Once the pride of the British Navy's East India fleet, the Veritas has fallen on hard times. She is now a transport ship, her cargo prisoners of the Crown, her destination the penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, the southernmost State of Australia. Pastor Bob Cookson tries to offer solace to the convicts on board. He meets Angus McLeod, a hard-liner on the rights of workers, who is about to enter a world where no such rights exist; Lester Harris, a farmer, who insists his wife follows him to the Antipodes; and Sean Shanahan, miserably separated from the love of his life. Cookson is shocked to discover that most of the men have committed only trivial offences. He suspects a conspiracy to empty British prisons, but finds a more sinister motive at work.