Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1020

About this issue

This 1897 pulp serialization of "Barney Blake, the Boy Privateer" by Herrick Johnstone, subtitled "The Cruise of the Queer Fish," depicts early wartime naval adventure. The narrator, a dismissed sailor seeking work in May 1813, joins the privateer brigantine Queer Fish through his messmate Tony Trybrace. The vessel, captained by the jovial Captain Joker, carries 125 men—a multinational crew including the gigantic cook Snollygoster, the mysterious boy Willie Warner and his companion Roderick Prinn, the verbose storyteller Bluenose, and an ill-tempered Scottish first mate. Initial chapters establish the ship's departure from Boston with comedic incidents, including a Polish Jewish peddler accidentally carried to sea. The narrative begins pursuit of British merchant vessels as a licensed privateer during wartime conflict.