#1 – Cold Truth
Between the wars, the exploration vessel Alert sails into Arctic waters to search for a missing Swedish expedition. The voyage ends in failure, but decisions made amid ice, isolation and deteriorating discipline are concealed by the surviving officers rather than fully reported. Years later, during the…
#2 – The Judgement of His Peers
A group of retired sea captains reconstructs the career of Claude Bastable, a master mariner whose competence and reputation conceal a pattern of vanity and misconduct. Their discussion returns to the voyage on which his decisions caused avoidable deaths and left colleagues to carry the consequences.…
#3 – An Absence of Imagination
In the mid-1950s, Captain John Sanford takes the merchant ship Da Feng along the Communist Chinese coast and receives orders to transport a man denounced as an enemy of the people. The prisoner’s presence turns a routine command into a test of political coercion, personal conscience…
#4 – Magnetic Anomaly
1966. The British vessel, the Weather Guardian, is on a routine voyage in the North Atlantic in winter, collecting meteorological data for the purpose of weather forecasting. But the voyage soon turns out to be far from routine. James Childe, the Third Officer, and the enigmatic…
#5 – Unintended Consequences
Captain John Sanford, the sturdy and determined former master of a British cargo-ship, has spent the last decade imprisoned in Communist China, undergoing a horrific ‘re-education’ after being captured for harbouring an ‘Enemy of the People’ onboard. When he is finally released and arrives back in…
#6 – The Petrel’s Cry
The Petrel’s Cry collects maritime stories set across the twentieth century, following captains, officers and former shipmates whose lives remain bound to particular vessels and voyages. Homecomings, chance meetings and renewed emergencies expose the private histories hidden behind professional competence. Across different seas and generations, the…