Mariner, merchant, and reluctant warrior, Geoffrey Frost has entered the American Revolution on behalf of the colony of New Hampshire, commanding a captured British sloop o' war and sailing out of Portsmouth to harass the British fleet. Audacity is returning from Canada following a daring rescue of American prisoners held at Louisburg when she sails into a fog bank - and straight into a British convoy shepherded by a thirty-two gun frigate.
In serving the American cause, Frost will impersonate a British merchant, capture several supply ships, order the execution of some of his own countrymen who have turned pirate and renegade, and perform an extraordinary feat of navigation in order to restore two men to the ship of the great explorer Captain James Cook. He will also meet the beguiling and exasperating Lady Cygnet, an opera singer, who promises to enliven and complicate Frost's life.