Captain Achilles De’Kedge, veteran of the Royal Navy and mentor of young Felix Wild, has died. His wooden foot — an object strangely coveted by his friend Mrs Sparrow — takes pride of place next to his coffin at the funeral. But the Captain has left something else behind, in addition to a plethora of illegitimate offspring spread throughout the world: a bequest that will set up Felix for life.
Before he can barely take in what this will mean for his future, Felix receives an offer from the Admiralty: to travel to China on a clipper in the Great Tea Race of 1866 and to make drawings of what he sees. The voyage takes him first from Portsmouth to Capetown on board a steamship full of female convicts (a source of fascination to the red-blooded nineteen-year-old) before he transfers to the clipper Attitude for the onward voyage. Along the way he learns what ‘owt’ means in Yorkshire dialect, why the vessel’s captain keeps two cockroaches in his beard, why ‘voracious’ is a good description of the captain’s wife Juggy, and how to fool people into thinking he speaks an obscure foreign language.
This third and final volume of the seafaring adventures of Felix Wild is a gripping read, with all the pace, wit and colour that readers have come to expect from Peter Broadbent.
