Every boy in 1918 dreamed of the sea, but Dave Hallard was born to it. A Brooklyn teenager with salt in his veins, Dave hears an old mariner's tale of the Hatteras, a bark wrecked near the Fanning Islands, rumored to carry a fortune in platinum. Before his father can stop him, Dave slips away with nothing but a note and a one-way ticket to adventure. The Pacific Queen becomes his classroom: brutal work, brutal seas, and a hostile mate who makes every watch feel like a fight. He survives a near-disaster towing the derelict Miriam, saves a drowning man, and rounds the Cape where the Southern Cross watches over him. When opportunity calls, he quits the ship in Auckland, signs onto a decrepit tramp, and hunts for the lost wreck. What he finds is something more valuable than platinum: himself, transformed from a dreamy boy into a sailor forged by the ocean's tests.
