Helsingfors? – opposite Stockholm – most of us can place Helsingfors; Reval? – if allowed to generalise the east coast of the Baltic and treat it as a straight line, we could pass on Reval . But Oesel and Dago and Moon? We should put them down as miscreants in a children's rhyme. We learn from this book that they are islands off the coast of Esthonia – in fact they, together with the gulfs of Riga and Finland, were among the subconscious memories that made us a little doubtful in treating that east coast of the Baltic as a straight line. It was among those islands and the shoals with which they are girt that Mr. Ransome made the voyage of five hundred miles which he describes in this book. His ship was a thirty-ton centreboard ketch, built in Riga to his specification and to the design of a friend. He himself was master as well as owner, and his crew consisted of a lady, who was kept busy cooking all the time, and an ancient mariner.