Jack Vizzard, now a Captain in King George’s Corps of Marines, and his Sergeant Major, Joe Packer, are assigned to HMS Melampus, a frigate under the command of Captain Graham Moore patrolling the Atlantic. Both men enjoy a solid reputation until a fight ashore at Portsmouth leads to an arrest, a court martial, and a deadly enmity with a Naval officer.
Sir John Jervis, Commander-in Chief of the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet, needs more ships and more marines if he is to engage the Spaniards in a naval battle. Vizzard is deployed to HMS Captain, a 74-gun ship of the line, the flagship of a young commodore named Horatio Nelson who has the trust and approbation of Admiral Jervis.
Jervis’s ships find the Spanish fleet on 14 February 1797, Saint Valentine’s Day, and the battle begins off Cabo de São Vicente on Portugal’s southern coast. It is here that Commodore Horatio Nelson, ignoring orders, risks his career and the lives of the king’s men and marines to test a revolutionary naval strategy.