A Sailor Boy with Dewey follows sixteen-year-old Oliver Raymond, son of a San Francisco merchant with trading interests in Hong Kong and Manila, as he travels to the Philippines during the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Sent to visit the family firm's Manila branch after graduating school, Oliver takes passage on the schooner Dart under the drunken, brutal Captain Kenny, alongside his close friend Dan Holbrook. When a hurricane and collision with a Chinese junk sink the Dart, the survivors scatter into small boats; Oliver and Dan are separated, and Oliver washes ashore on Luzon, believing his friend drowned. He endures capture by hostile Tagal natives, escapes through jungle and canyon, and is nearly murdered by the vengeful Captain Kenny, who shoves him off a cliff. Battered but alive, Oliver eventually reunites with Dan, who survived after all, and together with shipmates Tom Dawson and Matt Gory they make their way toward Manila, only to be arrested there as "rebel sympathizers" and forced to break out of a Spanish jail. Amid the chaos of the Filipino insurrection against Spain, Oliver and Dan fight off assassins threatening the family firm's Manila clerk, rescue a dying American whose deathbed letter entrusts them with a fortune meant for shipmate Watt Brown, and dodge crossfire between Spanish troops and insurgents. A chance encounter in Hong Kong brings Oliver and Dan into contact with Commodore George Dewey himself, after they rescue an injured naval officer from Chinese footpads; Oliver's knack for engineering repairs impresses Dewey personally. The boys secure passage aboard the USS Boston and witness the historic Battle of Manila Bay firsthand, participating informally in the American squadron's decisive destruction of the Spanish fleet under Admiral Montojo. Afterward, venturing back toward Manila through insurgent-held territory, they narrowly survive further skirmishes, native ambushes, and a charge by wild buffalo bulls before finally locating the wrecked Dart on the coast, where Watt Brown is standing guard against Chinese pirates — arriving just as Captain Kenny reappears aboard a junk, setting up a tense standoff. The novel blends historical naval drama with boys'-adventure survival tale, culminating in Oliver's determination to see both Kenny's villainy punished and the Dart's ownership rightfully restored.
By Edward Stratemeyer · First published 1899 · Genre: Adventure, Historical Fiction, War/Military Fiction · 32 chapters