A new writing team - two-time academy award winning actor Gene Hackman and one of America's leading authorities on shipwrecks and diving, Daniel Lenihan - have combined their talent and experience to create a rousing adventure saga of men and the sea.. "In 1805 seventeen-year-old Jack O'Reilly sets sail with his parents from Salem, Massachusetts, aboard the Perdido Star. Jack is full of high hopes at the prospect of a new life in his mother's homeland of Cuba, but shortly after the family arrives, tragedy strikes, and in a desperate escape, Jack rejoins the departing Star as a member of the crew.. "For the next three years Jack encounters storms, shipwreck, hostile and friendly natives, and enemy vessels as he travels around Cape Horn to the South Sea islands, the Philippines, around the Cape of Good Hope, and finally back to Cuba. He becomes the leader of a renegade group who call themselves the Right Honourable Brotherhood of the Shipwrecked Men of the Star. But throughout his adventures, his obsession to return to Cuba for revenge dominates his life, and his daring actions become the talk of the men of other vessels, who come to know him as "Black Jack" O'Reilly. Not until Jack fears the loss of his two closest mates and attempts a desperate rescue does he finally free himself from the chains of his fury and vindictiveness.