Wrenched by tragedy from a peaceful and respectable middle-class home in Victorian London, Hannah Kemball finds herself accompanying her father, Captain "Cracker Jack" Kemball, aboard the tea-clipper Erl King on a voyage to China.
It is 1869. In shanghai and Foochow, the crack British tea-clippers are loading the season's tea, preparing for the annual race to bring their valuable cargoes and the fortunes of their swaggering crews halfway around the world to the London market.
Unfortunately for Hannah, only one thing matters t the iron-willed captains about to pit their skills against the perils of three oceans: to be the first to make it home. Overconfident of victory, Captain Kemball strikes a wager with the sinister Captain Richards of the Seawitch. The stakes: Hannah's hand in marriage.
The race is on, and as the sails unfurl, so do the dangers for Hannah aboard her father's ship. As the fastest sailing vessels ever built storm across the world's oceans, she learns that this is a race with no rules, and that murder, mayhem and deceit are all part of the game.
- ISBN10 0719547849
- ISBN13 9780719547843
- Publish Date 15 March 1990
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 13 August 1997
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher John Murray Press
- Imprint John Murray Publishers Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English