Young Garret Connachan is expelled from a private academy for knifing a classmate. Bribed to take the youngster on as an underage midshipman, highly regarded captain Francis Drake is soon tested to blend Garret into his band of marauding, sixteenth-century pirates. But a deep secret complicates young Connachan's struggle to earn the respect and confidence of hardened brigands intent on plundering the seas. A series of events, accented by two catastrophes, alters Garret's future in a completely unexpected way.