The Cruise of the Midge

A young officer in the West Indies squadron chases slavers and pirates through the Caribbean in a schooner-rigged tender, between hurricanes, fevers and the courts of admiralty. Michael Scott had been a Jamaica merchant and wrote from some sixteen years in those waters. The seamanship and the humour are both first-hand, and the account of the slave trade's last years is unsparing. Sixty plates of shipping and harbour scenes by painters including Canaletto and Charles Brooking carry the salt air of the Caribbean service onto the page.