A Pirate's Daughter - Theresa M. Moore, Author

‘There came a cracking sound, then the sound of whistling.  Something crashed violently into the ship, making it shudder from stem to stern. Then another.  Charity scrambled up the ladder and threw the hatch open, climbed out onto the main deck and saw Queen Anne’s Revenge firing cannonballs into the Mary Catherine.  She looked around and saw bodies of strangers and shipmates alike strewn about on the deck in attitudes of death.  They must have fought each other hand to hand and the merchant crew had lost.  She had never seen so much blood before, and the smell of it and the stench of urine came up from the deck and assaulted her nose.  She covered her face with a coat sleeve to blot it out as she searched frantically for her father and Jonathan but did not see them among the dead.’

 

The Mary Catherine, captained by Joshua Makepeace Rakham, ran the waters along the Gulf Coast, picking up cotton in Louisiana and receiving rum for the return voyage to the Caribbean Sea.  Rakham’s daughter Charity had lived aboard ship since the death of her mother and due to her being the Captain’s daughter she was treated with respect by the crew.  But as time went on and Charity grew into a lovely young lady, there were crew members who began seeing her as more than a child.  This soon lead to the cry of mutiny by two such crew members.   However, this was soon put to rest when word reached Rakham and the two were handled in the ways of the sea…they were stripped and whipped.

 

This became just the beginning of the problems Charity finds herself facing.  Her survival while in the possession of a man known by the name of Franz Joseph Rosenthorne becomes impossible to deal with and the only way out is through escape.  But with no money nor means of acquiring money, escape seems impossible.

 

A Pirate’s Daughter is yet another book in the Children of the Dragon series and my 5^th to read.  And I have to say that I’ve yet to read one that I haven’t enjoyed.  Each has kept me spellbound with the mystery and events as they unfold with both good and bad creatures of the night.

 

2010

Atellus