In the 1860s the idea of low-budget cruising yachts accessible to ordinary middle-class people was still some way away (John MacGregor was just beginning to experiment with his one-person yawl Rob Roy), and "yachting" was reserved for the sort of people who run "superyachts" today. People like S R Graves, Irish-born Liverpool businessman and shipowner, Mayor of Liverpool, Commodore of Royal Mersey Yacht Club, chair of every conceivable committee concerned with the arts, sciences, economy or welfare, who would be elected MP for the city a couple of years after this book came out.

Graves was no rough-hewn shipowner in the Onedin Line tradition, but a classic Victorian polymath, interested in everything from palaeontology to public health, soaking up facts and figures the way modern travellers soak up sunshine and booze. He was clearly very proud of his Irish heritage, and often draws parallels from Irish history, whether or not they happen to be helpful. The book is absolutely groaning with data, with no fewer than four appendices containing detailed digests of the economies of the countries he visited. And in case you ever wanted to establish a Foundling Hospital, you will find enough information here to build your own and calculate the costs and mortality rates.

Graves's yacht, the patriotically named Ierne, was in the classic mode of the time, with a professional crew of about six, plus a steward and a Baltic pilot ("easily found for around 10 pounds a month"). If something interesting happened at a convenient time during the day, the Commodore and his travelling companion the Doctor might help the crew with sail-handling, but apart from that they seem to have spent their time at sea fishing, sketching, and investigating the life of the sea-bed with the help of a marine-biology trawl and a jar of spirits. But not on Sundays, of course: one of the few negative things Graves mentions about Ierne is how limited her "Sunday library" is. Once Divine Service is over, it's a dull day for them, sharing the couple of books of old sermons that are all she has on board in the way of non-secular reading-matter.

There's not much in the way of descriptions of sailing and navigation here, the book really comes alive when they get into port.

We hear about Copenhagen, Stockholm and Uppsala. In Stockholm, they bump into two honorary members of the Royal Mersey: Prince Oscar of Sweden, who arranges for them to see Drottningholm and some other royal residences, and Queen Victoria's 18-year-old son Prince Alfred, who is on an "informal" visit to the Baltic with about half the Royal Navy. Alfred urges them to come to come to St Petersburg with him, so they tag along with the fleet, giving Graves the excuse to bombard us with information about the Navy as it was in that awkward transitional stage, half still stuck in the Nelson era and half already playing with ironclad ships, steam propulsion and breech-loading guns.

We then get the full tour of St Petersburg in the days of Alexander II (Graves does not approve of Catherine the Great and her Hermitage full of atheistic Frenchmen), before Graves and the Doctor capriciously decide to hop on the recently-opened railway to Moscow, leaving the Ierne to make her own way to Göteborg and wait for them. Moscow — the first time I've read about it in a yachting book — gets a detailed inspection too, including the waterworks and numerous hospitals and churches. Then it's back to Sweden by steamer via Finland and through the Gotha Canal to meet the Ierne again for the trip home around Cape Wrath to the Mersey. ( )