Fascinated by the shabby mystique of port cities, and drawn to the lingering romance of travel by ship, Thornton McCamish embarked on a journey to explore the disappearing culture of the high seas. This book traces his travels, setting out from Marseilles, following the smell of fish and diesel around the Mediterranean and the Middle East before heading to Cape Town via the Canary Islands and on through East Africa and the spice and slave routes of the Indian Ocean. The book is all about the romance and menace of the ports, an attempt to find a place that never really existed, where the girls are always friendly, the aces are always high and the treasure is still where Blackbeard buried it.