The Convict Ship, Volume 2 (of 3)

A young man disguise himself as a cabin boy to find his beloved among the condemned. Simon Marlowe has crossed gender boundaries, hidden himself in the coiled ropes of a convict ship, and been dragged into the light by a roaring boatswain. Now begins his descent into hell. The second volume of William Clark Russell's trilogy plunges deeper into the squalid, brutal world of penal transportation: stinking holds packed with broken men, iron discipline, disease, and the constant roll of an ocean that cares nothing for human suffering. Yet love persists. Tom is somewhere aboard this floating prison, and Simon must survive the machinations of guards and convicts alike to reach her. Russell, the master of nautical fiction, renders the ship as a world unto itself: its hierarchies, its cruelties, its strange camaraderie. This is historical fiction that smells of tar and sweat and fear, a vivid reconstruction of an era when Britain solved its crime problem by exporting the accused to the other side of the earth.