Beadle's New Dime Novels: Captain of Captains

About this issue

By Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, this adventure tale depicts an encounter between an American merchant vessel and Moorish corsairs in the early nineteenth century. The Adventurer, captained by Rupert Meredith—a Revolutionary War officer sailing with his wife, twin sons, passengers, and crew—is pursued by an Algerine galley near the Spanish coast. Following a violent storm, the corsair presses attack. After intense hand-to-hand combat, the corsair chief—a giant wielding a cutlass—mortally wounds Captain Meredith in a duel. The chief then seizes one of Meredith's twin sons as a hostage shield, escaping to his own vessel with the boy as his captive, leaving the widowed mother grieving over her dead husband and kidnapped child.