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This is a true story which tells an extraordinary tale based on a Whitby Skipper and his small crew of misfits who set sail on an Arctic Voyage in a seventy-year-old vessel declared unsafe by the department of transport.  Against the odds, they sail one-and-a-half thousand miles to the remote island of Jan Mayen, place a plaque to mark the remarkable life of eighteenth-century navigator and inventor of the barrel crow’s nest, William Scoresby, and then miraculously survive the return journey.

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In 1991 Captain Jack Lammiman sets sail for the Arctic with what is described as “a motley crew” on board the barely shipshape Helga Maria to plant a plaque on Jan Mayen Island in honour of the 18th/19th century whaler William Scoresby who sailed out of Whitby further north than anyone had penetrated at that time.  The crew in Roberts’ version is reduced to five, with one fictitious character and a couple of the more experienced sailors excised, but Lammiman’s achievement in taking his ship to Jan Mayen and successfully returning remains remarkable.

Writer Bea Roberts says: “What appealed to me about this true story to begin with is that it felt like an Ealing comedy or a Carry On film – it’s got this fantastically silly edge: this group of pensioners being chased by the Royal Navy!  But it’s also really remarkable as a story of incredible adventure, of daring, of bravery and of people doing something really rather audacious and brilliant.”