Julie Wright’s A CAPTAIN FOR CAROLINE GRAY – A Bluestocking Sails from Regency London to India to Find Love

  

Set in the early 19^th century in the Regency era, this is the story of Caroline Gray, whose outspoken opinions and well-displayed knowledge kept her from finding a proper husband. Due to her family’s sudden dwindling income, she is offered only one way out—to sail to India where a man waits who her family approves of. She boards a ship (named Persistence, but never described) with other young women on the same path.

Captain Thomas Scott commands one of the ships of the Fishing Fleet (“fishing” as in brides fishing for husbands). The voyages pay well, but he questions why families would allow young women to be matched with total strangers so far away, and he finds most of the young ladies insipid.

Caroline is the first woman to catch Thomas’ eye. He likes that she has a brain and can converse on many subjects. But the rest of the passengers are shocked by her behavior and Caroline finds herself an outcast, except for two other young women who become her friends.

 

The story is well written, the scenario plausible, and the jealousy of other women believable. But the story before they reach India, it could have moved along at a faster pace and could have had more atmospherics. There is no sense of being on a ship, no creaking of timbers, no rolling and pitching on the open ocean, no difficulty getting up and down ship ladders in long gowns, and save one day, almost no weather. This despite the fact they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, which is famous for its storms and heavy seas.

 

The young ladies—never on a ship before—never get seasick, never have difficulty walking on a moving deck. They might as well have been in a hotel. There was one storm where everyone got wet, but for the most part, there are very few descriptions of the sea...which seemed unrealistic. Also, in the early 19th century, while passenger ships from London to India used lookout platforms, they were generally called tops or crosstrees, not crow’s nests, a term used for observation capsules on whaling ships.

 

Two-thirds of the way through the story, they get to India and the pace picks up. Caroline meets the man who is waiting for her, a nefarious captain aligned with bad guys bent on revenge against Thomas. There are some exciting scenes that lead to the satisfying romantic conclusion.