The old sea-dog, Captain Spike of the brigantine Molly Swash, calls out the order to first mate Mulford: the ship casts off with the tide—and young Rose Budd is to be aboard! For Rose and her kindly aunt, it is to be a voyage for rest, recuperation, and escape from a world beset with worries and the rampant "pulmonary" disease, tuberculosis. As they soon learn, however, the best-planned vacations can go in unexpected directions—toward romance, perhaps . . . and more alarmingly toward danger. The great American critic Van Wyck Brooks lauded Jack Tier for its describing "one of those fine, free, leisurely voyages around the world—voyages that made men out of boys and abounded in shipwrecks and perilous adventures." Originally serialized as Rose Budd in the popular Graham's Magazine, the novel ranks among Cooper's finest tales of the sea.