A very handsome, rakish, and formidable craft the new schooner looked, as she lay alongside the quay, her enormously long and delicately-tapering masts towering high above the warehouse roof; her wide-spreading yards, extending far over the quay, accurately squared; her standing and running rigging as taut and straight as iron bars; her ten long nine-pounders grinning beneath her triced-up port-lids; her brightly-polished brass long eighteen-pounder mounted upon her forecastle; her spacious deck scraped and scoured until as white as snow; and her new copper and her black topsides gleaming and shimmering in the gently-rippling tide. George Bowen, though orphaned at a young age, received as fine an education as any to be had, thanks to an uncle with an eye toward learning. Yet the boy has his eyes set on the sea: for his father had been a captain. George applies himself with dedication to seven years of apprenticeship -- and chances into landing the post of Second Mate on a beautiful new privateer schooner. Then within days he finds himself taking part in a foggy morning battle, fully engaged with a ship flying the French flag!