Ned Farrier Master Mariner · Call of the Cape

Ned Farrier has grown into a fine young man after the agony and humiliation of a London workhouse and a gentleman’s club in Vauxhall where he was rescued with two friends as described in Limehouse Boys, a work of historical fiction. He learns the seagoing trade as a bargeman and works his way up to Captain of his own merchant ship bound to Australia, South Africa and beyond. Then, Ned loses his young wife and child to the consumption, and the Cape Colony of South Africa tugs at his heart as he longs to be with Sally Hudsmith, a married woman and a passenger on board one of his ships with problems of her own. While Ned advances his career and his standing with his employers, Sally endures hardship and tragedy. When Sally’s husband dies, she is once again a passenger on Ned’s merchant ship, the Saxony, bound for an England that no longer feels like home. When Ned is offered the post of Agent for the Gray Packet Line in Cape Town, he asks for Sally’s hand in marriage, and she accepts with joy and excitement, and they return to South Africa to begin life anew. In this work of historical fiction called Ned Farrier, Master Mariner: Call of the Cape, author Patrick G. Cox paints a realistic picture based on his family’s ancestry of what life was like for men and women new to the frontier of southern Africa and the excitement of relationships outside the confines of England.