The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle By: Avi (5)

Charlotte Doyle is a thirteen year old girl who lives in Liverpool, England. Her family lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is traveling to on the ‘Seahawk’. She was supposed to go on the ship with two other families, but they didn’t come and there was no wait for them. When she gets on the ship her adventure begins. Her first day on the ship Zachariah, the only black man on the ship and the oldest, gives her a dirk which is a knife, to protect herself with. Charlotte doesn’t feel she needs it so she tries to give it back but he won’t take it. Later, she goes to the captain to have tea with him and he tells her there are no firearms on the ship accept for the ones he hides and shows it to Charlotte to tell her, he is honest with her. He also tells her the crew is a bunch of bad people she shouldn’t trust, so she is tricked into spying on them by becoming friends with them. When she gets with the crew they tell her that the captain is the liar, but she doesn’t believe them.

When she and the sailors are with her fixing a jacket the needle she is using breaks, so she gets another one, while she is in the crew’s room, (the forecastle) she sees a gun and a round robin, which is a paper saying they will take revenge on the captain. Quickly she runs and tells the captain, and he is furious, so he tells everybody to get on deck, and he shoots, and kills one of the mates from the former crew. This man Cranik, was whipped before, on the arm so much by the captain, his arm had to be cut off, so he hated the captain. The captain has to blame somebody for the round robin, so he blames Zachariah and whips him in the faces fifty times leading to his “death”. This makes Charlotte so mad she decides to smack the captain with the whip.

Then, because she is mad at the captain she decides to no longer be a passenger but become part of the crew. She climbs up the highest mast, because the crew wants to see if she can really become part of the crew. Charlotte does become part of the crew, and the captain slaps her, and she promises him she is going to report him to the police when she gets on land.

When the ship goes through a hurricane Charlotte is saved by a she thinks is Zachariah. She is confused because she thought he was dead. During the storm the captain’s first mate is killed, with the dirk in his back. Charlotte is brought to court because she was the only one known to have the dirk, and found guilty.

For her last 24 hours she must sit in the brig of the ship, which is a very small place where she is waiting to be hung. Zachariah is actually alive, and helps her escape the brig. So, her, Zachariah and the crew decide to get the guns he is hiding, and kill the captain, but when Charlotte went to the his cabin to get the guns, but he already had one in his hands, and admits he is the one who killed the first mate. So, he tries to kill Charlotte on the deck but instead he falls into the ocean, to never be seen again. Charlotte is voted as the new captain of the ship, but when she has to go home to her family she makes Zachariah the captain. When her father found out what really happened on the ship she is in big trouble. At the end of the book she runs away from home to work on the ‘Seahawk’ again.