Harvey Cheyne, pampered son of an American millionaire is swept overboard from the deck of a liner and picked up by a small fishing boat, one of several trawling the Grand Banks. He is rapidly confronted by the harsh realities of life and comes to terms with himself amid the hard labour and morality of the redoubtable New England fishermen. A classic adventure yarn.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 –1936) was a British author and poet, born in Bombay India, and is best known for his children's books. His earliest years were blissfully happy in an India full of exotic sights and sounds. But at the tender age of five he was sent back to England to stay with a foster family in Southsea, where he was desperately unhappy. The experience would colour some of his later writing. When he was twelve he went to the United Services College where the Headmaster a friend of his father and uncles, fostered his literary ability.

Aged sixteen, he returned to Lahore, where his parents lived. In his spare time he wrote poems and stories which were published alongside his reporting. When these were collected and published as books, they formed the basis of his early fame. Returning to England in 1889, Kipling won instant success with Barrack-Room Ballads which were followed by some more brilliant short stories. While settling his wife back in New England, he wrote Captains Courageous and The Jungle Books.