Across an expanse of sea, the Concepcíon was desperately signaling her need of carpenters. She listed to starboard, obviously taking on water. The Fury came closing in to help, and I saw Chips, our carpenter, loading a skiff as he and his crew prepared to row across.
Then my uncle said, “Come, Davy. We’ve wounded to tend, and that’s a man’s business too.”
As we worked over the wounds of our shipmates, I could not help saying, “We failed, Uncle. We failed to take him.”
Uncle Patch did not look up from the gash he was stitching. Through the wind port sunlight streamed, gleaming in his coppery red hair. Patiently he said, “There is nothing like complete success this side of heaven, lad, and nothing like complete failure this side of perdition. We have dealt the pirate king Steele a blow from which he will never recover.”
“But he’s free!”
“Aye,” said my uncle, neatly tying off his last stitch. “A tot of rum for Mr. Grady, Davy, that’s a good lad. Who’s next?”
A gunner with a scorched hand took Mr. Grady’s place, and as he prepared a salve, my uncle said, as if no interruption had occurred, “Aye, Steele sails out there, and free, but here we are, our joints sound and whole. And now Steele sails all alone, Davy. We’ve taken his navy from him, and his harbors are closed or destroyed. ’Tis a terrible fate for any man to be all alone. It will be worse for Steele, for not even a pirate will trust him now.”
When we finished our work, we came back onto the deck. It was noon by that time. The wreckage had been cleared overboard, and we were about to anchor in the lee of Hog Island, so that our own repairs could begin. Men thronged the yardarms and deck, lowering sails, preparing to drop the anchors.
But on the quarterdeck, his hands behind his back, his head bowed, stood Captain Hunter.
And looking at him, I could not help but think, This man, too, sails alone.
The Red Queen
Jack Steele’s fearsome pirate ship is of a type that did not really exist until a little later in naval history. In the late 1600s, ships were beginning to change, becoming faster, sleeker, and more maneuverable. It is surprising to many people that the ship’s wheel, the spoked steering wheel, was not invented until the early 1700s. Until that time smaller vessels were steered by tillers. These were levers attached to the rudder. Moving the lever to the right caused the rudder to turn to the left, which steered the ship to the left. Larger ships used a vertical lever called a whipstaff. The invention of the ship’s wheel would lead to ships that were easier to turn and more effective in battle.
Something like that improvement is at work with the Red Queen. She was a Spanish galleon, and so was among the largest ships sailing the American seas during the 1600s. However, the Spanish were very conservative in building their ships. Galleons had a high forecastle in the front and a very high aftercastle in the back. In a way, that gave them an advantage in combat, because the high-mounted guns in the aftercastle could fire down at an enemy ship. However, the tall structure caught the wind and made the ship hard to maneuver and slow to turn.
Jack Steele cut off the higher decks from both the front and the rear of the Red Queen. She still had three rows of huge guns. After Steele redesigned the ship, she could turn almost as fast as a frigate, which was a much smaller vessel with only one deck that carried guns. And the loss of the high aftercastle meant that she could spread more sails and sail along at a very rapid rate. Steele took a ship that was meant to carry and protect treasure and turned it into a ship of prey. With its speed, heavy cannons, huge crew, and maneuverability, the Red Queen would have been a terror of the seas, and years ahead of her time.
Part of our inspiration for this improvement in ship building came from many years after the Red Queens era. The USS Constitution, built for the United States Navy in 1797, was similarly ahead of her time. With her unusually thick hull, she could withstand enemy fire. The cannonballs often bounced off, giving her the nickname “Old Ironsides.” Her cannons were large and well-aimed. She carried a fierce array of them. Her standard armament called for forty-four heavy cannons, but she has carried as many as fifty-two, far beyond the British standard of twenty-eight or thirty-two guns on their frigates. She was also bigger than British frigates. As the saying went, she was big enough to defeat anything smaller, and fast enough to outrun anything larger. Like the Red Queen, “Old Ironsides” was never defeated in her many battles. She was so well built that she is still afloat today in Boston Harbor. In fact, after more than two hundred years she is still a ship on active duty in the United States Navy!
—Brad Strickland and Thomas E. Fuller, September 2002
Biogrphies
BRAD STRICKLAND has written or cowritten nearly fifty novels. He and Thomas E. Fuller have worked together on many books about Wishbone, TV’s literature-loving dog, and Brad and his wife Barbara have also written books featuring Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the mysterysolving Shelby Woo, and characters from Star Trek. On his own, Brad has written mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy novels. When he is not writing, Brad is a Professor of English at Gainesville College in Oakwood, Georgia. He and Barbara have a daughter, Amy, a son, Jonathan, and a daughter-in-law, Rebecca. They also have a house full of pets, including two dogs, three cats, a ferret, a gerbil, and two goldfish, one named George W. Bush and one named Fluffy.
THOMAS E. FULLER has been co-authoring young adult novels with Brad Strickland for the last five years. They are best known for their work on the Wishbone mysteries as well as a number of radio dramas and published short stories. Otherwise, Thomas is best known as the head writer of the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. He has won awards for his adaptation of H. G. Wells’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” his original drama, “The Brides of Dracula,” and the occult Western, “All Hallow’s Moon.” Thomas lives in Duluth, Georgia, in a slightly shabby blue house full of books, manuscripts, audio tapes, and too many children, including his sons Edward, Anthony, and John, and occasionally his daughter, Christina.
Bobby Pendragon is a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy. He has a family, a home, and a possible new girlfriend. But something happens to Bobby that changes his life forever.
HE IS CHOSEN TO DETERMINE THE COURSE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE.
Pulled away from the comfort of his family and suburban home, Bobby is launched into the middle of an immense, inter-dimensional conflict involving racial tensions, threatened ecosystems, and more. It’s a journey of danger and discovery for Bobby, and his success or failure will do nothing less than determine the fate of the world….
A new series by D. J. MacHale
Book One: The Merchant of Death
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Book Two: The Lost City of Faar
Book Three: The Never War
Book Four: The Reality Bug
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From Aladdin Paperbacks Published by Simon & Schuster
Heart of Steele Page 12