Once turn'd round

A 16th century scheme purportedly to help persecuted religious minorities to escape to a new life in the New World is , six centuries later, revealed to have been a deadly scam to maroon the passengers on an Arctic coast in order to provide forced labour for a factory, where feathers from a rare seabird (the snaegeir - a relative of the great auk) are harvested to supply a lucrative trade in Europe - a wholesale slaughter which, within a few years, brought the birds to the edge of extinction. In the present day, Robertson Crutcher, a descendant of Johannes Cruytser, the merchant venturer who initiated the trade and built the factory, sets about atoning for t-he bloody stain upon his ancestry by placating the ghosts of the exploited would-be pilgrims and rescuing what may be the last surviving pair of snaegeir birds from Alba Maior, after a reported sighting by a whaling crew.

The title, you may have recognised, comes from Coleridge's the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is a major reference point.

"Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

In addition, The story draws heavily upon the facts of Martin Frobisher's life as a privateer and explorer, and his largely fruitless voyages to the coast of Labrador in 1576-78, including his association with the merchant venturer Michael Lok and the 'astrologer royal' Doctor John Dee.