Fourteen-year-old orphan Davey Shea has come to live with his disreputable uncle Patch, a naval surgeon and complete stranger. Davey becomes Patch's apprentice and accompanies him, when Patch joins his friend Philip Hunter, on the HMS Retribution, a British war frigate. When Hunter leads a mutiny against the captain's brutality, all those involved receive a death sentence. Davey is swept along when the group escapes and forms a band of pirates. Davey wonders if his Uncle and Hunter have really turned their back on the king, or if there is a larger plot at work.

"Aladdin Historical Fiction"--Cover. "Aladdin paperbacks".