In the changing world of 1960's Ireland, a young man named Anthony Holten answered a newspaper advertisement and soon found himself in a totally alien environment upon the high seas. From the even tenor of a mechanic's life in Dublin, he was catapulted into the hustle and bustle of shipboard life - where a new world enfolded him amidst the clamorous machinery spaces of steamships plying between many far-flung
destinations. The writer recounts his experiences as a developing marine engineer and his impressions as a raw
landlubber learning a mariner's life in a story that takes
the reader on a worldwide journey that begins in rural
Ireland: from his early experiences in the ports of
Europe to the cold hostile Atlantic Ocean and the
Baltic Sea; across the western oceans to the Caribbean,
through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean; and
then from the USA to the searing heat of the Persian
Gulf via Capetown and ever onwards to the Far East.