With the completion of his previous mission, political considerations make it desirable that Timothy Phillips remain away from Britain. Accordingly, he is promoted to Post Captain, given a new ship and sent to deliver an envoy to Simon Bolivar in the Province of Venezuela, in Spanish America. While away on this mission he finds the United States had declared war on Great Britain . During the course of that war, the pirate commander of a powerful ship has begun terrorizing commerce of both the United States and Britain in the Caribbean. Phillips and a counterpart in the US Navy united temporarily to defeat this deadly foe.