In 1719 the family of the Comte de Bourke, an Irish Jacobite in the service of France and Spain, puts to sea to join him at his new embassy, is wrecked on the Barbary coast and carried off into the hills by the tribesmen; their fortunes, and those of a young Englishman, Arthur Hope, are followed through captivity to the ransom at Algiers. Charlotte Yonge took the wreck, the captivity and the rescue from a true account in The Mariners' Chronicle and kept close to it, writing for older children who could take their history with real danger in it. Fifty-eight plates of seascapes and family scenes by painters including Joseph Vernet and Laureys a Castro carry the Mediterranean light and peril of the story.
