Imagine being the ruler of that city and letting him get "cured" instead of having him infodump / give daily reports about this.
"You love the boats. I do not, but I love what they mean." sweeping gesture toward the window
Can you imagine a better person to appoint for your harbormaster? Or even a harbormaster assistant, this guy would do it for free and do it better than anyone.
An underappreciated part of civilizational development is social technology, as opposed to material technology.
Sometimes people just don't think of seemingly obvious ways to do things for hundreds or thousands of fucking years. Human society is a funny thing.