Doc Sportello and Sauncho Smilax

Doc Sportello and Sauncho Smilax are friends whose joking familiarity makes room for real trust. Their relationship comes into focus in the closing maritime episodes: they share a reflective moment on the beach, then take Sauncho’s small firm boat out to follow the Golden Fang when it returns to port. Sauncho brings professional knowledge and a personal stake in the schooner; Doc supplies companionship, curiosity, and a willingness to go along. The pursuit ends not with possession, but with the ship under Coast Guard control and Sauncho still hoping that law might bring it within reach.

Friendship and Mutual Regard

The two men’s intimacy is expressed through comic shorthand rather than declarations. When Sauncho sets out in the firm’s boat, Doc asks what he is doing aboard; Sauncho appoints him mate. Doc turns the assignment into a Gilligan joke, casting Sauncho as the Skipper. The exchange establishes their familiar rhythm while also marking Doc’s readiness to share the risk and inconvenience of Sauncho’s undertaking.

That humor does not cancel tenderness. After their day at sea, Doc says the schooner and Sauncho belong together and, on a sentimental impulse, tries to hug him. Sauncho flinches, as he usually does, but Doc apologizes and wishes him well. The small mismatch—Doc’s spontaneous embrace and Sauncho’s reflexive withdrawal—does not undo their closeness; it gives the friendship its particular texture, affectionate without becoming conventionally demonstrative.

A Shared Reflection on the Beach

Before the final pursuit, Doc is interrupted by a call from Crocker Fenway while dreaming of the schooner. In the dream, the vessel has recovered its former working identity and its name, Preserved; the dark traces of violence aboard it have been cleared, and the spirits of those killed there are imagined as finally at rest. The episode links the boat’s material history to the burden of memory, while making its imagined restoration an emotional prelude to the men’s later encounter with it.

At sunset after rain, Doc and Sauncho stand together on the beach as the clearing sky opens a luminous strip above the horizon. Sauncho speaks in the manner of someone summing up a case: time and memory have carried away years of possibility, while the land’s better future has been seized and held to the compromised present. He hopes the ship may reach a better shore, an undrowned Lemuria where the American fate did not come to pass. His courtroom-like address turns their view of the sea into a meditation on lost alternatives, not merely a forecast of what will happen to the vessel.

They then see—or think they see—the schooner sailing away. Doc wants to believe that Coy, Hope, and Amethyst are aboard and safe, almost making out the family at the rail. Sauncho is less certain, and the two begin to bicker over what they have witnessed. Their disagreement shows a difference in temperament: Doc leans toward the consoling possibility, while Sauncho resists treating hope as proof. The scene nevertheless leaves them together, sharing both the vision and the uncertainty.

Following the Golden Fang

The practical test of their friendship arrives the next morning, when Sauncho calls Doc with news that the Golden Fang has entered San Pedro and appears to be preparing for a quick turnaround. Federal authorities are making interception moves, and Sauncho urges Doc to reach the marina in time. Doc suspects that the invitation is partly meant to keep Sauncho from doing something reckless, but he goes.

At Linus’s Tavern, Sauncho receives a phone call and abruptly leaves before Doc can even order a drink. Doc catches him on the pier casting off the lines of a small fiberglass inboard-outboard belonging to Hardy, Gridley & Chatfield. Sauncho has already started the motor and is easing away from the berth when Doc manages to board. The speed of Sauncho’s response turns a tip into an improvised expedition; Doc’s presence makes it a joint one.

The schooner appears beyond Palos Verdes Point with its staysails and jibs set. Sauncho watches it with evident longing, while Doc recalls having seen Preserved under full sail only once before, during an acid trip. That earlier, altered sight gives way here to a more grounded encounter, though the scene retains uncertainty about what the men can know or accomplish. They fall in behind the ship, and Sauncho reports that the Coast Guard is involved as well as federal authorities. When the schooner sees them and switches to diesel power, Sauncho recognizes that their small boat cannot keep pace with it.

Expertise, Limits, and the Vessel’s Future

Sauncho’s knowledge shapes the expedition even where it cannot deliver control. The firm boat carries fishing equipment and a fathometer, which he switches on while they are following the schooner. The instrument indicates depths of hundreds of meters where the charts and expected seabed do not account for what it is detecting. Its reading, followed by a rhythmic sound that seems like surf despite their distance offshore, makes the sea itself appear unreliable. The pair are not simply spectators to a chase: they encounter evidence they cannot readily explain.

When the schooner is in danger of stranding, Sauncho explains the legal stakes. If it can be brought back into safe receivership and its owners do not claim it within a year and a day, it may qualify as abandoned; ownership would then depend on maritime law and related claims. The Coast Guard boards the vessel, shortens sail, deploys lines and storm anchors, and arranges for a tug. Sauncho says it is good that they came out. Doc replies that they did little, but Sauncho points out that without their presence there would have been only the government’s account of what happened to the old boat. Their contribution is modest, yet it matters as an independent witness to the official response.

Back ashore, Sauncho has paperwork to complete and arranges overnight moorage for the firm’s boat. He is already thinking beyond the immediate rescue: the one-year-and-one-day period leaves time for insurers, claims, and other interested parties to emerge. Doc guesses that Sauncho may have taken out an insurance policy himself. Sauncho blushes and admits that he expects to be involved if there is litigation, while suggesting that one of Doc’s wealthy acquaintances may simply buy the schooner at auction. The legal route offers possibility, not certainty, and Sauncho understands that other claimants could intervene.

Affection Without Resolution

The relationship’s closing note combines hope with comic deflation. Doc’s wish that the ship and Sauncho belong together is answered by Sauncho’s joke comparing their match to Shirley Temple and George Murphy. He then sings a song from Little Miss Broadway, briefly carrying the performance far enough that Doc tugs nervously at his sleeve. The interruption comes when Sauncho’s intimidating employer, C. C. Chatfield, appears and signals that he wants to discuss an MGM idea. Sauncho stops singing and acknowledges him.

The interruption returns Sauncho from romantic possibility to work, just as the maritime law he describes keeps the schooner’s future contingent. The friendship is more secure than the outcome of the salvage: Doc accompanies Sauncho, recognizes his attachment, and offers comfort, while Sauncho lets him share both the pursuit and its uncertain aftermath. Their partnership does not resolve who will own the Golden Fang or whether it will become Sauncho’s; it gives the vessel’s uncertain fate a witness, a companion, and a measure of human warmth.