Wrenched by tragedy from a peaceful and respectable middle-class home in
Victorian London, Hannah Kemball finds herself accompanying her father,
Captain "Cracker Jack" Kemball, aboard the tea-clipper Erl King on a
voyage to China. It is 1869. In shanghai and Foochow, the crack British
tea-clippers are loading the season's tea, preparing for the annual race
to bring their valuable cargoes and the fortunes of their swaggering
crews halfway around the world to the London market. Unfortunately for
Hannah, only one thing matters t the iron-willed captains about to pit
their skills against the perils of three oceans: to be the first to make
it home. Overconfident of victory, Captain Kemball strikes a wager with
the sinister Captain Richards of the Seawitch. The stakes: Hannah's hand
in marriage. The race is on, and as the sails unfurl, so do the dangers
for Hannah aboard her father's ship. As the fastest sailing vessels ever
built storm across the world's oceans, she learns that this is a race
with no rules, and that murder, mayhem and deceit are all part of the
game.