With nuclear war approaching, the President orders USS Constitution to escape. The Contingency of Government scenario is hopelessly romantic: hopes are that the icon of America's founding ideals may survive somewhere in the South Atlantic and return someday to inspire a post-apocalyptic world. On the eve of sailing, Old Ironsides' sailing master embarks on an unexpected and fantastic voyage of his own. He is transported back to the early nineteenth-century. There he finds himself caught in the intrigues of espionage drawing European nations and the young United States of America into the War of 1812. In the past, he realizes he must do nothing to change the future, even though he is tempted. He survives battles at sea, captivity by Barbary pirates, political intrigues, desertion on a barren island and discovers renewed patriotism, romance and -- most of all -- himself. He returns in time to sail Constitution, America's oldest continuously commissioned warship, on a seemingly impossible mission which thwarts the last possible launch of a nuclear holocaust.