The Brigantine; or, Admiral Lowe’s Last Cruise

Published originally in 1864, The Brigantine; or, Admiral Lowe’s Last Cruise is No. 68 of the Beadle’s Dime Novels series.  The story—half action-adventure, half romance—takes place in that neglected era when Manhattan Island was occupied by the Dutch, before the English took charge, which gives it an added touch of uniqueness; and what’s more, the title character is lifted from an actual pirate, Edward “Ned” Lowe (1690–1724), who may or may not have been dubbed “Admiral” but definitely did operate a small fleet of pirate ships off the east coast of America.  (But the reader should not Google Mr. Lowe before reading this book, because his real character was no match for the fictionalized hero in this tale, nor do the time periods actually match.)

About the author, “Decatur Paulding, U. S. N.,” absolutely nothing is known other than that he wrote this one dime novel for Beadle and Company.

Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes.  If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.