The Sea Cat

by Anthony R. Fanning

In 1725, ten-year-old Cathleen Abigail Satterfield pleads with her father to allow her to become an officer in the navy, as her brother Piers has done. Her father, Richard, demands the girl conduct herself as a proper young lady destined for marriage and responsibility. Cathleen, known to most as Cat, is a clever and wilful child. She disguises herself as a boy and runs away from home to become a sailor in hope of finding adventure in faraway places. On his wife's insistence, Richard enlists his eldest daughter Natalie to help find the girl. She borrows a small ship, assembles a crew, and sets off in search of her young sibling. Cat, meanwhile learns that working aboard a ship of His Majesty's Navy is not a game. Playing the part of a young orphan in order to join the crew, Cat finds she does not enjoy the social status amongst the men that she did as a child of a wealthy merchant in the colonies. She must work hard and face dangers she could never have imagined in order to prove herself a valuable member of the crew, and she must do so without the discovery of her being a girl.