When he told her that he was married to the sea, she thought he meant it figuratively. Sadly, Captain Brevard was not a figurative man. He was married to the sea quite literally.
It had happened by accident, not by design. He'd taken his boat, The Red Lord, out for one of his regular cruises. He offered a run around the harbor and down to Monday Island, so called because the townsfolk had long ago decided that life was too short to give descriptive names to everything. The day they decided was a Monday, and to celebrate they renamed Elm Island, which had been named back when the town was founded by a man who had no idea what elm trees looked like. There wasn't a single elm on Elm Island, and it had stuck in the townsfolk's craws.
Captain Brevard had taken this particular cruise to Monday Island at the behest of a couple who, unbeknownst to him, were eloping. They knew that the town charter forbade any captain, boat or ship, from performing marriage ceremonies in the harbor, but through an odd quirk allowed those ceremonies and sanctified them within 100 yards of Monday Island. The town charter was a mess.
However, while marriages could be legally performed by captains within 100 yards of Monday Island, the captains of the town refused on principle. It was a union thing, some agreement with the union of marriage officiants or something, its reasons lost to the mists of time. So the couple had had to be circumspect when hiring Captain Brevard.
They hired Captain Brevard specifically because he was an inveterate drunk and a gambler and it was said he'd do anything for money. Once The Red Lord was within the 100 yard boundary, the couple plied Captain Brevard with spiced rum and promises of cash and found him a willing conspirator in their elopement. So willing was he, once plied with the aforementioned spiced rum, of which there was a dangerous amount, that upon marrying the couple, he promptly declared his intention to marry everything on the boat to some other thing. The life jackets were married to a coil of rope. The bilge pump was married to a seagull which happened to land on the bow. And so forth.
It must be said that the eloping couple had consumed several celebratory portions of spiced rum upon completion of the original ceremony, and that led to several more, and while Captain Brevard consumed far more, he was as has been said an inveterate drunk and so had built up a tolerance unmatched by the young eloped couple. Suffice it to say that they were willing participants and even encouraged Captain Brevard in his rash pronouncements of marriage upon all and sundry.
At a certain point, so the legend says, The Red Lord ran aground on Monday Island itself, whereupon Captain Brevard commenced marrying rocks and trees, none of them elm. The young couple were to the point of inebriation where one can no longer cause one's legs to support one's weight, but they carried on cheering the various ceremonies for a while before lapsing into blissful unconsciousness. And thus it was only Captain Brevard who was witness when he finally ran out of things to marry to other things, sobered up slightly, and realized that he was unbearably lonely.
Several days later, after returning to the dock and calling the still-slumbering newlyweds a cab, Captain Brevard swore off drink and declared his undying love for the sea. They had a small ceremony, just him, the sea, The Red Lord, a random seagull, and the random seagull's plus-one. It's said that it was quite beautiful, if slightly bittersweet.
So if you see a man, haggard from years of loneliness, sitting at a bar drinking lemonade and wearing a captain's hat – if you see that man, no matter how attractive you might find him, know that he's taken. He's married to the sea.
Also, there are a lot of trees on Monday Island which are cheating on one another.
