The last voyage of the "Lillias Eden", an old wooden schooner employed in the turtle trade. The Lillias Eden and the multi-national crew leave home port on Grand Cayman for the green-turtle hunting grounds in the reefs and cays of the Caribbean. The West Indian turtle-fishing expedition meets with failure, and desperation and discord affect the ragged crew who are beset with superstition and belief in tales of pirates, storms and other folkloric episodes.

Finally in a desperate gamble to find the turtles, the captain sets sail for the legendary inlet south of Cuba, Far Tortuga. Nine men aboard an old Caribbean schooner in search of the fishing grounds of their forefathers, find only a modern world in which they have no place.

An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself, this powerful story of the sea is also a resonantly symbolic account of the relations between man and nature.
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