Captain Halliwell shoulders the entire blame for the demise of the flagship of the British North Atlantic Squadron and ten of his men. From that disastrous moment, he wastes away in a sullen marriage and a repressive job in his hometown of Stratford, England. In the final episode of his frail and gloomy life, Halliwell recognizes there is one bright spot he has managed to overlook: his seven-year-old granddaughter Lee. He bequeaths Lee a thought-provoking ideal, setting her eventually on a course to steer her own ship of fate with firm mastery. A group of Canadian graduate students vacationing in Stratford charter a narrowboat from a fleet owned by Lee's father, and manage to have the first-ever, near-fatal accident while traversing a towering canal aqueduct. The charter leader, Ivey Beals, is drawn to Lee and her uncanny resemblance to a hometown Labrador girl who has evaded his pursuits for years. Ivey's and Lee's attraction is strong in spite of a sequence of outside intrusions and argumentative encounters that keep them apart. When Lee travels to Labrador to trace her grandfather's scant history, she finds much more than she bargained for.