The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Charlotte stands up. Jaggery demands to know what she’s doing. She tells him she’s joined the crew. Jaggery, his angry welt growing redder, orders her to return to her cabin and change into a proper girl’s dress. She backs up until she’s standing with the men. Jaggery insists that her father would disapprove; she reminds him that her father is Jaggery’s boss, and that she knows him better than the captain does.

Flustered, Jaggery says that, if she insists on being a crew member, he’ll treat her like one. Jaggery orders Hollybrass to move Charlotte’s belongings from steerage to the forecastle, and that, in the ship’s log, she’ll hereafter be called Mr. Doyle, and Miss Doyle will be marked lost. He stomps off. The men cheer.

Her apprenticeship begins. The men prove patient as teachers, and she learns quickly. She performs all the tasks that the men do, shirking none. She pounds oakum, scrapes the hull, stands watch, takes the wheel, swabs the deck, tars ropes, ties knots. She climbs the rigging and learns to work every sail. She aches every day and sleeps heavily. Her skin turns brown from the sun; her feet and hands become calloused.

The men put her in a corner hammock and tack up an old sail to give her privacy. She acquires their habit of speaking in rough language. Within two weeks, she can climb the rigging effortlessly. Her life has become an adventure.

They believe the captain is watching Charlotte, always appearing during her shifts, waiting for her to make a mistake so he can prove he’s right and she’s wrong about what her father will say when they reach port. She says she won’t make a mistake.

The test comes two days later. The flying jib, a sail attached at the bow, becomes tangled, risking the bowsprit. Jaggery quickly orders “Mister Doyle” to fix it. She hurries to the bow, Grimes at her side giving quick instructions and a knife to cut the tangled rope. Charlotte leaps onto the bowsprit, her hand on the back rope, and climbs out above the surging waves. She cuts the rope, but the sail snaps back and knocks her off her feet. She dangles by her arms from the bowsprit, which plunges her lower body into the sea, over and over.

She manages to get herself on top of the bowsprit; she edges backward to the deck. Grimes hugs her. The captain calls her over and berates her for doing the job with Grimes’s assistance. He concludes by slapping her. Charlotte shouts that he’s a coward and that she can’t wait to reach Providence and take him to court: “You won’t be captain long! You’ll be seen by everyone as the cruel despot you are!” (136) He pales, then whirls and departs.

Two days later, Charlotte sees a branch on the water with a red bird perched on it. Barlow tells her it is from the Caribbean, pushed north by a hurricane. He thinks the captain wants to skim the edge of the storm and use its winds to get to port faster. If he guesses wrong, though, it’ll be a disaster.

Early on the morning of the 45th day at sea, the hurricane strikes. A cry for all hands rings out. The ship pitches violently. Charlotte stumbles from the tossed-about crew quarters. The sky is dark with clouds; screaming winds hurl heavy rain. Charlotte gets knocked over and nearly swept overboard. The captain orders the crew up into the sails, which have come loose, threatening to break the mast. He gives Charlotte a knife and brusquely orders her up into the shrouds to cut away a rope.

The violent storm forces her to use both hands to climb; she puts the knife between her teeth. Her long hair keeps flapping across her face, blinding her. She pulls it back and uses the knife to cut it short. Struggling upward, she worries that the ship will founder and all aboard will die. She hears a cracking sound, but the mast holds. She reaches the loose sail, which snaps at her, nearly knocking her from her perch. She climbs above the sail, where she sits on its spar and cuts off the many connecting ropes.

She moves back toward the opposite spar to complete the job, but she slips and dangles by her hands; her knife tumbles away. Slowly, hand over hand, she pulls herself backward toward the mast. She begins to lose her grip and cries out for help. A hand reaches down, and she takes it and pulls herself back up onto the spar. She sees Zachariah moving away.

The sail finally snaps off and flies away into the distance. The ship, relieved of the burden, tilts wildly as if to capsize but rights itself. Charlotte crawls off the spar and climbs down. The main mast has snapped off, and the deck is strewn with spars, ropes, and sails. She joins the men on the quarterdeck, and frantically they use axes to cut away tangles, saving spars where they can and letting others fall into the sea.

The storm ends abruptly and the sun comes out. Charlotte cries, “It’s over!” Mr. Johnson warns her that they’re merely in the hurricane’s eye, and that the storm will start up again shortly. They hurry to clear the deck. At the bottom of the mess lies the body of Mr. Hollybrass. Charlotte’s dirk sticks out of his back. Jaggery turns him over. The dead man’s hand clutches Charlottes handkerchief. Jaggery stares at Charlotte.

He orders Hollybrass placed in steerage, then gives orders about the bilge pumps and the wheel. Too busy to think about the dead first mate, Charlotte joins the men at the bilge pumps, where they work hard for three hours to keep the ship from filling up with seawater. Exhausted, she goes forward and tries to sleep in a hammock, but she’s interrupted with orders to stand at the wheel. From there she goes back to the bilge pumps. Three times she rotates through forecastle, wheel, and pumps.

After 17 hours, the storm abates, and Charlotte “slept the sleep of the dead who wait—with perfect equanimity—upon the final judgment” (148).