In Part 1 the author gives a brilliant treatise on the lines that served the Atlantic Ferry in the first half of the nineteenth century, their smart passages and their "hard citizen" officers. Dreadnought, New World, Daniel Webster and many other Atlantic cracks are dealt with.
Part 2 teems with romance. The story of Captain Samuels and the "Bloody Forty" the most notorious gang of "packet-rats" out of Liverpool.
Abstract logs, voyages, specifications, Donald Mckay-built ships and the best Atlantic passages are in the Appendicies.