It was 1799, and French privateers lurked in the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal. Yet Eleanor Reid, newly married and just twenty-one years old, made up her mind to sail with her husband, Captain Hugh Reid, to the Pacific, the Spice Islands and India. Danger threatened not just from the barely charted seas they would be sailing, but from the lowest deck of Captain Reid's East Indiaman Friendship, too-from the cages of Irish rebels he was carrying to the penal colony of New South Wales. Yet, confident in her love and her husband's seamanship, Eleanor insisted on going along. Joan Druett, writer of many books about the sea, including the bestseller Island of the Lost, and the groundbreaking story of women under sail, Hen Frigates, embellishes Eleanor's journal with a commentary that illuminates the strange story of a remarkable young woman.

Author Biography

Joan Druett is an award-winning maritime historian who is an expert on women at sea under sail. She lives in New Zealand with her husband, the internationally acclaimed maritime artist, Ron Druett.