Timothy came back home with clothes for her only to find that she was dead. Hannah Gumbs died during the second of Timothy's first four years at sea. He later claimed to be sixty, younger than the more than seventy years of age he guesstimated he actually was, so he could become part of the crew on the Hato. When he finally got a job on another ship, the Gertrude Theismann, he believed he was only fourteen, but he claimed an age of sixteen. A 'bukra' was a white boy in the richer part of St.

When he tried to become a cabin boy on one ship, its captain took on a 'bukra' boy instead because he was a negro (black person).

As a boy, he formed a dream of one day being captain of his own schooner, which he meant to name after the woman he called 'Tante Hannah.' Even though she was not Timothy's biological aunt, Timothy still referred to her as this. The theme to this story is making dreams a reality.Īccording to Timothy of the Cay, Timothy had been abandoned as a baby at the residence in Back O' All where Hannah Gumbs, a former coal carrier turned washer-woman who reared him, was a squatter. Thomas (of which Virgin Island it is now the capital), and Phillip Enright's life after the same events. The book discusses Timothy's life before the events of The Cay, when he was living in 'Back O' All,' the poorest section of what was then the squatter's village of Charlotte Amalie, on the then Danish-held United States Virgin Island of St. It is a prequel for Timothy and a sequel for Phillip to the 1969 novel The Cay. Timothy of the Cay is a book written by Theodore Taylor.

Timothy the cay