The Smugglers

An adventurous tale with engaging, colorful characters, The Smugglers begins with a robbery staged by a highwayman and then sets sail on the high seas with Captain Crowe, a last minute replacement for the murdered captain, Dashing Tommy Dusker, and John Spencer, the sixteen-year-old protagonist and son of the ship's owner. The schooner itself, the Dragon, began with the bloody death of an innocent one and has forever carried with it this unfavorable beginning. Though the Dragon's mission is a direct trip to London with a cargo of wool, she detours to France for a second cargo of illicit liquor and encounters drifting dead bodies, ships in pursuit of her, and malicious warnings at every turn. The story's great strength is its realistic show more seafaring-dialogue such as "The fog's no high enough to hide the masts. Dasher, get aloft; "Ye've got the wheel." The mysterious characters, who's good and who's evil, will keep the reader guessing. In the classroom students will simply enjoy the page-turning plot; however, the story also lends itself to teaching the historial importance of the sea and its ships to powerful nations like France and England. show less

More corpses, more ships, more scares.

Miscatalogued by some public libraries as a childrens book; where YA category is available, should be YA.

Fun and Creepy!

In nineteenth-century England, after his father buys a schooner called the Dragon, sixteen-year-old John sets out to sail it from Kent to London and becomes involved in a dangerous smuggling scheme.
Series: High seas trilogy, 2
Lexile: 640