Rites of Passage

In the early 1800s, Edmund Talbot, a young and rather priggish Englishman, takes passage on a boat heading for Australia where he is to be an official in the colonial government. In addition to Talbot, many of the eccentric passengers - a sexually predatory sailor, an aging coquette, the ship’s tyrannical captain - undergo profound changes in the course of the voyage, during which a naive clergyman is victimised and, finally, pushed to take drastic action.