As the question implies, it would be a mistake to describe Captain Jonsen, the commander of a pirate ship that inadvertently takes on the Bas-Thornton children and their two Creole companions while in the process of seizing a British merchant ship, as a tragic hero.

The captain, like much of his crew, is hardly the vicious force of nature his occupation would imply. His attitude toward the children is a strange mixture of callous indifference and desultory compassion. Everything he does seems to partake of this dual nature, his behavior a repertory of half-gestures. When, in his growing fondness for the ten-year-old Emily, he begins stroking her hair in a muted sexual overture, he's ashamed, rather than angered, when she bites his thumb and runs away.

Like the unfolding action of the novel itself, his character is governed less by its own imperatives than by chance and circumstance. Thus, when Emily falsely accuses him of the murder of the Dutch captain, it seems less an act of revenge than a randomly cruel twist of fate.

Aristotle's definition of the tragic hero states that the hero must experience an "anagnorisis," a recognition that, due to an error in judgment, they are the cause of the terrible reversal of fortune that they have experienced. Such recognition implies high character, intelligence, and, in general, a nature sympathetic enough to evoke fear and pity.

Hypothetically, in order to fulfill this role, Captain Jonsen would have had to display an awareness of the suffering he had wrought in kidnapping these children, including the death of one of them, and would have had to turn himself and his crew in to the British authorities. But he never truly experiences such an anagnorisis, and thus, he cannot be regarded as a tragic hero.