Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:Captain van Hoek

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is an intermediate page for Captain van Hoek.

Stephensonia

Enoch Root "wills" the Minerva's Captain van Hoek to take note of him.

Authored entries

Captain van Hoek

Operator of a very high tech ship, Captain van Hoek amusingly possesses an interchangable prosthesis which is normally a hook. He can be mistaken for a stout boy of ten so he must be short of stature. He might be a Dutch byblow of the wee Charles I and thus the inspiration for the pirate "Captain Hook.1" Which is rather ironic as he is a captain with very anti-pirate views forged some 20 years earlier. 1690 was the start of the Golden Age of Piracy according to some; Many more feel The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 started it. Those nations who did sign the treaty were promising not to charter 'privateers.'

Dappa%26VanHoekMW.jpg

Dappa and the Captain make it happen
One does wonder about Captain Crunch
I don't know which Sinbad movie I modified this image from - sorry His anti-pirate mindset is shared by his strangely literate and math savvy multi-national crew. With his first mate Dappa, he is capable of multi-layered bluffing strategies. Such bluffing the enemy first recorded in the English Privateer Drake's raids upon the Spanish.

We learn more on him in The Confusion; and Jack Shaftoe gets to call him a red-headed stepchild. He knows Enoch Root.

Quotes

" ... he nailed his colors to the mast 20 years ago." Quicksilver Page 148. Nailing the colors to the mast is a traditional sign of defiance, indicating that the colors will never be struck, the ship will never surrender.2