Annie's Captain is the love story and life of Captain John Cavarly, one of America's greatest skippers and Miss Hulme's grandfather. Born in New London, Connecticut, he ran off to sea at the age of fourteen. A little over a decade later, on his maiden voyage as Captain of the clipper ship Anglo-Saxon, he falls in love with one of his passengers, the attractive and petite Miss Annie Bolles.

Up to now, the sea has been the Captain's first and only love. Annie captures this hard-disciplined seaman, and despite her mother's protests, decides that they should be married on the quarterdeck when the ship docks at San Francisco.

Miss Hulme tells through a woman's eyes the extraordinary story of the Captain's love and of his clipper ships; of Queen Victoria's London and happy reunions with the Bolles family in Hawaii; of the San Francisco earthquake and of the Captain's change over from sail to steam after his favorite clipper had been captured and sunk by a Confederate ironclad.