MDMD Captain Smith's double?

[Terrance]

I am behind the schedule here, but I hope that you all do not mind that
I am bringing up the rear. 
I will be caught up with Michel Rycks and the rest of our mad ships soon
enough. 
Reading Pynchon it is easy to get off course and be plunged into the
broken mnemonic depths. 
Moreover, it has ever been my custom not to tack loxodromiclly along a
rhumb and Rambo line, but to steer a course less traveled by deductions
geometric. Bringing up the rear, I am ever mindful that I am evading the
shortest distance between two points. Yet, I am convinced this is the
only way for me to sail through Pynchon's novels. 

Joh Baily wrote: 

"The initial description of The Seahorse (when Capt. Smith comes upon
it) 
actually made me think "Damme! A Preterite Ship!" And that thought has
not, 
as of yet, been contradicted." 

Captain Smith is not impressed by with the dreary Seahorse.
Nevertheless, from his dreams he is able to see 
in her a Light, "how corposantly (holy body, a St.Elmo's Fire) edg'd in
a persisting and, if Glories there be, glorious light
A light in which
all Pain and failure, all fear, are bleached away
." MD35

What Pain and failure and fear? Whose? Bleaching? That doesn't sound too
good. 
His command seems destined to fail. 

Captain Smith, since assuming the Command of the Seahorse has been
living in a tiny corner of Hell. 
A corner of Hell he is none too accustomed to. He is rowed out to the
Seahorse. He accepts her, beast that she is, his scruffy sixth rate
frigate. 

A Sixth rate Jackass she may be, but her Glory is assure'd by her duty
in the service of a Miricale on that day of Miricales. And she has
nerve. 

But is she a horse for this knight? Will Captain Smith be true to his
motto? Is he a fair-minded Captain? 
How does he get along with the sailors? 

And where the Hell is he anyway? Metamorphosis? 
A preterit captain for a preterit ship? 

Captain Grant seems to be Captain Smith's double. He too is none to
impressed with the immortal Seahorse. He hasn't been a tidy corner of
Hell, but ashore nonetheless, a gypsy waiting to be a sleek line on a
document from above.