Union Passed Midshipman Gavin MacKenzie, fresh from the capture of Roanoke Island, is still on the USS Delaware operating on North Carolina's Albemarle Sound when it is ambushed on the Chowan River at Winton. An action which the town soon regrets. He is the Navy liaison in Elizabeth City when the Army paroles prisoners captured on Roanoke Island. And he manages to reconnect with Rebecca Franklin, the enticing but fiery staunch supporter of the Confederacy. He is transferred to the USS Cumberland in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a magnificent natural harbor and the key to the Virginia Peninsula. He gets to know well his four steerage messmates and all parts of the razee sailing sloop-of-war, from stem to stern, from the hold to the mainmast truck. But it is not long before the Cumberland is destroyed by the former USS Merrimack, converted by the Confederates into the powerful steam-powered ironclad, the CSS Virginia. MacKenzie's having fought on the Cumberland makes him valuable to the USS Monitor. He is in her turret the next day when the Monitor challenges the Merrimack/Virginia for supremacy of the Roads. Join Gavin MacKenzie in the hell of the two-day Civil War battle that revolutionized naval warfare.