Setting!
Being the newest guy and only American on board, he got all the shit jobs. The literal shit jobs; whenever he didn’t have anything to do, he could always clean the heads. The sailors’ hygiene on the Paul Féval was exactly as Ted expected, but at least the big communal bathroom was easy to clean, with tile floors and big drains. Somebody had even rigged up a hose to one of the sink faucets, which was a real help with cleaning up the accumulated funk.
But Ted spent most of his time helping cook. Or, rather, he picked up stuff and stowed stuff and pulled stuff out of various lockers and did whatever the actual cook yelled at him to do. That wasn’t too bad, either. The food was always unidentifiable but usually no worse than bland, and after the first couple of days he was only getting screamed at some of the time.
Ted had worried about getting hazed by the crew, until he realized that being on head cleaning detail was the hazing. He figured that as long as he looked miserable enough from both that, and being screamed at by the cook, that’d keep the crewmembers from getting more creative in their amusements. Hell, if everything only stayed the same, he could manage two months, easy. Being at sea wasn’t romantic at all, but it beat sleeping on the streets.