It's early December when sixteen-year-old Edward Paige leans out of the train window and bids his parents farewell. Bound for London, then the south of France where he will join his first ship as a deck apprentice, Edward is about to become a man of the sea. Edward has had a yearning to go to sea for as long as he can remember. As he embarks on his adventure, he has one goal - to become an officer in the British Merchant Navy. After finishing cadet school, where the learning curve is steep and the life lessons are plentiful, Edward soon receives his first glimpse of the Mediterranean as he arrives in Marseilles, France. On an adventure marked not only by hardship but also joy, Edward's travels take him to the North Sea, the Baltic, the angry North Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the South Atlantic - but it is the night he spends with a beautiful woman in Buenos Aires that will change his life forever. In this coming-of-age tale, Edward battles the sea, the weather, and his own emotions as he enters into manhood.