Bloody Jack Series By L.A. Meyer

• Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary Jacky Faber, Ship's Boy (2002)

• The Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (2004)

• Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (2005)

• In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber (2006)

• Mississippi Jack: Being an Account of the Further Waterborne Adventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman, Fine Lady, and the Lily of the West (2007)

• My Bonny Light Horseman: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, in Love and War (2008)

• Rapture of the Deep: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Soldier, Sailor, Mermaid, Spy (2009)

• The Wake of the Lorelei Lee: Being an Account of the Adventures of Jacky Faber, on her Way to Botany Bay (September 2010)

• The Mark of the Golden Dragon: Being and Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Jewel of the East, Vexation of the West, and Pearl of the South China Sea(September 2011)

Bloody Jack: When Rooster Charlie is killed by Muck, a corpse seller to the local anatomists and a vile creature, Mary takes his clothes and poses as a boy, in order to get a job. Dressed in boy's clothing, she go to the docks and ends up being hired as one of six ship's boys on the British warship H.M.S. Dolphin. Cunning and charming, Mary is hired on because she can read, and she signs aboard under the alias Jack (Jacky) Faber. Soon she meets her fellow ship's boys, Willy, Tink, Benjy, Davy, and Jaimy.

After some time on the ship, Jacky catches the Captain's eye when she makes a new uniform for herself, and is asked to sew up more for the others. Around this time, Jacky begins her puberty, and having no education in that way thinks that she is dying. After, a pirate ship is spotted and a battle begins. The crew boards the enemy ship, and Jacky picks up a pistol from a dead pirate. She sees a pirate making a path for the side of the ship and about to kill the one of the ships boys Jaimy that Jacky is was starting to have feelings for. Then she shoots the pirate, who is carrying a chest of money, and thus gets the nickname "Bloody Jack". It is in this battle that Benjy, a ship's boy in The Brotherhood, (what Jacky and the other ship's boys call themselves), is killed. The ship heads for Palma to get there ship repaired after the battle. At about this time, Jacky first menstruates, and her upbringing having left her unaware of the details of female physical maturation, she believes that she is ill and about to die.

After the ship lands at Palma, the ship's boys go to get a tattoo to show their brotherhood. Jacky then goes to a brothel to find a woman to ask 'for a friend' why she had bled before, where the madam quickly sees through her disguise and informs Jacky of the details of female bodies. The rest of the ship's boys consider Jack a rake after this, as they only know one nominal reason for a visit to a brothel.

Then the ship heads for the Caribbean Sea. While Jacky is in the schoolroom, Midshipman Bliffil starts to beat Jacky up, and only stops when the teacher yells at him. Jacky is put in the sick ward for her injuries. She convinces Midshipman Jenkins to stand up to Bliffil and teaches him some fighting moves. A crew member Bill Sloat threatens Jacky and her sea dad Liam Delaney he tries to protect her, which causes some problems. When Bliffil attacks Jacky again, Jenkins stands up to him. Jacky begins to sleep in the rope locker because The Brotherhood had an argument, and this is when Sloat tries to rape her. Jacky tries to protect herself by stabbing him with her knife, but she injures him more than she had meant to, and ends up stabbing him in the stomach and he stumbles overboard. Liam is put on trial for the murder and he is going to be hanged. Jacky intervenes and confesses to stabbing Sloat. She is put in confinement and thinks that she will be hanged to, but she is set free because she acted in self-defense.

After that she is welcomed back by into the Brotherhood but the feeling is still weird. Jaimy admits to her that he has strange feelings for her, and that is when Jacky asks him to hold up a dress so she can mark it, and Jaimy learns that she is really a girl and that she has feelings for him.

Soon after they arrive in Kingston, Jamaica. Jacky and Jaimy go out on the streets, and Jacky wears a dress that she bought. They eat at a café, and Davy and Tink see them. Davy and Tink do not know that the girl Jaimy is eating with Jacky, and she leaves and changes back into her ship boy clothing. Then they set sail again and hunt for the pirates.

They soon meet LeFievre, a pirate, at sea. There is a battle, but LeFievre gets away, and the Dolphin is damaged and sinking but men are at the pumps pumping out water when land is sighted, and they stop there. Davy learns of Jacky's true identity when he discovers her and Jaimy curled up in a hammock together. Soon after, Mr. Tilden the teacher wants to put Jacky on a kite and fly her up so she can see more land, but the winds were blowing so hard that the tree she is tied to is ripped out of the ground and after many hours of flying she lands on an unknown island. She stays there for a few days and uses smoke signals to try to get the attention of HMS Dolphin. A boat crew from the Dolphin comes to rescue her and she finds out that LeFievre and his pirates are on the island with her and waiting to ambush the rescue crew. She tries to lead the rescue crew away but the pirates catch her and hold her for hanging and money. She is hanged, but is so scrawny and skinny that she just hangs there choking. The HMS Dolphin rescue crew lands, and Jaimy quickly cuts the rope she is hanging on, and Jacky survives.

Then she is finally discovered to be a girl. She is guarded by someone everywhere she goes. She is confined from almost everyone on board, including her old mates, but they secretly sneak over to the grating above her room to talk to her. She is told by the captain that she will be enrolled in Lawson Peabody's School for Girls in Boston, and then the book concludes with her stepping off the ship.

Historical Fiction Naval Heroes - Bolithio Novels

Richard Bolitho

Richard Bolitho is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the main character in a series of novels written by Douglas Reeman (using the pseudonym Alexander Kent). Bolitho was born in 1756 in Falmouth, Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, the second son of a prestigious naval family. He joined the navy in 1768. He served in the wars against France and the United States. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1774, captain in 1782, and admiral in 1800. He died in action against the French in 1815. The name Bolitho is a common Cornish surname, but Reeman says that he borrowed the name Richard Bolitho from a real person, "a distinguished old chap" he had met in the Channel Islands when he sailed his boat there.^{[citation needed]} Reeman also states that the real Richard Bolitho was the brother of the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall.

Among his fellow officers, Bolitho was known for his tactical ingenuity, his daring, and his disregard of both convention and political expediency. He rose to high rank—despite the opposition of less competent men—because of his ability to win crucial victories against seemingly impossible odds. Among the men of the fleet, Bolitho was known as a demanding but scrupulously fair and humane captain. The men sometimes referred to him, though never to his face, as "Equality Dick." His reputation as a paragon of decency in a brutal world created a fierce sense of loyalty among those who had served under him.

Officers and men who served under Bolitho frequently chose, when given the chance, to do so again. Ships in the squadrons he commanded as a senior officer were frequently commanded by men who had served as his lieutenants when he was a captain. His most lasting relationships were with Thomas Herrick—a fellow officer and his oldest friend—and John Allday, a former Cornish shepherd who became Bolitho's coxswain and de facto bodyguard.

Bolitho had a number of romances. One of the first was Viola Raymond, the wife of an English diplomat. She died while Bolitho and a small number of his crew were stranded in a boat in the tropics, but it was her courage and sacrifice that rallied the crew. Bolitho married twice. His first wife, Cheney Seton, died in a carriage accident. His relationship with the second Belinda, the mother of his child Elizabeth, deteriorated when it became clear that she was nothing like the person he thought he married and was a very selfish individual. Estranged from her and his daughter, he carried on an increasingly public affair with Lady Catherine Somervell, who was his wife in all but name until his death.

Douglas Reeman uses some real locations as settings for his stories. The fictitous Bolitho ancestral home near Falmouth was inspired by a house which Reeman saw and photographed in the 1960s at Philleigh near the King Harry Ferry in Cornwall. In reality, the house is not near Falmouth at all, so Reeman "relocated" it for his novels. However, the Church of King Charles the Martyr, which occurs in the books really does exist in Falmouth.^[2]

Reeman's own Royal Navy career and lifelong interest in sailing inform his seafaring novels. He saw active service with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, serving in North Sea, Arctic, Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns. Starting as a midshipman in destroyers he later transferred to motor torpedo boats, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Adam Bolitho

Adam Bolitho is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the main character in a series of novels written by Douglas Reeman (using the pseudonym Alexander Kent), succeeding the previous main character Richard Bolitho.

In "Enemy In Sight", Richard Bolitho is joined by his nephew Adam Pascoe, who is later renamed Adam Bolitho when he becomes Richard's heir. Adam, the only son of Richard's disgraced older brother Hugh, was born in 1780 in Penzance, Cornwall, shortly after his father joined the revolution in America. Having been sent to Richard at the age of 14 by his dying mother, he joined the Royal Navy, rising through the ranks to establish himself as a daring and resourceful frigate captain, as his uncle had once done.

Adam's role in the series steadily increases as Richard ages and achieves high rank. After Richard's death, he becomes the principal character in the series.