Immaculate officers and rough-bearded riflemen, evangelists, card-sharps and dandies face death at attention on the sloping deck of the Birkenhead. But who was the coward hidden among the women in the lifeboat, and who was the girl who lived to report his shame?

Eight years later in the summer of 1860, the coward's legacy unfolds, and Verity must piece together a mystery that leads him to uncover an ingenious plot: a madman's revenge for the loss of the Birkenhead. And with this knowledge, only Verity can avert a tragedy unparalleled in English history since the loss of Prince William in the White Ship 700 years before.