Captain of The Nancy

Captain of The Nancy is the main antagonist in the short story of Terry Deary's True Shark Stories episode The Shark That Solved a Crime.

He was based on the real captain of the same Nancy ship in 1799 in the Caribbean.

Biography
When sailing round Cape Tiburon in The Sparrow, Lieutenant Wylie catches sight of a ship which he believes is French since the Navy are involved in a war with France. He sees The Nancy and he heads at it to intercept it because he's sure they're French but all evidence proves they're in fact Dutch. It is at this point that the captain throws his ship documents over the side because he knows they are proof of his nefarious deeds and could lead to his arrest.

The captain harasses Wylie when he comes onboard and he threatens to sue him if he damages his cargo. The cargo goes rotten and so the captain takes Wylie to court, demanding compensation.

At court, the officials find no contradiction to the captain's claims that he is Dutch and they release him but blame Wylie for wrongful arrest. To add insult to injury the captain demands double the compensation for the loss of his cargo and his unlawful arrest. Wylie knows he has no such money and he'll have to sell his house and go homeless.

When all seems lost, George Tilson, a midshipman friend of Wylie's, comes in with a startling story that when Wylie was in the Cape, so was George, on a different ship, when the bored sailors went fishing, and saw empty waters. George got the idea a predator was around and ordered the men to catch it using one plankton they'd caught earlier. When the men finally caught a shark, they cut it up for supper. When the cook opened up the shark, he saw some papers in its stomach, undigested. He knew it was shipping documents, so he saved them for inspection. This proved that The Nancy was in fact a French ship, and she was bound for Le Havre! Thus the captain's guilt in conspiring against the Navy was proven without doubt and he was arrested for treason.

Wylie instead got a massive compensation as a reward and became rich from a silly mistake.