Stories of the war between the states were still being told by veterans of the Civil war, and the Spanish American War had ended only fourteen years earlier when Philip Warren and Anson Bigelow received appointments to the United States Naval Academy in 1912. The United States was in the midst of a second industrial revolution with electricity, the automobile, and reliable indoor plumbing. The U.S. Navy was upgrading the fleet to steam turbine powered ships with larger guns, modifying its ratings, and testing the flying machine invented by the Wright Brothers. At the young age of sixteen these two boys have to quickly learn how to become men of the new modern academy before they could join the ranks of officers and gentlemen of the modern U.S. Navy. In an institution not yet 100 years old, and two short years before the trigger that would start a world war, the two friends take on the challenges of their senior midshipmen and the academy to learn what it takes to survive in the new modern academy known as Annapolis.