Quest for Gold
Pirate life sounded like paradise to eighteen-year-old Daniel Wincott, compared to the abuse he received from his drunken father. Opportunity for riches and adventure on a raiding expedition against a Spanish camp draws the boy into the company of Jamaica’s ex-privateers, now in 1716 no longer with the Crown’s sanction to strike Spanish shipping. Thus, young Daniel begins his descent into the cruel, greedy whirlpool of piracy.
At the same time, teenaged Abigail Matthews falls into the hands of vicious Moroccan corsair Mahmoud when he captures her ship on her way to join her father, the new Governor of Jamaica. Forced to endure months of captivity under the depraved Mahmoud, Abigail eventually despairs of ever seeing her family again. For Daniel, meanwhile, each attack, each ship captured makes him more a man yet pulls him closer to the point of no return, a gallows at the end of Execution Dock. When his vessel crosses paths with Mahmoud’s, neither Daniel nor Abigail will ever be the same.
As a pirate yarn, the novel has action aplenty. The pirates are certainly not timid and seldom pass up opportunities to attack even stronger ships. Nautical and historical details make up one of the two main weaknesses in the book. Descriptions of ship-to-ship combat, seamanship, and shipboard life have numerous inaccuracies. For example, in the book, it states that something was happening “one compartment below.” Compartments are rooms; different levels on a ship are “decks,” not compartments. On the other hand, well-choreographed sword fights put the reader in the center of action despite predictable outcomes. The second weakness is in the believability of the characters. Daniel becomes too skillful and advances too far in the pirate hierarchy too fast, and his more experienced captain and shipmates treat him with an inconsistent mix of disdain and deference. Better editing would have made this novel more satisfying.
