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"I sometimes compare people with a story my father used to tell me when I was a wee girl. About how they built a boat in the shipyard, how they started from her keel plate and built her up, riveting and welding her plates to a sound structure... And when she was finished, she'd sail down Belfast Lough and into the ocean to be lashed and buffeted by storms. But dad always said that he could be sure of one thing, she'd come through it all in one piece. Isn't it a pity people couldn't be like that?" Set in the Belfast Shipyard of the 1950s and against the backdrop of the IRA's Border Campaign, Sam Thompson's seminal 1960 play is a powerful expose of Ulster's sectarian bigotry and violence before the eruption of the Troubles. Peter O'Boyle, a Catholic shipyard worker, has become the target of a vicious whispering campaign. Veteran Trade Unionist Davy Mitchell, a Protestant who has spent his life fighting for others' right to work, is keen that the Union does what it can to protect him. As tensions mount and the union begins to split on sectarian lines, mob rule starts to take over...

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Author: Sam Thompson