AMERICAN BLOCKADED FROM MAINE TO NEW ORLEANS. BRITISH MEN-OF-WAR CRUISING LONG ISLAND SOUND, THICKER THAN BONES IN A HERRING.

These might have been the headlines that dark winter of 1814, when young Jason Cobb crept out into the night from an inn called Spar and Binnacle. He was fleeing for his life from a pair of conspirators, one of them his stepfather, both traitors to the American cause during the War of 1812.

Jason makes his escape and finds a sailor's berth aboard the United States frigate Thunderbolt. The first American ship to break the six-month British blockade, the Thunderbolt sails a dangerous route, threatened by British ships-of-the-line, to bring Captain Tom Blythe and a noble Haitian emissary, Baron Dupuy, to Haiti on a secret mission for President Madison.

From the dust jacket