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 Ironside's 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...