[1] It is a deathbed monologue by a wealthy shipowner and shipbuilder, Sir Anthony Gloster, addressed to his only surviving child, his son Dick or Dickie, who does not speak.
Now, 50 years later, he has made a million (£ sterling, as of 2017[update] equivalent to about £120M), has 10,000 on his payroll, has 40 freighters at sea, is a "baronite" (i.e. baronet),[Note 1] has dined with royalty, and the press have called him "not the least of our merchant-princes".
In London, using his savings, he formed a partnership with a man named M'Cullough and set up a ship-repair foundry.
He was educated at "Harrer" (i.e. Harrow School) and Trinity College, is only interested in arts and society, and is married to a woman who Sir Anthony describes in unflattering terms both physically and personally.
Sir Anthony calls his son "weak, and a liar, and idle, and mean as a collier's whelp nosing for scraps in the galley".
Sir Anthony does not want to be buried in the vault he had bought in Woking at a time when he had hoped to establish a family line.
He is to write to McAndrew, who is Sir Anthony's oldest friend, who works for him, who knew Mary, and who knows his wishes; the company will grant McAndrew leave of absence if Dickie says that this concerns Sir Anthony's business.
American-born British poet T. S. Eliot included the poem in his 1941 collection A Choice of Kipling's Verse.
"The Mary Gloster" involves a McAndrew who is "Chief of the Maori Line", a "stiff-necked Glasgow beggar", who has prayed for the protagonist's soul, who is incapable of lying or stealing, and who will command the Mary Gloster on its final voyage.
In 1921, American travel writer E. Alexander Powell wrote, 'Our course took us within sight of "the Little Paternosters, as you come to the Union Bank," where, as you may remember, Sir Anthony Gloster, of Kipling's ballad of The Mary Gloster, was buried beside his wife'.
[7] In 2008, British historian John Charmley (not all of whose works are accepted without question) compared Sir Anthony to Conservative Prime Minister Bonar Law and Dickie to his predecessor Arthur Balfour.