The American Revolution War is in full swing, with Yankee privateers swarming in British waters. For ship-owners like Captain William Kite of Liverpool, ruin was only a gun-shot away. When providence strikes the embattled Kite yet again, he is desperate to restore his fortune and travels to London to try a final throw of the dice. Kite pursues his elusive goal from the commercial machinations conducted in the smoky air of London to the thunderous discharge of cannon fire in the least well-known sea-battles of the American War of Independence that echoed out over the placid waters of the Indian Ocean.