The primary characters in Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica are children, particular the Bas-Thornton children—John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura. Raised on a plantation in Jamaica, the children are put on a ship back to England after a hurricane destroys their home. Emily is the protagonist of the book and is the character around whom much of the action takes place.

Accompanying the Bas-Thorntons on their voyage are two Creole children, Margaret and Harry Fernandez. After they are all captured by pirates, they go through extraordinary trials; Emily and Margaret especially endure much difficulty at the hands of men. Emily is pursued menacingly by the pirate captain, Captain Jonsen, and Margaret is pursued by his chief mate, Otto.

Other characters in the book include Captain Marpole, the captain of the ship Clorinda, on which the children set sail before being captured by pirates, and José, the cook aboard the pirate ship.

Mr. Bas-Thornton

Mr. Bas-Thornton, a plantation owner in Jamaica who sends his children to school in England. On the way, the children, with two of their friends, are taken aboard a pirate ship. Though the children are returned within a few months, their father and mother never realize what the experience has done to them psychologically.

Mrs. Bas-Thornton

Mrs. Bas-Thornton, his wife.

John

John, oldest of the Bas-Thornton children. He is killed in a fall from a warehouse when his pirate captors, who have taken the children accidentally and treated them well, are selling their booty at a Cuban port.

Emily

Emily, John’s sister, an excitable ten-year-old child. She and the pirate captain achieve a strange psychological relationship, though a stormy one. While emotionally upset, Emily slashes one of the pirates’ prisoners, a Dutch sea captain, to death with a knife. Months later, she allows the pirate captain to go to his death by hanging for her own crime, without apparently suffering any qualms of conscience.

Edward

Edward,

Rachael

Rachael, and

Laura

Laura, other children of the Bas-Thorntons.

Margaret Fernandez

Margaret Fernandez, Emily’s friend and fellow captive. Margaret voluntarily goes to the captain’s cabin to live, being an older girl. She knows that Emily actually killed the prisoner but does nothing to change what happens to the innocent man. She appears to suffer from shock and loss of memory when she finally reaches England.

Harry Fernandez

Harry Fernandez, Margaret’s young brother.

Captain Jonsen

Captain Jonsen, the pirate captain. He is not a bad man, so far as the children are concerned. He sees that they are left alone by his men and treated well. He did not intend to keep the children and gives them up voluntarily to a passing ship. Later, he is condemned to hang for the murder Emily committed.

Captain James Marpole

Captain James Marpole, from whose raided ship pirates remove the children. Thinking the children killed, he sails away, leaving them aboard the pirate ship.