David Baboulene runs away to sea in a cloud of romantic dust for the first of his shipboard adventures. A journey which takes him across the world and back, from the Southern States of America, through Barbados and Jamaica, the Panama Canal, across to Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, then back through the Gilbert and Solomon islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and the Azores to a triumphant homecoming in Liverpool. But despite the laughs, the real journey in this strangely moving tale takes him all the way from a boy to a man.