While their father Fenton Hardy is working on cases of museum robberies, he asks Frank and Joe to stake out the Black Parrot, a shipping boat docked in Bayport. The Hardy boys get a job loading crates aboard the ship but because the crew is so unfriendly and the boys are kept very busy, they don't have a chance to investigate. They instead decide to follow another lead and travel to New York to search for a rare old book. While scouring a used book store, they locate a book titled Empire of the Twisted Claw which bears a symbol on the cover which matches a ring the first mate of the Black Parrot was wearing. While they cannot afford to purchase the book, the store keeper allows them to read it, whereby they learn about the Empire of the Twisted Claw and the pirate ships named Black Parrot and Yellow Parrot and the King who controlled the empire.
