Palafox is a Protestant Irish boy from the west coast of Ireland, schooled by his father, a churchman, and eager to join the Royal Navy.
He learns naval discipline and how to determine his ship's position at sea as part of a large berth of midshipmen on HMS Centurion.
His friend Sean O'Mara joins with him, considered his servant initially by officers and put among the seamen, rising in rank as he shows his abilities, to bosun's mate.
Anson remarks on the terrible decision by the Admiralty to include the Chelsea pensioners (500 infirm sailors) as part of his crew.
Before the equator, Peter gets a delirious fever, lasting until they land at Saint Catherine's island off Brazil, where they stay past Christmas.
They meet with high winds, thick fog, bitter cold and storms, naming several rendezvous points in the Pacific.
Peter's ribs are broken from a rope that froze in this cold, windy weather; he feels lucky he was not tossed into the sea like so many others.
Peter computes the losses of crew on Centurion, Gloucester and Tryal since leaving England: 961 sailed out, 626 dead after reaching Juan Fernandez.
They lose Mr Walter and some officers, who take a merchant ship on the well-travelled route back to England, to report progress and carry mail and gifts home.
Sailing east, Centurion waits for the galleon, engaging her in close battle on June 20, 1743, taking her and her cargo of silver and gold.
Sean is promoted to bosun's mate, guarding the treasure aboard the prize and Centurion for the year's voyage home.
Specifically, "Shipboard life rings true, the story never flags and humor abounds: "Well, he is a wonderful poacher for a Protestant," observes one Anglo-Irishman.
[3] Kirkus Reviews finds this novel "Not a mature piece of work, but appealing enough to satisfy fans of O'Brian's naval sagas.
"[1] Tom Clark writing in the Los Angeles Times says that "evidently in keeping with an aim of appealing to a younger audience, the darker aspects of the crew's experience are played down in favor of a robust and exhilarating rendering of the great adventure of it all."
"[5] Scott Veale writing in The New York Times was upbeat about this novel, saying that "As always, the author's erudition and humor are on display, whether he's describing the singing of the masts in the wind, the harrowing seas of Cape Horn or 18th-century superstitions."
Veale found the period detail to be "uncompromising", and expected that readers "will be swept up by the richness of O'Brian's prodigious imagination.
Mr Walter the chaplain wrote his own account of the voyage of Anson, noted by Clark (above) as one of O'Brian's historical sources for this novel and the interactions among the officers and crew.
It is set in the Napoleonic Wars, begins in 1800, and features a pair of men who become the closest of friends, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, physician and natural philosopher.
The Royal Navy has changed since Anson's voyage, as have the politics of the world, with the thirteen British colonies in North America now the nation of the United States of America, the War of the Austrian Succession over, including the exit of France from nearly all its North American colonies, the French Revolution in the past, and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 also a past event.
[7] The Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Covadonga, after the battle, was sold at Macau and the treasure transferred to Centurion, which proceeded to England after a brief rest, arriving there in June 1744.
This novel was aimed at younger readers, as well as adults, and takes the viewpoint of a new midshipman joining the Royal Navy on HMS Centurion in 1740 on this voyage.
Seen by the midshipman Peter Palafox, the sense of the adventure is depicted, as he sees the world and learns the discipline, hardships and rewards of the Royal Navy.
The hardships of the voyage are not dismissed, with counts of the deaths from scurvy, whose cure was not yet understood, and the problems of navigation without the precise knowledge of location gained by chronometers to measure longitude, depicted in detail.