She is the owner's representative. On the spot. Therefore, she is responsible for solving problem. Twenty years old and the joint heir to the successful Caribee Shipping line, Helen Edge has just boarded the Caribee Express, bound from Darwin to Singapore with a cargo of rice and sugar. Helen immediately takes to sea life, striking up a friendship with the ship's young captain, Dennis Moore, and for once managing to break free of past unhappy memories. Then chaos strikes when the ship is hijacked by Indonesian revolutionaries. Joanna, with the rest of the crew and the passengers, is now a prisoner on her own ship, far from home and from any British intervention. But Helen's mother, the notorious Joanna, owner of the shipping line, four times married, ex-princess, millionairess and convicted murderess, is not about to give up her only daughter without a fight -- and fighting is what she is best at .