List of When the Boat Comes In Episodes

This is list of episodes for BBC One period drama When the Boat Comes In which aired four seasons consisting of 51 episodes between 1976 and 1981.

1919. Sergeant Jack Ford returns to the mining town of Gallowshields, on leave, pending discharge. He meets schoolteacher Jessie Seaton and ingratiates himself with her brother Tom, his fiancée Mary, and Jessie's parents, Bella and Bill. The next day Jack meets an old friend, his Corporal, Matt Headley, who has Will Scrimgour with him. Matt is now a maintenance man at a local colliery. Matt takes Scrimgour home, to his wife, Lucy. Matt returns to the pub, where he waylays Jack, who is on his way to attend Tom and Mary's wedding.

On their way to the wedding, Jessie and her medical student brother, Billy, heckle Major Pinner, the local Liberal candidate standing in the imminent election, over his party's rhetorical promises of 'a land fit for heroes', and about his reluctance to give women the vote.

At the wedding Tom takes Jack aside, to talk to him about Mary's brother. Jack was present when Mary's eighteen-year-old brother Joe was killed at the Somme, on 31 July 1916. He was in the same company as Jack and Matt. Tom has heard that Joe was "a Nancy that he went with men". Jack tells Tom that Joe was "as straight as a die". After Tom has left, Bill insists on hearing the truth. Jack tells him the truth: when Joe's body was found, he was in the arms of another soldier.

Scrimgour is frightened by a group of boys, who are running along railings with a stick. Scrimgour snaps, and brutally beats one of them, John William Francis.

Billy tries to get Jack interested in working for the local Labour party. They are interrupted by Matt, who takes Jack to see Scrimgour, who is hiding in his bedroom, believing himself to be back in the trenches. Jack plays along with Scrimgour's delusion, telling him that the company has been relieved. Two policemen arrive, and take Scrimgour away. One of the policemen, P.C. Price, tells Jack that Will will be tried in the morning, by Major Pinner, who is also the local magistrate. Price warns Jack that Pinner may be resentful, because, unlike Scrimgour, he wasn't decorated during the war.

Jack attends Will's trial. Doctor Lang gives the facts of the case, stating that Will caused the boy actual bodily harm. Jack tells the court that Will won the Distinguished Conduct Medal, (the second highest award for gallantry, after the Victoria Cross), for rescuing a colleague under fire. Will is committed for trial, and kept in custody. Pinner says that Will chose to beat the boy, and that his actions were "self indulgent". Jessie is incensed, and Jack vows, "to fettle old Pinner".

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