Sixteen years after she played Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Bette Davis reprised the role of the last Tudor in this colourful but rather tepid melodrama. She gets to chew a little scenery as she realises that Richard Todd's Walter Raleigh is in love with lady-in-waiting Joan Collins, but the history lesson script keeps her on a short leash. Todd comes across as a sulky boy who isn't allowed to play in the Americas rather than an ambitious man of action, and his romance with the demure Collins is soggier than a cloak over a puddle.

Sir Walter Raleigh overcomes court intrigue to win favor with the Queen in order to get financing for a proposed voyage to the New World.