Following an incident at sea, fifty-year-old Captain Eugene Marius finds himself without employment or purpose in Marseille, paying fruitless daily visits to the port's shipping offices. Consumed by guilt, spurned by his family and faced with the futility of life away from the waters, Marius seeks solace in alcohol and the arms of a prostitute, but is unable to keep his mental and physical deterioration at bay. Remarkable in its gritty descriptions of Marseille and the psychological portrait of its protagonist, "The Closed Harbour" is a poignant, sharply written examination of the maritime profession and life as an outcast.