The Missing Merchantman

A July morning at Weymouth finds eighteen-year-old Edward Damerell leaving his father and sister to return to sea. Already three years into his training in the merchant service, Ned travels to London to join the Flying Cloud, a new steel-built clipper commanded by Captain Blyth. His father's objections to the navy help explain the choice of career, while Ned's close inspection of the ship introduces a world of cargo, rigging and working seamanship.

Harry Collingwood's adventure novel moves from the busy seaside town and London docks to a much less familiar landscape. A later scene finds Ned and Sibylla Stanhope in a dinghy beneath steep, wooded cliffs. A climb to retrieve a bird becomes an unexpected discovery, and Sibylla's growing alarm gives the scene its suspense. Readers interested in sailing fiction will find precise ship descriptions alongside the practical risks, quick decisions and uncertain encounters of a sea adventure.