is the story of a childhood in Wales and a boyhood on the arduous "sail-in-trade" of northern Europe before World War II. It is a charming, nostalgic reminiscence of a lost world, of childhood in a Welsh countryside still in the 19th century, of a time when chantey-singing sailors fought the weather to deliver bricks, coal, even animals around the world, and of a young boy who wanted to experience it all.