Geena Davis stars in this adventure saga as the most swashbuckling female pirate to ever lay waste to the seven seas. Morgan Adams (Davis) is the daughter of a pirate who has followed in her father's footsteps. When he dies, he passes along his ship, a crew of bandits, and one third of a treasure map (which happens to be tattooed on his skull). Morgan is eager to search out the rest of the map and retrieve the riches, but the fragment she holds is in Latin. Morgan then buys a well-educated slave, William Shaw (Matthew Modine), who can read the ancient language and already has a taste for the criminal life. However, Morgan and William are not long into their search when they discover that someone else is following the same trail for the rest of the treasure map: Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), Morgan's uncle and as black-hearted a scurvy dog as ever boarded a ship. As Morgan and Dawg battle each other over the fragments of the map, a British journalist (Maury Chaykin) covers their feud for the penny press. William Shaw was originally to have been played by Michael Douglas, who dropped out in the early stages of this troubled production.