Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 805

# Museum Catalog Note

The Last of the Pirates: Doom Driven, a serialized romance by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, continues in this 1894 issue of Beadle's dime novel weekly. The narrative, framed as discovered documents from a pirate's abandoned Chesapeake mansion, opens with a small boat adrift containing a dead woman of twenty-eight, a devoted enslaved caretaker, and a five-year-old boy. The child's mother perishes while the caretaker sacrifices her last provisions to save him. A pirate schooner under Captain Corti discovers them; the captain recognizes the dead woman with shock and provides the boy sanctuary. The narrative shifts to introduce Captain Rodney Randolph commanding a U.S. Navy schooner-of-war, who learns from Lieutenant Vancourt that the outlaw vessel Spiteful—piloted by "Basil, the Buccaneer"—has appeared offshore. Randolph, emotionally affected by the pirate's name, pursues the craft with determined intensity.