Rousing tale gives facts of life at sea

BLOODY JACK, By L.A. Meyer, Harcourt Children’s Books, New York, 2002, hardcover, $17.

Take one measure of “Treasure Island,” another of “Robinson Crusoe,” add a bit of Oliver Twist, sprinkle with Horatio Hornblower and season with a generous dollop of Sex Ed 101 and you have the ingredients of this lively tale of the rousing adventures of Mary “Jack” Faber, an 18th century London street orphan who goes to sea as a ship’s boy at age 12.

That’s right: ship’s boy. She was 11-year-old Mary Faber in 1797, orphaned by the plague and left to roam the streets of London as a member of Rooster Charlie’s gang. Always hungry, always ill-clad, always on the wrong side of the law, Mary becomes Jack when she leaves the gang after Charlie’s early demise and wanders to the London waterfront, where His Majesty’s Ship the Dolphin is signing on her crew for a voyage in search of the pirates then harassing shipping in the southern seas.

Meyer, who lives in Corea, must have thought through the wisdom of blending sex education with his knowledgeable tale of life aboard a well-armed frigate in the days when the high seas were as lawless as the Old West. Through Jack’s own lively and always straightforward (and most readable) words, we learn how she disguises her feminine anatomy and cleverly adapts to the behavior of the other five ship’s boys, of which he-she is the only one who can read.

We are there for Jack’s first menstruation, a quite unexpected experience, a trauma she believes is a prelude to her death aboard ship. But that’s only the beginning of her sexual and anatomical education. She is attacked by a pederast who believes she is a boy and she learns the hard way about what is most on many men’s minds when they meet a young girl.

Meyer is skillful and direct in his blending of these illuminations with the story of a 17th century warship on the high seas. But I found myself wondering what I would have thought of this book had I come across it during my 12th and 13th years.

After all, in those long-ago days (and believe me, they were long ago) I knew next to nothing about the facts of a girl’s life. I hardly knew anything about my own equipment and I surely would never have been able to define the word pederast. So I can see how this wonderfully entertaining novel could be assigned to eighth-graders in Sex Ed 101. And I can also see how delighted those students will be at discovering this is not some clinical tome whose dry prose and full-frontal illustrations try to guide them through the intricacies of our reproductive anatomies.

No, this book is much more than that, so much more. We come to its end knowing much about life aboard a British ship of war. We learn of life in London in its most trying times, and we are taken on a voyage across the Atlantic into the tropical Caribbean, that exotic sea that had then become the favorite home waters of pirates who plundered the ships of all nations.

As told in Jacky’s pert and colorful words, the story has the pace of a bird in flight and we are carried along swiftly on the wings of his-her adventures, violent, romantic, and following one after the other, keeping us wondering right to the very end what will become of this charming and courageous scamp.

For as we keep turning these easily turned pages, we find ourselves liking Jack more and more. She becomes our good friend, and we hope with all our heart that she will not only survive, but somehow, somewhere find a happier, less stressful life. And does she? Ah, but that’s for you to learn, along with a great deal of other useful information that finds its way into the rollicking adventure.

John Cole is a free-lance writer from Brunswick.