Published in 1860, this story about a midshipman on a rebel man-of-war during the American War of Independence was No. 2 of "Beadle's Dime Novels" which was one of the most popular dime novel series, reportedly selling hundreds of thousands of copies and responsible for coining the term "dime novel." Literally "coining" the term. Each issue of the series carried the imprint of a U. S. coin showing the words "ONE DIME" which a Supreme Court decision ultimately ruled was the publisher's exclusive and protected trademark. The series started June 9, 1860 and ended November 17, 1874.
Harry Cavendish, the listed author for this novel as well as its hero, was a pen name for Charles Jacobs Peterson (July 20, 1818–March 4, 1887), a well-known author and publisher who also wrote under the names Harry Danforth, J. Thornton Randolph, and Henry R. Shipley. This novel was collected together, modified slightly, and reprinted from something originally published as a serial in Graham's Magazine beginning in January, 1842, under the title "Harry Cavendish."
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.
