The first part of the story tells of Brown's birth, as a result of a liaison between his mother, Agatha Brown, and a Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Richard Saville-Samarez. It describes his upbringing in late Victorian and Edwardian England, with Agatha as an unmarried mother pretending to be a widow, and her instilling into him a sense of duty to the Navy and to his country. As soon as he is old enough (fifteen years of age), Brown joins the Navy, and at the start of World War I is serving on the cruiser HMS "Charybdis" at Singapore.