Little Bear hears about his grandfather's exploits as a sea captain when they are cleaning out the attic together.

In 1807, having survived a typhoon in the East Indies, Jacky Faber makes her way to London to seek a pardon for herself and her betrothed, Jaimy Fletcher, who, posing as a highwayman, is trying to avenge her supposed death.

After finding a way to teach the ship's crew members to understand navigation, Nat, a self-taught mathematician and astronomer in eighteenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, writes down his explanations and compiles them into "The American Practical Navigator," also known as the "Sailors' Bible."

Now rich, Jacky Faber has purchased the Lorelei Lee to carry passengers across the Atlantic, and believing she has been absolved of past sins against the Crown, she docks in London, where she is arrested and sentenced to life in the newly formed penal colony in Australia.

Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates.

The high-seas adventures of two cat brothers.