Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First-Person (Central Narrator)
We can tell right away that the narrator of this story is going to be first-person. But it's not until midway through the plot that we realize how he's specifically telling us his story. At first, he seems like your typical first-person central narrator, meaning that he's telling us a story about himself. But things get interesting when he lets slip the fact that he's telling this story way after it actually happened. He can't even remember everyone's name:
[He] gave his name (it was something like Archbold—but at this distance of years I hardly am sure. (2.1)
This "distance" of years comment totally changes how we look at the narrator, because now we can ask serious questions about how much of the story he remembers correctly. By the time the whole thing is said and done, we're even left to wonder whether Leggatt is a real person, or someone the captain has created in his memory. Who knows, the captain might be really old by the time he tells this story, and he could be losing his mind. The fact is: we just don't know.