Details
Peter Bussa strikes the reader in Chapter I as a figure of fun, the typical relaxed quaymaster of a small provincial port. Yet it is this type of laxity which Dr Hammer castigates in the novella Ia, where refuse on the quay contributes to the spread of disease. When Bussa is identified as having disregarded the Harbour Commissioners’ bye-laws, Q knew exactly what the bye-laws were and why they were important because he was chairman of the commissioners of Fowey harbour. Interestingly, although Troy was a small provincial port, it was a very busy one and had been for over two thousand years, even into neolithic times.
It is Bussa who is ultimately responsible for the discharge of ballast into the harbour and the broken crane. More importantly, he is complicit in the activities of John Rogers in allowing overladen boats to come and go from the jetties.
In Chapter IX, the reader discovers Bussa to be the secretary of the Regatta Committee, who had some years before overseen the fireworks display on the town quay with hilarious consequences. Bussa is presented as public spirited but incompetent and inefficient, yet sufficiently well-liked for the quay to work after a fashion. Q sees both side of Bussa.