Whitby in the 1790s, a whaling town: the press gang takes men off the ships as they come in, a girl loves a specksioneer, and a shopman who loves her hears something he chooses not to repeat. Gaskell, a Manchester minister's wife, called this the saddest story she ever wrote; she researched the Whitby press-gang riots on the spot, and the lie at the centre is told in half a sentence, by a decent man.