In March 1808, as war spreads through Europe, Vice Admiral Richard Bolitho takes passage in the ill-fated Golden Plover bound for the Cape of Good Hope Estranged from his wife and child and plagued by the fear of blindness, he leaves behind the contempt of society and memories of a friendship betrayed, and takes with him the mistress he will not forsake When shipwreck overtakes them little remains beyond raw courage, reckless hope and the certainty that, for those in peril and those at home, life has changed irrevocably