Always having wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father killed in 1759 in the Battle of Quiberon Bay, 13 year old Nathaniel persuades his reluctant mother to allow him to pursue a career at sea, but owing to a foolish misunderstanding, he serves his apprenticeship on a slave-trading ship. Her new-found horror of the slave trade and fears that her innocent son will be corrupted by it fires an unrelenting desire for its abolition. Her son's life in a slaver, the horrors of the trade and her struggles to do "something for those poor creatures" are all beautifully bound up in this story which is difficult to put down.