Caribbean, 1765. Captain Edwards, at his first command, is tasked with a search and rescue mission to salvage the seventy-four gun ship-of-the-line Spartan, mysteriously gone missing. But to do so he has to expose a plot involving the most powerful men in America and measure himself against old ghosts of the past he thought buried forever, in a furious manhunt with the pirate that killed his father and now threatens the southern colonies and the life of the only woman he loves.