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Piracy did not end when Blackbeard's head was severed at Ocracoke Inlet in 1717. Year by year the number of reported pirate attacks on shipping increases.This book supercedes Philip Goss's excellent Who's Who of Pirates which was published in 1924 and has been the standard work on the subject. A serious study and an entertaining read, this book will be of value to all who study maritime history, the colonial era or the Caribbean,It will be of interest to many who dwell near, or visit, the eastern United States or the Caribbean Islands.Genealogists will find it a most useful source. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Exhaustive Index!
This is exactly the kind of reference book for which I've been searching for years.My sea shanty group, Bounding Main [...], portrays Elizabethan mariners, and finding references to any kind of nautical cove beyond Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins and other "big names" has proven to be difficult, heretofore.This book gives you a delicious little taste of knowledge, the further pursuit of which is very exciting.A great "Who's Who" of the pirate genre! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Encyclopedia of Piracy (A Good Start)
This is an A-Z coverage of pirates and related topics. It includes coverage of books, authors, movies, actors, places and, you got it, actual pirates. If you want information of something piratical this is a good first place to look. There's a lot left out though, so I'd consider this as a good beginning on a more comprehensive book.

One big caution though, Rogozinski, doesn't seem to be overly constrained by history, so don't take everything written in this book as gospel. P-)

a fun coffee-table book
This is basically a coffee-table book, with lots of neat facts and figures about all things piratical.It certainly has some errors here and there, but it serves as a nice cross-referencing tool with other books on the subject.And where else can one find such a diverse discussion, including entries on the origin and formation of the pop-culture image of the pirate (peglegs, yo ho ho, etc), camp movies like the various Treasure Island features, and reviews of stories from Sabatini to Pope?While this book could certainly cover the pirate pulp novels of the 40s, 50s, & 60s better (think Jay Scotland), it's great for what it is.For a more scholarly book, I strongly recommend Ritchie's Captain Kidd.

A good reference book, but an average history one.
This book is practical for references. But the author is often wrong. I found about a dozen fatal errors, and several minor ones. I have read many, many books of pirates history. If the author had truly read with care hismasive bibliography, then he would not have made so many mistakes. I do notbelieve he did his homework well. Also, he does not gives any body ofnotes, so we the readers do not know where he took his data from, nor canwe distinguish when is he using primary sources or when he is making thingsup. I recomend it only with reserves. For a better book, see DavidCordingly, or go to the masters as Gosse. ... Read more

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Discusses Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, and other pirates and privateers, both men and women, who have roamed the sea since 1500. ... Read more

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In their heyday, the sight of a pirate ship on the horizon would strike terror into the hearts of their intended victims. The colorful yet fearsome reputation of the pirate still resonates today and the sight of the skull and crossbones retains its thrilling power. The lives of the most famous of their brethren have been immortalized, initially in the pamphlets of the time, now in movies and books.

Telling the full story of piracy from the "buccaneering era" of the 17th century to the last great piratical wave of the early 19th century, this book explores the generally short and bloody life of the pirate, detailing his ship, weaponry, and codes of behaviour, as well as his most famous exploits. It is the gripping tale of the violent and deadly brigands who roamed the high seas in search of plunder. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A top pick for collections seeking more than a casual coverage.
Scourge of the Seas: Buccaneers, Pirates and Privateers examines the myths and realities of pirate life, examining the stories of adventure on the seas, the biographies of practicing pirates throughout history, and considering pirate ships and vivid battles alike. Other books on pirate history may offer the same viewpoint with a less detailed perspective: SCOURGE OF THE SEAS covers not just events and personalities, but is packed with details about ships, weaponry, codes of behavior, and holds plenty of color photos throughout. A top pick for collections seeking more than a casual coverage.

Full of information and well written
Angus Konstam's Scourge of the Seas: Buccaneers, Pirates & Privateers is one of those books that just has to find a way into your personal library.Full of facts about pirate society and society's feeling of repulsion of their activities, Scourge manages to keep the reader interested by great writing and wonderful illustrations.

Dealing with pirates from just about every angle, Konstam also does a complete of including just about every important pirate for 200 years.Dealing with how they organized their activities, how their ships operated, and how they divided their booty, Scourge is a wonderful read.

Significant chapters include The Buccaneers and Their Victims, Buccaneer Commanders, The Pirate Crew, Pirate Warfare, Pirate Codes, Pirate Flags, Pirate Justice, The Development of Privateering, Organization and Recruitmnet, The Anti-Piracy Campaign of the 1820's.

Well researched, and written with the reader in mind, Scourge will be a book you'll love to read. ... Read more

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Pirates of the Caribbean is a study of pirates in the Americas during their heyday. Cruz Apestegui has drawn on a huge number of sources - both published and unpublished - to write the definitive narrative history of piracy in the Caribbean. The story begins with the arrival of the first Spanish settlers in the New World. They found an immense amount of wealth there, and the whole purpose of these early settlements was to extract this and send it back to Spain in great treasure galleons. When Spain found itself at war with France in the 1520s, these settlements and galleons became the target for privateers in the service of the French king. From these beginnings, the whole edifice of piracy, popularised by Hollywood films and the swashbuckling novels of Rafael Sabatini, emerged. The wealth of New Spain attracted ship owners who tried both legitimate trade and smuggling to turn a profit. European wars generated fleets of ships commanded by the same men who replaced illegal trade with outright seizure of ships and attacks on Spanish ports. Famous names such as Hawkins, Morgan, Drake, and Heyn all built their fortunes on these escapades.Piracy remained profitable until trade with Spanish colonies was opened after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713. Piracy in the Caribbean was then suppressed, and by 1720 had ceased to be anything but a marginal activity by small operators. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Spanish Viewpoint
Having read through a couple of score books on piracy, many of them mere knockoffs of Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates; you have to look at yet another book on piracy and almost yawn. Reading through the first chapter of this book you get a feeling that something is amiss, and it dawns on you that you are reading about the depredations of the Sea-dogs, buccaneers, flibustiers and pirates from the Spanish viewpoint. After years and years of reading the heroic exploits of the Elizabethan Sea-dogs it is refreshing to read another opinion.

The author has provided ample illustrations, maps and pictures to help the reader visualize the narrative. While there are the usual names and places, Morgan, de Graf, Drake, Tortuga, Port Royal, Hipanola; the author has provided additional material on Spanish Costa Guarda and privateers. He also, spends a good deal of time detailing the Spanish efforts to deal with the scourge of piracy, from fortresses to warning towers. At times the reading is slow, but the novelty of the viewpoint always carries the reader forward wondering what new twists on the old stories might appear.

Yet another book for my pirate library; it enjoys a place next to my copy of Angus Konstam's The History of Pirates. P-)

Pirates from the other side
While a very good compendium of buccaneer tales from the days of derring-do, what makes this book unique (at least from an English-speaking perspective) is that it is an account of the pirates, buccaneers, etc from the Spanish viewpoint. Those of you who have read about the Caribbean pirates and have seen the usual Hollywood movies are in for a treat! Historical correction number one; the pirates didn't always win against the Spanish, and in fact, most of their encounters ended with disasterous consequences for the buccaneers, even the most famous! Historical correction number two; there were a lot more than just English-speaking pirates in the Caribbean (sorry, Henry Morgan!), and the efforts of the numerous Dutch and French (and even Spanish) pirates get full treatment in this book. All this is very well, and it is quite interesting to note the strenuous and often very successful efforts that the Spanish government of the times made to prevent pirate successes. That said, historical bias goes both ways, and the reader will quickly recognise that while they have been reading English-biased accounts in the past, they will soon recognise that they are reading a Spanish-biased version in this book, and some of the statements made can be quite ludicrous from time to time. Most pertinent in this regard is the gaffe that although a portion of the Spanish Armada did indeed make it back to Spain, the Armada as a whole lost over a third of its ships and men. Senor Apestegui would have us believe that this was in fact 'not militarily significant.' I don't know which military Sr Apestegui has served with, but every one that I have come in contact with will readily confirm that losses of a third of any military force constitutes a military disaster of the first order! My final criticism involves the often repeated assertion that piracy in the Caribbean essentially disappeared around 1720. I can assure you that nothing is further from the truth! This area suffered from pirates right through the 1840's, some of whom are very well known to this day (remember Jean Lafitte? Gained pardon from the US for helping to defeat the British at New Orleans in 1815? What do you think he was up to before then?). And the causes of piracy in this area remained the same; unemployed ex-privateers, lowered prices and a resurgence in trade based on the end of a war (the Napoleonic wars, the subsequent wars of independance throughout Central and South America). Oh well, perhaps in the next book! ... Read more

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It is very rare that a good Pirate biography comes along.The Pirates Own Book is one of the best Piratology references.Not only is is filled with useful information but it is a FUN read.It is well-written and full of adventurous accounts.What makes this book interesting in comparison to other books on Piratology is the plethora of beautiful (and sometimes gory) woodcuts. So avast ye Swabs! There be storms ahead! ... Read more

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This exhaustive maritime reference gives the particulars of hundreds of the brethren of the sea in biographical form.
A must for any Pirate enthusiast or arm-chair swashbuckler!Special introduction by Editor David W. Whitehead (Piratologist/Cryptoarchaeologist/Cryptozoologist), Author of "CryptoQuest Field Guide to Florida Pirates and their Buried Treasure". Pirates' Who's Who is a true classic from the CryptoQuest Reprint Series. ... Read more

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Excerpt: n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the American colonies, from Massachusetts to South Carolina, were at intervals subject to visitations of pirates, who were wont to appear suddenly upon the coasts, to pillage a settlement or attack trading vessels and as suddenly to take flight to their strongholds. Captain Kidd was long celebrated in prose and verse, and only within a few years have credulous people ceased to seek his buried treasures. The arch-villain, Blackbeard, was a terror to Virginians and Carolinians until Spotswood, of “Horseshoe” fame, took the matter in hand, and sent after him lieutenant Maynard, who, slaying the pirate in hand to hand conflict, returned with his head at the bowsprit.[1] Lapse of time has cast a romantic and semi-mythologic glamor around these depredators, and it is in many instances at this day extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. The unprotected situation of many settlements along the seaboard colonies rendered them an easy prey to rapacious sea rovers, but it might have been expected that the Maryland shores of the Chesapeake bay would be free from their harassings. The province, however, it seems was not to enjoy such good fortune, for in the printed annals of her life appears the name of one man, who has been handed down from generation to generation as a “pirate,” a “rebel” and an “ungrateful villain,” and other equally complimentary epithets have been applied to him. The original historians of Maryland based their ideas about him upon some of the statements made by those whom he had injured or attacked, and who differed from him in political creed. ... Read more

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Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (also spelled Esquemeling, Exquemeling, or Oexmelin) (c. 1645-1707) was a French writer most known as the author of one of the most important sourcebooks of seventeenth century piracy, first published in Dutch as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers, in Amsterdam, Jan ten Hoorn, in 1678.Born about 1645, it is likely that Exquemelin was a native of Harfleur, France, who on his return from buccaneering settled in Holland, possibly because he was a Huguenot. In 1666 he was engaged by the French West India Company and went to Tortuga, where he stayed for three years. There he enlisted with the buccaneers, in particular with the band of Henry Morgan, whose confidante he was, probably as a barber-surgeon, and remained with them until 1674. Shortly afterwards he returned to Europe; but he was later once again in the Caribbean as his name appears on the muster-roll as a surgeon in the attack on Cartagena in 1697.The bibliographic legacy of Exquemelin's "History of the Bouccaneers of America" is complex. It has rightly been said that perhaps no book of the seventeenth century in any language was ever the parent of so many imitations and the source of so much fiction.Edited by David W. Whitehead (Cryptoarchaeologist/Cryptozoologist), the prolific Author of "CryptoQuest Field Guide to the Monsters, Ghosts, UFOs and other Anomalies of Florida", "Field Guide to Haunted Orlando" and many other books.CryptoQuest Publishing brings you this title in the CryptoQuest Reprint Series, a collection of rare, hard-to-find books of horror and the supernatural, cryptozoology, pirates, anomalies and archaeology. ... Read more

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Colorful, cunning, and beholden to no man, pirates have always fascinated us. This book is about some of those sea outlaws -- the pirates and privateers who infested the Caribbean for over three centuries, constituting one of the most fascinating chapters in a three-thousand-year saga of piracy. A select bibliography and index are included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

It is not original, and lacks appropiate notes
This book is just another book of pirates. It does not give anything new. I have read many pirate history books, and reading this one was like reading any other of an average quality. It lacks many pirates, so I cannot say it is a complete work. What I most would like to _note_, is thatthe author uses marginal notes at the end of each chapter, very few indeed,and very incomplete. For example, she says: "5. Boston Gazette"and that's it. So, one can not be sure if she read the actual source, or ifshe is citing another author (that she does not mention) who cited theoriginal source. It seems this author has the bad custom of providing onlypaltry notes, if any, as I confirmed in her article in a joint publicationedited by D.Cordingly named _Pirates terror_ (how original). So, as thegolden rule says, an author that does not cite properly, can not be cited.In this manner, this book is not reliable for students, researchers norscholars. And no, guys, it has nothing to do with communism nor with KarlMarx... ... Read more