Falling in love
A former trimmer on the tramp steamer "Hyacinth", on which Ukridge once travelled, Wilberforce "Battling" Billson is an enormous man with a broken nose, strong jaw, red hair and muscles like hawsers, famed for his ability to clean up against half a dozen able-bodied seamen in Marseilles bars. Falling in love with Flossie, he decides to find work on land, and for a while Ukridge becomes his boxing manager, but his sentimental nature often scuppers his career. At one point he is swayed by evangelists, becoming fiercely opposed to alcohol and violence, but this soon subsides. We learn that he later settles down with Flossie, becoming a seller of jellied eels.