Collier adds sexual harrassment to the list of things Priscilla has to put up with on Daxflan. Not only is she not put off by the fact that her advances are unwelcome, that explicitly adds to her enjoyment. It’s worth noting that Collier is depicted as a sexual predator who happens to be of a particular orientation, with the presentation balanced by other characters later in the novel who share the orientation but not the unfriendliness or the disdain for consent. I can think of other works I’ve read which have lacked that diversity of representation, so it’s good to see here.

It’s three days since the previous chapter, and Priscilla’s off-shift has moved from Second Shift to First. If the ship day is a strict rotation of work-rest-work-rest, as implied by Shelly’s rant, that argues for an odd number of shifts in the day. On the other hand, maybe there are an even number of shifts per day and Priscilla had to work a double shift in there somewhere — perhaps while they were in dock at Alcyone, where they’d need the cargo master to remain available. (I dismiss out of hand the possibility that she might have been given a double rest period.) For what it’s worth, the single data point we have on shift numbers in Liaden trade ships, Jethri’s Elthoria, had four shifts per day.