A chance meeting on the muddy foreshore of the River Thames starts Kevin Rushby on a voyage in search of the lost pirate settlements that once existed on the islands and atolls of the Indian Ocean. Hitching rides on a motley assortment of freighters, dhows, yachts and fishing smacks, he sails up the African coast, then east to the islands of the Comoros and Madagascar. The final objective was to locate the descendants of the sixteenth-century pirates who had carved kingdoms for themselves in the remote jungles of north-east Madagascar. Along his way, Rushby meets the crackpot dreamers, the tough settlers, the fighters and the failures who live on the coasts and islands now. It is a story full of adventure and incident: voyages to islands where forgotten Portuguese forts lie covered in jungle, places where some have tried to shoot their way to paradise, and where the ever-present ocean can destroy lives and dreams as quickly as men and women create them.