"New shackles were being forged here, in the light-filled loft, amid smells of oiled canvas and raw hemp and tar, the creeping fringes of the sail-cloth, his feelings for Sarah Wolpert and for his father."
Book 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, pp. 13

"I am talking about a commerce that will be worth millions. A lawful commerce - it is sanctioned by the law of the land. Merchants trading to Africa can hold up their heads with the best."
Book 1, Part 1, Chapter 2, pp. 16

"The last Kemp saw of his ship was the duchess yearning away from him...this was any ship now, a shape become generic, universal. His last real sight of her had been that swanning glide, that brief, ungainly wallowing, that yearning retreat of the figurehead. It was the last of her he would ever see."
Book 1, Part 1, Chapter 9, pp. 62

"Ambition, the wish for some lustre to fall on him...