Beadle's Dime New York Library No. 625

"The Gold Seekers of the Bahamas" This adventure serial by Col. Prentiss Ingraham follows Claude Cassiday, a Boston-based merchant ship captain and newly commissioned naval officer. After rescuing ninety sailors from a sinking American brig-of-war during a West Indian hurricane, Cassiday receives a commission as Junior Lieutenant. His appointment comes at a tragic time: his young son was lost to presumed pirates during an earlier trading voyage in the Bahamas. Reassigned to the naval sloop Emerald, Cassiday leads an expedition to search the Bahama Islands for pirates and locate his missing son. His whale-boat vanishes after encountering violent storms; weeks of searching yield no trace of the vessel. The narrative follows Cassiday's family's anguish and the Navy's subsequent investigation of reef-bound islands seeking survivors or evidence.