Murder Afloat (review)

Many, many unfortunate fictional boys have found themselves under the thumb of a ruthless sea captain, generally after either being kidnapped or impressed. Ben Orville, age fourteen, falls into the kidnapped category, rounded up with a bunch of German immigrants near the docks in 1882 Baltimore to toil on the oyster dredger Ella Daw under drunken, vicious Captain Henry Steele. The first and second mates, Plum and Hawk, seem nearly as terrifying as the captain, but as Ben is forcibly taught his new trade, he begins to realize that Plum and Hawk are the only hope for order aboard the ship. A group of the Germans make an escape one night, and they take Ben with them; he and a young man named Rolfe are the only survivors among the escapees, and as they rely on the kindness of strangers to make their laborious way back toward Baltimore, Rolfe is picked up by bounty hunters and Ben hastily finds employment on Captain John Mayer's happier Disciple. He also, though, is eventually captured while ashore and returned to the now desperately undermanned Ella Daw, with its deranged captain and two very angry mates. Although Ben's misadventures closely resemble those of other young literary seafarers, Conly individuates her protagonist's story with well-drawn, scandal-infused details of the oyster industry, a distinctive narrative voice for Ben that recalls the tone of nineteenth-century adventure tales, and a taut plot thread that implicates Ben directly in a murder. Brevity—a boon to many reluctant or time-constrained readers—will make this easy to promote as a satisfying middle-school quick pick.