This is the story of John Deane of Nottingham, a person who, according to the author, really existed. John Deane is born in 1679 to wealthy parents, but starts out in relative poverty, working as a drover around London. He then goes to sea and rises to the rank of Captain of the Navy, but abandons that position to become "Merchant Adventurer". Next he spends some years in Russia, serving Peter the Great on a Russian war ship. When he had enough of that, he became British Consul, and finally spend some years in retirement in his native WIlford by Nottingham, where he died at an old age in 1760.
Such an eventful life of course contained many interesting adventures, which are in this volume related. There are conspiracies, battles on land and sea, pirates, shipwrecks, natural disasters, kings and queens, friends and foes, damsels in distress, and other great yarns.
