The romance of Captain Duffy

The romance of Captain Duffy by H. De Vere Stacpoole is a South Seas adventure short story written in the early 20th century. Framed as a sailor’s reminiscence, it turns on shipwreck, castaway survival, and a chivalrous, ultimately unfulfilled romance.

An unnamed narrator in Malacca listens as Captain Duffy tells how a mutiny on a Canton pig boat left him adrift and marooned on the tiny island of Fovea. Living on fruit and crabs, he builds a hut and shell garden, then wakes to find that a distant nighttime “thunder” was a mail steamer’s explosion, whose lone survivor—a young woman in a ball dress—has washed ashore. Duffy steadies her through shock and amnesia, keeps a scrupulous distance, and covers her with his coat when a shabby trading schooner arrives to rescue them. In Canton, while her delayed family sends word and tailors refit her wardrobe, newspapers turn Duffy into a sensation; he resolves to speak his heart, but when her parents appear with a polished young suitor who greets her with a kiss, he quietly withdraws, ships out, and reflects ruefully that waiting for the “right moment” cost him the only one he had.