Gilpatric, Guy "The Homestretch"

The blowsy freighter INCHCLIFFE CASTLE (with her Chief Engineer, the perpetually besotted Colin Glencannon) is returning in a Mediterranean convoy to England after three years of war service. Her master, elderly and comic Captain Ball, worries that, with the war rapidly coming to its conclusion, there will be a shipping slump – and “old shellbacks” like himself (and by inference, Glencannon) will be out of employment, “on the beach” in the argot of mariners. Glencannon naturally concocts a scheme to make the paunchy ship captain look both younger and thinner (all the better to impress shipping company managers) with the aid of a “Dr. Zoglich’s Abdominal Streamliner” (that is, Glencannon’s homemade version of the doctor’s girdle).