It was late December 1785, the twenty-fifth year of the reign of King George III, King of Great Britain and King of Ireland. For the past six weeks the Honorable Company Ship (HCS) Halsewell, employed in the service of the Honorable East India Company, had been berthed at Gravesend in Kent (a town situated on the River Thames) as she prepared to embark on her third voyage to the East Indies (the whole of South-East Asia to the east of, and including, India).

When she set sail, on 1 January 1786, no one could have guessed that her dramatic demise would touch the very heart of the nation: an event of such pathos as to inspire the greatest writer of the age, Charles Dickens, to put pen to paper, the greatest painter of the age J. M. W. Turner to apply brush to canvas, and the King and Queen to pay homage at the very place where the catastrophe occurred.

Artifacts continue to be recovered from the seabed, shedding further light both on 'Halsewell' herself, and on the extraordinary lives of those who sailed in her.