The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle Essay

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The True Confessions Of Charlotte Doyle

In 1832, Charlotte Doyle began her voyage across the Atlantic Ocean on the ship “The Seahawk”. The captian of the ship was Captian Jaggery. At first Charlotte did not understand why the sailors did not like him, but during her voyage she learned why.

During the first parts of her voyage, Charlotte stayed mostly in her small cramped cabin and wandered a bit on deck. She was told that she was a weak little girl and had no place on board the ship except in her cabin and with the Captian. Once Charlotte befriended the cook, he gave her a knife for protection. She quickly hid it and forgot about it.

During a rebelion aboard the ship, Charlotte defends one of the crew members against the captians word. The captian gets angry and tells Charlotte that she must go and become one of the crew now, to replace the cook that died in the rebelion. So Charlotte cuts her hair, loses her dresses and becomes a sailor, although most of the crew does not approve, she continues on.

Then a hurricane hit. And during the confusion, Charlotte is sent up on the mast to cut a sail free. She slips and drops the knife she was using to cut the rope. When she makes it down the mast, everyone see’s the first mate stabbed to death on the deck of the ship, with the knife the cook once gave Charlotte.

The captian immediatly accuses Charlotte and puts her in the ships jail. However, Charlotte could not have killed the first mate, because she was not using that knife while she was up on the mast. While in the jail, Charlotte finds that the cook never actually died, but that he has been living below deck the whole time.

The cook and Charlotte make a plan together to escape Charlotte’s fate of hanging. The cook talks to the men and they all begin to see that Charlotte could not be guilty. So on the day of her hanging, Charlotte and the men revolt against the captian again, this time winning and sending the captian overboard to his death.

As they reach America, Charlotte does not want to go home, but she wants to stay aboard the Seahawk and stay part of the crew. So she goes home and sneaks out that night and rejoins the crew, and the new captian who happens to be the cook. And they sail away forever.