In a howling gale, English Pilot-Major John Blackthorne commands the crippled Dutch ship Erasmus, last survivor of a five-ship expedition meant to harry Iberian powers and find new bases. The crew is decimated by scurvy and starvation, the Captain-General Paulus Spillbergen is nearly helpless, and discipline frays as Blackthorne pushes on toward the rumored Japans.

Blackthorne spars with the exhausted third mate Hendrik Specz and forces a sick merchant, Maetsukker, to serve as lookout. Below decks, bodies accumulate and supplies dwindle. Blackthorne hoards his last apple against scurvy and updates his rutter, recalling his mentor Alban Caradoc’s lessons on longitude, the primacy of the pilot, and the perilous examples of Francis Drake.

He also recalls how Spillbergen’s treasure-hunting detours in Tierra del Fuego forced a deadly wintering; Erasmus alone reached Chile, where the existing rutter ended. Now, at dusk on the 133rd day from Chile, a lookout’s cry reveals reefs dead ahead. Blackthorne swings the ship broadside to gain control, calls all hands, and fights the sea as waves sweep men away; Hendrik is hurled overboard and smashed against rocks.

Amid chaos, Vinck and others haul out sails to claw for a narrow gap. The ship scrapes reef, a halliard parts, the foremast snaps, and another man is dragged under with rigging. The current turns the ship abeam into a maelstrom and a helmsman is killed by the spinning wheel. Blackthorne clings to the helm, raging, as the vessel staggers through the vortex.

At the breaking point, the keel grinds a shoal that swings the bow; the rudder finally bites. Wind and sea align, and Blackthorne rides the surge through the pass. Erasmus bursts into a bay beyond, battered but afloat, preserving the expedition’s last chance of survival and the quest for landfall.