The concept of a Pax Britannia lasting for over a century while Victoria remains on the throne for 160 years holds such promise. Sadly this novel could not live up to it. The first line: "... a tramp steamer [...] chugged on across the oceanic wilderness..." was not a great start. When the third sentence opened "The entirety of the firmament was clogged with cloud...", my heart fell further. By the time "Captain Engelhard - Bavarian-German by extraction - peered out of the brine-spotted glass in front of him at the undulating mountains of water..." I was feeling pretty hostile towards the author and I had not even finished the first page. Like "the filthy, noisy craft" I "pressed on" and like the seabirds found my "discordant cries lost to the howls of the wind" for another 32 pages before I recognised that burdened with such an abundance of cliches no plot could make this book worth my effort. ( )