The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Charlotte, though a well-brought-up and proper girl, still feels thrilled by the excitement of the great English port of Liverpool, where her ship for America awaits. She shows a wide-eyed curiosity and intelligence, traits that will serve her well in the weeks to come. Her joy stems from a sense of adventure, a feeling that will be tested thoroughly during the ocean crossing. 

Charlotte notices nothing particularly interesting about the ship she will take home to America beyond the figurehead, which gives her the first hint that dark tidings await her. Trouble is brewing; it’s as if even the carved seahawk can feel it. The screaming-bird figurehead symbolizes the tension and anger between this ship’s captain and crew, men who may come to blows on this voyage. 

“What could I do? All my life I had been trained to obey, educated to accept. I could hardly change in a moment. ‘Please lead me,’ I mumbled, as near to fainting as one could be without actually succumbing.”

The families she expects to join her aboard the Seahawk don’t arrive; trapped aboard the ship with no chaperone, Charlotte allows Mr. Keetch, the second mate, to escort her to her rooms below deck. She’s over her head and knows it. With no reliable adult to guide her, she must navigate the coming weeks entirely on her own. 

“Barlow’s the name and though it’s not my business or place to tell you, miss, some of the others here, Jack Tars like myself, have deputized me to say that you shouldn’t be on this ship. Not alone as you are. Not this ship. Not this voyage, miss.”

Sailor Barlow warns her that her presence onboard is a bad idea. Charlotte feels the same way, but she has no real options, and her training prevents her from running off into the night. Her genteel upbringing provides her with no training for the sudden sense of danger that she feels. 

“Believe me, if I could with kindness encourage the men to achieve their tasks I would do it. Alas, I would gain no respect. They don’t understand kindness. Instead, they see it as weakness. Instead, they demand a strong hand, a touch of the whip, like dumb beasts who require a little bullying. I must do what is best for the ship, the company—which is to say your father—and for them. I am a punctilious man, Miss Doyle. Without order there is chaos. Chaos on shipboard is sailing without a rudder.”

Captain Jaggery explains to Charlotte that she might hear about, or witness, behavior on his part that seems cruel. He explains away such actions as necessary deeds. His wants to appeal to her sense of breeding, get her to understand which side she belongs on, and ensure her support in case of trouble. 

“With all eyes upon us as we crossed the ship’s waist to the bowsprit and figurehead, I felt like a princess being led to her throne. Not even the same lowering mist I’d observed when I first came from my cabin could dampen my soaring spirits. Captain Jaggery was a brilliant sun and I, a Juno moon, basked in reflected glory.”

Jaggery parades young Charlotte about the ship, flattering her until she’s ecstatic. This puts her completely on his side, but in fact he’s making clear to the crew that Charlotte has his protection and that she will be one of his shields, someone they dare not injure. Unknowingly, Charlotte has become a pawn in the captain’s game. 

“Captain Jaggery and Mr. Zachariah! Such unlike men! And yet, quite suddenly I was struck by the thought that each of them, in his own way, was courting me. Courting me! I could not help but smile. Well no, not courting in the real sense. But surely courting me for friendship.”

Charlotte cherishes the captain’s attention—he’s her protection against unwanted treatment from the crew—yet she’s intrigued by Zachariah, whose interest in her puzzles her. Charlotte can’t yet wrap her head around the idea that the lowly cook has her best interests at heart, while the captain courts her to ensure his own safety. Soon enough, she’ll discover the truth. 

“Breakfast was set out in steerage, at the mates’ mess. Served by Zachariah, it consisted of badly watered coffee and hard bread with a dab of molasses, though as days passed, the molasses grew foul. Dinner at midday was the same. Supper was boiled salted meats, rice, beans, and again bad coffee. Twice a week we might have duff, the seaman’s delight: boiled flour and raisins.”

Charlotte’s meals are nothing like what she’s used to. Hunger wins out, though, and she gets enough to eat. She and her clothing become soiled beyond anything she’s experienced, and she must do her own washing, itself a new experience. Living conditions onboard are way beneath her expectations, but Charlotte gets through it and learns to enjoy what at first makes her uncomfortable. 

“It was at that exact moment that Captain Jaggery fired his musket. The roar was stupendous. The ball struck Cranick square in the chest. With a cry of pain and mortal shock he dropped his sword and stumbled backward into the crowd. They were too stunned to catch him, but instead leaped back so that Cranick fell to the deck with a sickening thud. He began to groan and thrash about in dreadful agony, blood pulsing from his chest and mouth in ghastly gushes.”

The leader of the mutiny, one-armed stowaway Cranick, is shot in the chest and dies, along with his rebellion, while his comrades look on, stunned and cowed. The captain has won the day, but his cruel victory, his subsequent mistreatment of the dead man’s body, and his choice of Zachariah to receive general punishment costs him the support of Charlotte. In a single evening, she learns that respectable isn’t the same as good. 

“‘No, I’ll not regret rising against you,’ [Zachariah] continued in his halting way. ‘I can only wish I’d acted sooner. I forgive the girl. You used her. She did not know better. I forgive my mates too. They know where Captain Jaggery takes command … no … God signs on.’”

Staring directly at Charlotte, Zachariah offers her a lesson on the difference between good and evil. She now understands why he was kind to her. Alone at sea among mutineers, she realizes that the devil on board isn’t a sailor but the captain himself. 

“‘Insulted by a sniffling, self-centered, ugly, contemptible girl,’ he spat out, ‘who deserves a horsewhipping!’ I sank to my knees, hands in prayerlike supplication. ‘Let them take care of you,’ he snarled. ‘In any way they want. I withdraw my protection. Do you understand? I want nothing to do with you. Nothing!’”

Charlotte tries to apologize to the captain, but enraged, he refuses to forgive her and will look the other way if the men choose to punish her for betraying them. Effectively, he has fed her to the lions. She’s now the enemy of everyone on board—she betrayed both the crew and Jaggery, each time for what she thought were good reasons—and has no one to turn to but herself. 

“‘I didn’t mean—’ He cut me off abruptly. ‘Gentlefolk like you never mean, Miss Doyle. But what you do …’”

Fisk tells her cuttingly that upper-class people can make mistakes and nothing happens to them, while for the same mistakes the lower classes get punished. Her tears, then, don’t make everything better with the crew. She must do more to set things right. 

“‘I want to show that I stand with you,’ I pleaded. ‘That I made a mistake.’ ‘A mistake?’ Foley snapped. ‘Two able-bodied men have died!’ ‘Besides,’ Dillingham agreed, ‘you’ll bring more trouble than good.’ ‘You can teach me,’ I offered. ‘God’s fist,’ Grimes cried. ‘She thinks this a school!’”

Charlotte wants to make up for her folly in reporting the men to the captain, but the sailors must overcome their skepticism, not only about her loyalty but because she’s a female, someone they don’t believe can manage men’s work. Charlotte has set herself a stupendous challenge. Clearly she’s brave, but her resolve will be tested severely in the coming days, and she’ll have to earn the men’s respect in the hardest ways possible. 

“This final climb was torture. With every upward pull the swaying of the ship seemed to increase. Even when not moving myself, I was flying through the air in wild, wide gyrations. The horizon kept shifting, tilting, dropping. I was increasingly dizzy, nauseous, terrified, certain that with every next moment I would slip and fall to death. I paused again and again, my eyes on the rigging inches from my face, gasping and praying as I had never prayed before.”

Charlotte proves her worth to the men by climbing the rigging to the top of the main mast. The effort terrifies her, and she nearly falls to her death, but she makes it back down in one piece. It’s a test of her as a person of courage, her first great achievement onboard. It’s also the beginning of the new Charlotte, a young lady changed forever as she begins her climb toward a better way of life. 

“Even if I’d wanted to, it was clear from the start that shirking would not be allowed. I pounded oakum into the deck. I scraped the hull. I stood watch as dawn blessed the sea and as the moon cut the midnight sky. I tossed the line to measure the depths of the sea. I took my turn at the wheel. I swabbed the deck and tarred the rigging, spliced ropes and tied knots. My mess was shared with the crew. And I went aloft.”

As good as her word, Charlotte takes on the daily tasks of a sailor. The men prove to be patient teachers. She takes her apprenticeship to heart more eagerly than she did back at school with mere penmanship and spelling. Her life has taken a new, more demanding course, and she’s determined to rise to its demands. 

“My hair, uncombed for days, blew free in the salty air. My face, dark with weather, was creased with smile. I was squinting westward into the swollen face of a bloodred sun, which cast a shimmering golden road upon the sea; from where I perched it seemed we were sailing on that road in a dream. And there I was, joyous, new-made, liberated from a prison I’d thought was my proper place!”

Charlotte thrills to her new life, one far more enchanting than the one she’d been brought up in. Life at sea exhilarates her. Her attitudes have changed; she’s newly self-confident and more grown-up. She has earned self-respect by meeting challenges head-on without blinking, facing difficulties most people never encounter. Her triumph is well deserved. 

“Wind shrieked and howled; more than once water poured over us from above, or the ship heeled to the gunwales, bringing hearts to mouths.”

Charlotte’s adventure turns deadly as the ship becomes trapped in a hurricane. For 17 hours, the storm tortures the ship and its crew. She nearly dies climbing the shrouds to free a loose sail, then works exhausting shifts to help keep the ship afloat. Charlotte never fails to do her duty. She proves herself as tough as anyone on board. 

“Without the crew on my side I would be hard put to prove my innocence. I knew that. Yet they seemed to have turned against me. Of all misfortunes that was the most hurtful to bear.”

The men no longer trust Charlotte, believing she may have murdered Hollybrass. Betrayed, if unintentionally, by the men she first betrayed and then joined, Charlotte now faces her future entirely alone, without the support of those she has learned to trust. 

“‘When you first saw me, Zachariah, did you think that I would ever go before the mast?’ ‘No …’ ‘Or climb into the rigging during a storm?’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘Well then? Why shouldn’t I have murdered Mr. Hollybrass as well? I’m sure that’s the way they’re thinking.’”

Charlotte explains why she’s so tempting a target for the men’s suspicions. Her very toughness now argues against her. The only man who would speak for her good character, Zachariah, must hide from the captain. 

“So what we have here is a girl who admits she owns the weapon that murdered Mr. Hollybrass. A girl who lied about where she got it. A girl who was taught to use a blade, and learned to use it, as Mr. Grimes would have it, ‘uncommon’ well. A girl who, all agree, is unnatural in every way she acts. Gentlemen, do we not, as natural men, need to take heed? Is it not our duty, our obligation, to protect the natural order of the world?”

Jaggery has neatly cornered Charlotte, using her unusual interests in male activities as evidence that she’s the likely murderer. He appeals to men’s fear of strong females, playing on their biases in an effort to push them toward a verdict of guilty. Her enthusiasm for seafaring may appear to most men as arrogance that must be punished. Jaggery relies on this trait to achieve his purpose, which is to get rid of her before she can bring charges against him. Charlotte’s courage in the face of evil may lead to her death. She sits alone before the great thresher of men’s power over women during the 19th century.

“‘Zachariah, he sees you. He knows you’re alive. The crew, he realizes, must know it too. I’m a threat to him. So are you. And now, here’s Mr. Hollybrass, another threat. But, let him murder Mr. Hollybrass and everyone will think you did the crime.’ ‘But then, he accuses you,’ Zachariah said. ‘And see how much he’s managed!’ I cried.”

Charlotte and Zachariah figure out that the captain can get rid of three threats by killing his rebellious first mate, blaming it on Charlotte, and using her execution to flush out Zachariah from his hiding place. Elegant as it is grisly, the crime, once understood, brings Charlotte and Zachariah closer together in their opposition to Jaggery. It also demonstrates how smart, tough, and practical Charlotte’s mind has become during her challenging voyage into adulthood. 

“It doesn’t matter that you are different, Miss Doyle. Don’t flatter yourself. The difficulty is that your difference encourages them to question their places. And mine. The order of things.”

In Jaggery’s world, someone who’s different is a threat that must be suppressed. Charlotte is different—she doesn’t obey automatically and wants to work in a man’s career—and to a leader with bad intentions, her independence can ruin his dark plans. Men who rely on fear to enhance their power cannot stand someone who thinks freely and has courage.  

“‘Zachariah,’ I said, ‘what shall become of me?’ ‘Why, now, I shouldn’t worry. You’ve told me your family is wealthy. A good life awaits you. And Charlotte, you’ve gained the firm friendship of many a jack here, not to speak of memories the young rarely have. It has been a voyage to remember.’”

Charlotte’s entire world changed in a few weeks at sea. Vastly more grown-up now, with new skills and the strength and courage to make her way in the world, Charlotte must find the right winds to guide her to her next adventure. She hopes her family will understand and support her. 

“I looked at the two of them, the timidity of their postures, the unwillingness to engage me with their eyes. ‘Mary,’ I said. ‘That is your name, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, miss.’ ‘Would you call me Charlotte if I asked you to? Be my friend?’ Mary stole a nervous glance at Bridget. ‘Would you?’ ‘I shouldn’t think so, miss.’ ‘But … why?’ I pleaded. ‘Master wouldn’t have it, miss. I should be dismissed.’ I could not reply.”

Charlotte learns that her home will be a version of the Seahawk, with the workers living in fear of their boss. She has seen more than enough of that type of casual cruelty aboard the Seahawk but realizes that she won’t be able to change it at home any more than she could change the relationship between Jaggery and his crew. Once again, she’s trapped in a system of fearful obedience to arbitrary rule. Somehow, she must escape its entangling grasp.