Chaffin chronicles the remarkable story of the Shenandoah's 58,000-mile voyage around the world during the Civil War. Along the way, it sunk 32 Union merchant and whaling ships heavily laden with cargo, including brandy, rum, and whiskey. After the vessel rounded Africa's Cape of Good Hope, it stopped in Australia and then navigated the ice floes of Siberia's Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Arctic Ocean--much of it through gales, ice fields, subfreezing temperatures, fog, and rain.

The ship's crew hoped to destroy the Yankees' western Arctic whaling fleet, but four months after the war ended, the Shenandoah's captain learned that he had been fighting a war "without cause or state." He had gone from being an enemy combatant to a pirate, an offense that could get him hanged. He camouflaged the vessel, circumnavigated the globe, and attempted to surrender in England. Chaffin drew on hundreds of original documents in researching this riveting narrative of one episode of the Civil War.