After two years of bloody fighting and heavy losses, after enduring the hurricane of 1824, HMS SURPRISE struggles to make Falmouth port in a dreadful state, very severely damaged and sinking, dozens of her crew wounded and injured, all her officers and men utterly exhausted.
Will she be hulked or even broken up? Doctor Simon Ferguson, traumatised by so many deaths, has had enough and leaves for his home in the Isles. The First Lord ponders the frigate's future as her men are paid off. Battered and broken, HMS SURPRISE's very existence is in doubt.
Actual historical events form the stirring backcloth to a story about fighting men in violent times. Life and death in the turmoil and terror they endure is described in vivid detail as the barky comes alive once more in an exciting climax to one of the most famous battles in the Greek war of independence.