The story I want to tell you began the first day I stepped on a ship – a real ship. It was a British frigate that had been docked in the harbour a couple of days before and, on that sunny Sunday morning, stood there in all her splendour, floating gently on the water, with her gilded lion heads shining under the sun. A nice seaman spotted me while I was looking bewildered at the lion figurehead and let me see the deck. That moment, I fell in love. But it would've been many years before I could step on such a majestic ship again – twelve years, to be specific. That means I was already twenty-one when I finally met him.
It was the day I joined Captain Hawley's crew, in 1776. She was a beautiful two-masted schooner, fifty feet long, called Royal Savage.
"Gentlemen," I greeted.
"A novice, huh?" a man in a long dark coat eyed me with a scornful look. "You must be Seth Murray, the kid Samuel recommended. I'm Ephraim Hawley, Lieutenant. Keep your eyes open, follow my orders, don't do anything stupid and you might survive."
"Y-yes sir!"
"Good. Now go below, Samuel will show you around." His serious countenance never faltered; at the time I didn't know it, but I'd soon learn that no one had ever seen him smile.
The hold was extremely dark but my eyes got used by it in a minute and I moved as quietly as I could to find my friend. I finally located him on a bunk bed, surrounded by maps.
"Hey Sam." I threw my bag on the upper bed.
He put the papers aside and smiled broadly at me. "Ahoy my fellow sailor, are you ready to loot and burn some British ship?"
"Are you serious?" I held back a laugh.
"Deadly serious. That's the right spirit to get on a ship with, privateers are still pirates after all. Come on, we have some time before we set sail."
I followed him around while he explained me everything I needed to know. He was a seventeen-year-old freckled boy with long brown hair, tied together into a low ponytail, and green eyes. He was the youngest member of the crew but knew everything about sailing cause he was the Captain's nephew and had been living on boats and ships of every kind since he was three. By the time we set sail, I knew all I needed to about our daily routine, plus some information on every member of the crew. There was Dave 'the Seafox' Jones, who was said to be the best smuggler and counterfeiter at sea; Connor Walker, a black-haired man who was particularly keen to get drunk and got into fights almost every week; Will 'bones' Carter, who was blind in one eye, but could shot a moving bird from sixty feet away; James Turner, who read the Bible aloud every night and had apparently decided to save Connor from his alcohol addiction; 'Silent' Pete, who'd been tortured by the British and had had his tongue cut, and many more.
