Cooper’s eighth novel appeared in 1827. Unlike his previous work, it was first published not in America, but in Paris. Cooper’s previous sea tale, The Pilot, had sought to provide a thrilling, but accurate rival to the seamanship on display in Walter Scott’s The Pirate. Set around Newport, Rhode Island in the mid eighteenth century, The Red Rover sees Cooper continuing to draw on his own naval experiences, whilst also introducing us to a pirate of his own – the eponymous Red Rover.
The novel is also notable for featuring one of the first serious attempts in American literature to portray an African-American protagonist, namely Scipio Africanus, a free black sailor who shares an equal billing with the novel’s other protagonists: the naval officer Harry Wilder and seaman Dick Fid. The main action of the novel concerns the thrilling consequences of Wilder’s decision to betray the Red Rover in order to captain the ‘Royal Caroline’ and to protect it from the piratical advances of the Rover and his crew.