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 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