Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 373

# Museum Catalog Note

The Buccaneers of Barnegat Bay, serialized in this December 1885 Beadle & Adams publication, is a maritime romance by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham set during the early nineteenth century along the New Jersey coast. The narrative opens with Stella, a fifteen-year-old girl raised near Barnegat Bay, watching a government schooner-of-war, the Crocodile, caught in a violent storm. When lightning strikes the vessel, she compels her companion Hugh Talbot—a young smuggler commanding a crew of eight—to mount a rescue despite their enmity toward the naval authorities pursuing them. After Talbot shoots his insubordinate coxswain Carter Hayes in a mutiny attempt, the crew ultimately launches their lifeboat to save the ship's crew, driven by Stella's moral exhortation and public challenge to their manhood.