The story begins in the early 1700s on one of the loneliest, coldest coasts in America, the Amagansett shore on the East Hampton plantations of Long Island. It is a true story about the eccentric Samuel Mulford, a whale chaser who used the oil and bones from the whales he caught on his farm and objected to the tax imposed on them by the new governor for the British government. He considered it a new tax never voted for by the people but when he refused to pay the tax he was convicted and fined for converting the queens goods to his own use. Simon Mulford at the age of seventy one, enraged went to London in England to complain to the queen but Queen Anne was dead and he took his complaint to the office of King George the First. 

The streets of London were rife with pick pockets so Simon Mulford lined his pockets with fish hooks to deter the thief's, gaining him the nickname Samuel "Fish Hook" Mulford.