This volume, the second in a series, contains Q's best known ghost story based on the wrecking of the HMS Primrose in 1807. It contains a short foreword setting the scene and an afterword describing the true events as well as annotations explaining Cornish terms, identifying locations and identifying the real historical personalities.

Now surpassed in fame as a writer by his daughter's best friend, Daphne du Maurier, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch was the pre-eminent Cornish writer of Victorian and Edwardian times and founder of the school of English Literature at Cambridge University.

He is of particular interest since his fiction was very often based on factual events which have now passed from memory.