Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings
with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and
the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy.
When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America--where
Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence
from Spain--the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange
consequences.
The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end
Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet
precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's
fate and his own.