Sunday, April 12, 2009

On which page of Theodore Taylor's novel The Cay does the word "destroyer" appear?

The word "destroyer" occurs multiple times in Theodore Taylor’s 1969 novel The Cay. A story that takes place on a Caribbean island during the early years of the Second World War, ships, both commercial and military, play a prominent role. On page 24, there is a reference to “two American destroyers” that, along with a Dutch cruiser, a larger surface combatant, have arrived at the island for the purpose of protecting merchant ships from the German submarines prowling the ocean’s depths. Much later in the novel, on page 129, Phillip awakens to the sound of loud explosions that the sight-impaired boy at first considers to be thunder. Upon discovering that there is no storm raging, however, he suggests to his cat the sounds might be explosions coming from naval vessels, “maybe destroyers,” he ponders, “fighting it out with enemy submarines.”


Phillip is correct, it turns out, that the sounds her hears emanate from navy destroyers, one of which arrives to rescue him. On page 134, he notes, “I was helped up the gangway of a destroyer,” manned by the American sailors who are, indeed, his rescuers. Finally, on page 135, Phillip describes being told by the ship’s captain that the crew of the destroyer had been hunting German submarines when they saw the smoke from the boy’s fire and diverted from their operation to investigate its source.


These are the instances in The Cay in which the author’s young narrator mentions destroyers.

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