As Nicholas’ daughter Hannah tells the story in the play, the trouble began when her father argued with a young lieutenant from one of the British revenue ships that patrolled Narragansett Bay.

“He was cultivating some corn he had planted in that lot by the shore,” she says to her friend Carter. “Green’s boy was helping him. He had the new horse in the cultivator and as it was the first time he had ever been in one he was kicking and plunging and acting bad generally; so to manage him better father got on his back and let the Green boy guide the cultivator. Just then a party of British came along looking for a place to get water and the officer in charge came up and ordered father to get off the horse and let the Green boy ride. At first father didn’t pay any attention to him but the officer kept on shouting until finally father told him to keep quiet at which the officer struck father with his sword. With that father did get off the horse but not to let the Green boy ride. He walked up to that officer, and they had an awful fight; father was all covered with dust when he got home but he didn’t seem to care. He said if we thought he was used up we ought to have seen that lieutenant when they were carrying him off to the boat.”

It turns out the young lieutenant who Nicholas had thrashed was the son of the ship’s captain. Nicholas was captured and imprisoned in retaliation.

For three days, Nicholas was held in the brig.

“He could either apologize or be hung, but still father would not apologize,” Nicholas’ older daughter Edah proudly tells her brothers Tom and John. “Then the captain said he would give him until sunrise the next morning to think it over and ordered him taken back and chained to that post where he had been before. And he lay almost starved until the next morning when he was taken up on the bridge again and the noose put around his neck, but still he would not apologize. Again, he was taken back to that place in the bottom of the boat where he lay another twenty hours with almost nothing to eat.”

On the third day Nicholas again was brought up on deck and, after facing the same threat of hanging, was released.

In most versions of the story, Nicholas is released through the intercession of a Jamestown Tory. In this drama, however, the hero is a British naval officer, Jack Denton, who has been courting Edah Carr.

Edah tells of his intervention: “Jack walked up to the captain and offered to give his word that father was a non-combatant, and when no attention was paid to him Jack told the captain that it was contrary to all warfare to make war on non-combatants, and that if any bodily harm was done to father he should make it his business to see that it came to the notice of the Admiral.”

Nicholas is sent home in Denton’s custody.

The play ends happily — although without any historic basis — with the marriage of Edah Carr and Denton.