Pirate Logistics
As promised, I am reading the pirate religious romance book. I am about a third of the way through.
To summarize: Faith Westcott doesn't believe in god because her Mom died; Faith's Dad won't force her and her sisters to marry if she's independently wealthy; therefore, pirating. Also there's this dude Dajon, who's religious and clearly the love interest, and this other dude Wilhelm who is written as if the only thing he lacks in life is a long moustache to twirl.
So far nothing crazy has happened on the romance or religion angles, which I appreciate. Faith is bothering me a little, because she's engaging in the stereotypical romance heroine method of wooing - flirt outrageously and then become terribly!insulted by an offhandeded comment of Dajon's and do something stupid to "prove him wrong". Yadda yadda yadda, we're all in high school, it hasn't gotten too bad yet.
But what's really driving me nuts? Pirate logistics.
The book opens with Dajon sailing home from his first merchant trip, captaining his father's ship and hoping he doesn’t screw things up. He sees a ship in distress, with a woman with wild red hair standing on deck calling out for succor, and stops to help. You can see where this is heading. Faith takes Dajon's ship, the prologue ends, and the next thing we know it's several years later and everyone's in Charleston, South Carolina (or, Charles Towne, Carolina).
Whereupon we discover that Faith didn't just take Dajon's ship, she took Dajon's ship. Swapped it right in for hers. Dajon has since become a captain in the British Royal Navy, and in one of those uncomfortable twists of fate, has been sent to America to hunt pirates. And here's Faith, pirating around in Dajon's father's ship.
I'd like to know how she got her pirates over here from England. One assumes that she traveled on a ship with her Father and sisters, to avoid those uncomfortable sorts of questions one receives when one shows up unexpectedly on the other side of the Atlantic. So… she just told her pirate crew, "Meet me in Charles Towne. Try to stay at least a day away from my ship so you're not spotted."?
The back of the book mentions family tragedies and doesn't mention parents, so I'd assumed that Faith and her sisters were orphans. Without anyone to keep tabs on them, the sisters could hold down the fort while Faith went out to pillage and brink home the cash. However, as mentioned above, her father, an officer in the British navy, is still around and will marry all of them off unless they accrue enough money on their own. So, how does Faith manage to pirate?
She sneaks out at night.
I'm serious. She waits until everyone is in bed, sneaks out, prepares the ship, weighs anchor, somehow… gets loot, returns, tacks everything down, and sneaks back in. Is it even possible to do all of that in an 8 hour time period? Where are these people she's pillaging - seven feet out from the dock?
You might point out that the servants would certainly notice, even if the other members of the household didn't. That angle, at least, is sort of covered - the servants think she's sneaking out to see a boy, like her better than her dad, and so are keeping mum. Oh! Also? Lucas, her piratical second-in-command, is one of the men they've hired on at the house. After Faith's father leaves on a sea trip and puts Dajon in charge of watching over the girls, this whole Batman dynamic develops, with everyone interacting politely over the dinner table, then sneaking out to battle on the high seas.
So if Faith is keeping Lucas close to her at the house, does that mean the ship is in a cove somewhere, full of bored pirates? Nope! They're drinking downtown in the bars.
Faith literally keeps a ship's worth of not particularly trustworthy people who know her real identity (revelation of which could get her hanged) in the same city as she is, full of alcohol.
Because that could never go wrong.
Poll