McGahan is happy to admit that he has no personal experience of the sea, but that his novel is inspired by the books he read as a boy: Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. This is a relentlessly masculine world; women are kept firmly in their place, except for one intriguing young woman of whom there will no doubt be more to discover in the subsequent books: The Coming of the Whirlpool is being promoted as the first in a series of Young Adult adventure novels called Ship Kings.

The Coming of the Whirlpool is nevertheless not a rollicking adventure with no pause for reflection. The young hero, Dow Amber, discovers early in life that bravery is a terrible thing and that heroes are lonely people. McGahan’s narrative is gripping and melancholy, the prose evocative without spilling into faux archaism, the names odd but not quite outlandish. Despite its fairly conventional plot line, devoid of sophisticated literary twists, this over-educated middle-aged female reviewer found it utterly compelling.